By Jake Fogal

BLOOMINGTON – A Bloomington Elementary School is reporting its garden was vandalized last week. Washington Elementary School, had several pieces of its garden smashed and/or stolen.

Kelly Mathy, a fourth grade teacher at Washington Elementary, assisted in starting the garden over a decade ago.

Large rocks were moved and crushed much of what was growing in the garden beds. An 11 year old cherry tree was also missing from the plotted ground at Washington Elementary School.

“Eventually we found out the cherry tree was gone. A lot of the plants had been uprooted and pulled out of the ground. Things had been moved and had been smashed. We have kind of narrowed it down, it happened between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday evening,” Mathy said.

Following its inception of a fruit and vegetable garden, the space was changed to a perennial garden due to the over hanging trees providing shade.

“Washington School was kind of a land-locked school. We have a lot of blacktop and we didn’t have a whole lot of green space for kids to play,” Mathy said.

“Wolf Park Garden came after Wolf Park, which was a community play ground built. We took a long strip along the playground and decided to turn it into a place where kids could plant fruits and vegetables and learn the life cycles of plants through some hands-on activities.”

According to Washington Elementary School’s Facebook, the garden has been repositioned and replanted and is open for any donations from the public.

Jake Fogal can be reached at [email protected].