MLHS volunteers beautify downtown with flowers

MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake High School FFA members, MLHS horticulture students and some teachers fanned through downtown Wednesday morning, removing plants from their containers, loosening root balls, calculating plant placement.

And before noon all the planter boxes downtown were filled with flowers and ornamental grasses.

It’s a yearly project for the FFA, one of its annual fundraisers. Macie Loutherback, an FFA member who was planting flowers on Ash Street, explained it.

“They (the Downtown Moses Lake Association) put in an order, we plant them, we grow them and we plant them (downtown),” Loutherback said.

The plants are grown in the two MLHS greenhouses, tended throughout the winter and spring by horticulture students and FFA members.

There’s a pattern to a properly planted planter. The crews start with petunias, sweet potato vines and purple fountain grass, which provides a mix of heights. FFA member Sam Otey, filling planter boxes on Ash Street, said spacing is important, since plants need room to grow. His advice was to avoid planting too close to the planter edge and avoid planting plants too close together.

“The biggest thing is, don’t suffocate the plant,” Otey said.

All of the students and teachers were volunteers. Their high school is closed Wednesdays anyway for cleaning, part of the district’s effort to combat COVID-19.

Dave Oliver, a welding instructor at MLHS and Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center, has volunteered in the past, and said it’s a good way to connect with students he doesn’t talk to on a regular basis.

It’s a project many FFA members look forward to.

“This is one of my favorite community service projects,” Loutherback said.