From a School to a Botanical Garden:Shuanglian Elementary

In the area behind Taipei Railway Station, where the traffic snarls on Chengde Road, we make a quick turn onto Jinxi Street. There, across from Jiang Weishui Memorial Park, is Shuanglian Elementary, a school founded 67 years ago. In the middle of the city, we see an oasis of green with a pond, a stream, plant life, and a scenic footpath. There are some boys crawling around in the grass looking for frogs and some girls scooping up lotuses from the pond.

Is this a botanical garden? Actually, it's a "forest ecology pool." The 70 x 10 meter space to the right of the school's main entrance was created in 2005 with NT$1 million. Director of student affairs Chang Chi-ming says that it was originally a staff parking lot that students would never set foot in with space for just around a dozen cars. It's become a favorite spot for students since it was expanded and turned into the ecology pool, and they often spend breaks between classes there.

Water canna

Knowledge underfoot

Chang takes us through the lines of banyans, royal palms, birches, and cedars near the school walls to an environmental observation platform and wading path made of earth, wood, and stone set in the ground. Gazing out, we see a rice field, the ecological pool, and four composting bins. The entire area is just in front of the first building of classrooms, separated by a three-meter fern-lined path.

At the ecological pool, a fourth-grader counts off the aquatic vegetation he knows for his visitors: scouring rush, soft rush, white lotus, water hissop, chameleon, umbrella sedge, Indian lotus, water lettuce, oriental cattail.... Once he's finished, he turns around and asks, "How many do you know?"

Not only does he rattle off the names of the plants, he also demonstrates with his hands and explains, full of self-confidence, "The soft rush's roots grow below the water and its leaves come above the surface, so it is an 'emerged plant.' The bulrush is one as well."

"Each student has to learn to recognize five types of plants growing on campus each semester. In six years, they'll know at least 60," says fourth-grade nature teacher Mr. Xie, revealing the children's secret method.

Academic director Huang Qiongyue is also proud of the students' achievements. According to him, teachers from the district's Chengyuan Junior High have mentioned many times that graduates of Shuanglian are much more interested in biology than those from other elementary schools. "The academic environment and academic drive are closely related," he stresses.

Flame tree

Ecological grounds

However, making a "clone" of a natural environment in the middle of a city isn't as easy as one might think. You can plant plants, but how do you persuade the animals to come?

School authorities installed a three-meter-wide pipe below the observation platform and the wading path as an "animal corridor" through which small creatures could come in from outside the school's grounds. Currently, lizards, earthworms, and millipedes are frequently seen.

Near the pond you can also often see several wrinkly-skinned toads. Chang Chi-ming says in fall and winter, during their breeding season, two males will fight over a female and the female gets "squeezed" so tightly by them it looks like she can't breathe. It is all played out on the school grounds, and teachers use the opportunity to teach about reproduction and competition in the animal world.

In addition, the former nature teacher Chang says recently he saw a Gunther's frog, which was taken off the Council of Agriculture's list of protected species just last year, hop onto the observation platform. Though he isn't sure that the seven-centimeter-long, white-lipped frog with an elongated head came in through the animal corridor, any addition to the school's environment is a welcome surprise for the city schoolchildren.

But city kids are often spoiled. Their parents love the idea of them getting in touch with nature, but hate to see them get bit by mosquitoes. They especially worry in the summer, when dengue fever is in season, and they always hope the Environmental Protection Bureau will send someone out to the school to spray insecticide. But while insecticides kill mosquitoes, they also seep into the soil and stay in the waters, harming the habitat of plants and animals.

Faced with this conundrum, the school authorities decided to place mosquitofish and paradise fish, both of which eat mosquitoes and their larvae, in the pond. The "natural pest control" worked well.

But just as it seemed the mosquito problem was solved, a single white egret that would fly onto the school grounds on weekends looking for food caused both happiness and worry. The appearance of this "special visitor" meant another species in the ecology, but the bird would eat the paradise fish in the pond. It was as if it were coming to the aid of the mosquitoes. However, Zhang says, "This also gave the kids an opportunity to see how nature makes adjustments and maintains its own balance." Now the school releases more fish at regular intervals so they won't all be eaten up.

The recycling of natural resources is another of Shuanglian's specialties. All of the pond water and water used on the plants comes from a rainwater recycling system on the roof of the adjacent classrooms. Rainwater is used after passing through a filter, and none is wasted.

Additionally, the four large composting bins near the pond are used to collect and store organic waste from the 20 or 30 trees on the grounds. When they are full, their contents are dampened, mixed with some soil, and covered with sailcloth. After five to eight months, the product can be used as fertilizer. A mulberry tree planted in this fertilizer grew so well that it was the envy of a nearby silkworm farmer. He'd come onto the school grounds late at night and pick off all its leaves, prompting the school to step up patrols.

Though, like most city schools, Shuanglian and its 1,600 students and faculty don't have a river or mountain of their own, they have recreated a miniature ecological environment in the midst of the concrete jungle. It may be small, but it is beautiful.

Water lettuce

Oriental cattail

Lotus