February 19, 2016
Provided by students of Lankenau High School/for PhillyVoice
Deep tracks and rutted grass at Lankenau High School. Students said that this week, the area was torn up by all-terrain vehicle. The land had served as a vegetable garden and peace garden - that was a memorial to those who have passed away.
Students at Lankenau High School in Roxborough are upset this week after vandals tore up flowers in a rain garden, a vegetable garden and a peace garden set up as a memorial to those that have passed.
School senior Deja Williams contacted PhillyVoice on Friday morning to share photos of the damage done at the school. She said students believe that sometime on the evenings of Feb. 16 and 17, vandals, likely on off-road vehicles, tore up school property by driving in the grass and gardens and causing the damage.
"It was two nights that they came back," she said. "We had a peace garden, for all the people who passed on, and now, it looks like a Ford truck commercial with mud and tracks everywhere."
In a statement, teacher Jennifer Hardisky, who head's Lankenau's botany club, said that students have volunteered many hours, both after school and during the summer, to beautify the area with flower beds and vegetable and peace gardens.
She said students also created "raised beds out of reclaimed wood" in the area, but the vandals ruined that work, too.
"All of this work was destroyed these past few days and the ground is completely torn up. There is no way to tell where the dug-up parts of the garden were or what was there," Hardisky wrote in a statement.
She said the damage could take weeks to repair and, she believes, all of the plantings in the gardens have been killed.
"I have worked with at least a dozen students (and this does not count the ones that have helped in past years and have graduated) on this and they are heartbroken," she wrote.
Hardisky wrote that students are now concerned that they will not be able to hold spring events in the field if it isn't repaired.
Asked to estimate the damage, Lankenau teacher Meredith Joseph said that just to repair the rain and peace gardens, the school would need about $12,000.
"And, that's not including the fields that were torn up," Joseph said Friday. "It's a mud puddle back there."
Joseph said that school officials have reported the damage to police and are now looking for people to donate or volunteer to help clean up the property.
"This is absolutely devastating," she said. "It's just mind-boggling."
The school has set up a fund to help repair the field and gardens. For more information, contact the school at 215-487-4465.
