Getting+Started

2011 Geranium Nation Challenge
All information needed for your successful plant project will be found on this web site!

We hope that your students find the opportunity to bring home a living plant and nuture it through the winter then watch it grow in the spring and finally thrive on your porch or in you garden a life long learning experience. We hope that this tutorial will help make this experience enjoyable for you and your class.

Comments are always appreciated and will help this project grow.

So where did your geraniums come from?

The City of Milwaukee plants thousands of annual flowers on our streets to beautify our neighborhoods. Trees and flowers make our city a nice place to live. How dismal would our existance in a city be without plants? Many of the plants come up year after year like our trees and shrubs. These are perennial plants. Other plants only live one year, these are called annuals. The reason we plant annual flowers is that they bloom all summer long and not just for one week or less. They must be replanted every year. It is not cost effective to save many of these annual flowers and easier to start new ones in the spring. However some of the plants can overwintered easily and be replanted the following year or maintained in a decorative pot. The geraniums we are using would have been destroyed and composted.

The science behind the project Using a living organism can be a challenge. They grow and can die. The opportunity to engage in this activity could cross many areas of learning. Discussing the parts of the plant and their function, basic plant physiology, and sharing information are but a few of possibilities for hands on learning. Simplifying the mysteries of photosynthesis and respiration can be a bit intimidating. Success is not easy but can be rewarding