The entrance to Grout Elementary School, on S.E. Holgate Boulevard at 31st, was nothing much to look at.

Parent and garden designer Lisa Brooke suggested it could be better…and spent the last school year working with the students and the school to make it so.

The result--flowering plants, graveled off-street paths, and a homemade circular bench composed of hay bales covered with stucco and decorated with glass flag mosaics by the students.

It all was dedicated in a ribbon-cutting [shown] on June 13th, presided over by Woodstock Resident Karin Potter, the wife of Portland's Mayor.