The Courtyard

In 2023, Princeton Mayor Mark Freda, Board of Education members, and PHS staff and students gathered in PHS courtyard to celebrate the completion of a multi-year revitalization effort, with new gardens and space for activities such as reading or yoga. However, the project never quite reached the level of engagement that was hoped for.

Then, in 2024 former PHS Science Supervisor Dr. Joy Barnes-Johnson received a climate literacy grant to revitalize the courtyards. This year, physics teacher Dr. Insu Yi and several other faculty members and PHS students are using the grant to clean up the courtyard and restore the gardens and research activity.

“The greenhouse was used a little bit for the horticulture class, and the courtyard for research. But they weren’t in great shape, let’s put it that way,” said Yi. “I began getting involved in a team that was formed based on our district grant. [The] initiative was to turn the ... courtyards into spaces for everyone — meaning classes, community groups, even outside groups — but most of the time we spent on cleaning up.”

Yi was initially hesitant to include PHS students, though he eventually began recruiting through his research and physics classes. In the future, he hopes to also include ESL and special education classes.

“I’m really interested in turning something as simple as a garden into a science project. For example, we have solar panels, but the solar panel is placed in the wrong way, so it doesn’t get sun[light],” said Yi. “I calculated with students what angle we should [have] from the horizon to the solar panels inclination, which we calculated to be about 30 degrees.”

The project has now grown to include several organizations. This includes a Generation Green team led by Dr. Andrea Dinan, director of the IDEAS center and community service programs at PHS. The team uses the courtyard as a way to teach elementary school students about sustainability, and the collaboration of the PHS facilities and custodial staff.

“From a logistical standpoint, if you want to transport 60 bags of soil to the courtyard, you have to navigate it through the school building to get into there. The spaces had kind of fallen into a little disrepair, so there was a lot of cleaning that happened,” said Jacqueline Katz, PHS’s current Science Supervisor. “We [worked] with facilities and custodians to help us move some of the trash.” Katz hopes that the courtyards can continue to be accessible to PHS students in the future, whether for research projects or educational initiatives.

“We have some students interested in fruit trees, so we’re going to try to bring fruit trees into the space. And we have a student interested in vertical gardening, so he’s going to build some vertical gardens up in the greenhouse,” said Katz.

PHS students recently celebrated the work they’ve already accomplished at a recent sustainability symposium at Monmouth University.

“It was really exciting. We got a chance to have a conversation with Tammy Murphy, who’s the governor’s wife, and she mentioned us in her speech, which was surprising and exciting,” said Raya Kondakindi ’26, a student involved in the project. “We got to communicate with people with similar sustainability goals, and it was a really engaging experience to talk with people who had experience in areas we’re looking into.”

The Lower Basin

As PHS students pass by the lower basin near the tennis courts, the bare patch of land is often overlooked. However, a new restoration project led by the Friends of Herrontown Woods (FOHW) and PHS students aims to bring the basin back to life.

The basin was first planted with turf grass to help reduce flooding in the area, and was later overplanted with native upland prairie vegetation in an attempt to transition the basin into a prairie-like ecosystem. However, due to the poor environmental conditions, the prairie system didn’t form, and the basin was instead dominated by invasive species.

FOHW submitted a project proposal last summer for the wet meadow basin in response to Princeton Public School’s request for plant care in the area. They are now working with the PHS environmental science class to restore the basin and re-establish native species in the wet meadow. “We provide support. They provide us with an orderly opportunity to understand that invasive versus native [plants], and what a wet prairie is,” said James Smirk, an environmental science teacher at PHS.

The July contract grants FOHW around $6,000 for upkeep, workshops at PHS , and new signage around the basin.

The restoration process began with the removal of invasive species, including plantain weeds, and in the coming months will proceed to the over planting of native grasses like little bluestem, soft rush, and ironweed, and various wildflowers. Smirk estimates that a self-propagating basin is still around 20 years away.

Until then, the basin will be maintained through a partnership between FOHW and PHS’s environmental science classes, who use it as a resource for learning.

“Before, I didn’t really know a lot of wetlands and how important they are to nature, and just in general to us,” said Amelie Kraft ’26, a student in Smirk’s environmental science class. “This class has definitely opened me to that, [and] I have a lot more knowledge about wetlands [and] preserves.”

PHS students play an active part in collecting ecological data and conducting their own experiments. This data–including information on native species’ distribution and location–will contribute to a long-term database helping track restoration efforts and biodiversity in the area.

“[The] student role is always going to be data driven,” said Smirk. “We’re [going to] collect data on invertebrates, because [they] are a good indicator for the overall health of the system.”

The basin project is a smaller part of the large sustainability goal throughout Princeton, which is to build an Emerald necklace made up of interconnected green spaces and trails.

“We would like to see that [the] emerald necklace has a component that every school is connected to,” said Smirk. “We want to build a green pathway through every property that eventually connects.”

Though vision for the emerald necklace in physical connection between nature in Princeton, Stephen Hiltner, the president of FOHW, emphasized the importance of a connection between nature and people.

“I’m hoping [the project] will spark an interest in students to start getting to know nature and all the tremendous diversity — nature is very complex, and for some people, that’s intimidating, but for me, it’s fascinating. If you love something, you want to find out as much as you can about it. I’m hoping to spark some of that,” said Hiltner.