HUDSON, N.C.,None — An elementary school that 10-year-old Zahra Baker attended has created a garden in honor of the girl, whose remains were found more than a month after she was reported missing.
SLIDESHOW: Photos Of Garden Honoring Zahra
Zahra attended Hudson Elementary School at the end of her third-grade year, from March through June 2008, before going to Granite Falls Elementary. She returned to Hudson Elementary to finish her fourth-grade year in 2009.
"She was outside at the end of last year, (and) she and another student were walking around, picking up trash. She said they wanted to pick up the school and have a beautification club," Robyn Stella, principal of Hudson Elementary, told Channel 9's newspaper partner, the Hickory Daily Record.
Zahra, a cancer survivor who had a prosthetic leg and hearing aids, didn't return to Hudson Elementary for her fifth-grade year because her family moved to Hickory.
On Oct. 9, she was reported missing. Hickory police declared her case a homicide investigation soon after, and her remains were found in Caldwell County on Nov. 10. No one has been charged in Zahra's death.
The teacher Zahra would have had in fifth grade this year at Hudson Elementary decided to start a beautification club called Go Green, Stella said. About 75 students in the school are now members.
"They've put mulch around the ground and planted tulips," said Melissa Stutts, a third-grade teacher at the school.
On Oct. 16, the club held a Beautification Day at the school in honor of Zahra, Stutts said. That day, dozens of kids came to the school to trim shrubs around the school and spread more mulch, so they could make the school look as beautiful as Zahra had wanted it to look.
The school decided to go one step further in recognizing their former student.
"We wanted to do something in honor and in memory of her," said second-grade teacher Karen Gilbert.
They decided to create a garden and call it Zahra's Garden. Stella said it's not a memorial garden, but one to remember and honor Zahra. An area nursery donated a weeping willow tree that will be the focal point of the garden. The school is deciding what else will be included in it.
"The fifth-graders want to put stepping stones around it," Gilbert said. "There are 130 fifth-graders, and each one wants to do a stone, to have a ring around the tree and then a path in the garden."
The school also wants to include different plants that will have blooms and color throughout every season of the year.
The garden already has a few butterfly bushes and other shrubs that have been donated, as well as a sun sculpture that was in the art teacher's classroom, but he thought it would go well in Zahra's garden. Someone has also put a dream catcher in the weeping willow.
"We've had people donate plants, bulbs, a statue and benches for Zahra's Garden," Stutts said.
Stella said she envisions the garden as a place where teachers could take their classes to read and reflect.
The fifth grade, which was Zahra's class, is also participating in A Season of Giving. Each year, the school does a group project. Two years ago, it was a family that lost everything in a fire. Last year, it was a deputy that had cancer, said Stutts.
This year, they are starting a scholarship in Zahra's name through the Caldwell County Education Foundation. The Education Foundation is a nonprofit organization designed to support high academic achievement in Caldwell County Schools.
"We wanted a scholarship fund that will grow, for when this class graduates," Stella said.
Zahra's classmates still remember her. Fifth-grader Caroline Burch, who is in the Go Green club, said she remembers the girl's speech and looks the most.
"She had spiky hair and an accent," she said of Zahra, an Australian native.
Kaitlyn Winkler, 11, said Zahra was friendly.
"She liked plants and had a great personality," she said.
Burch said she thinks Zahra would be happy about the Go Green club.
"She was one of the two people who wanted to do the beautification," she said.
Stella said this year has been hard for the students at Hudson Elementary.
"It's been a very difficult year," Stella said. "Where our school buses run, there has often been a lot of law enforcement out."
She said the school has had a good crisis team in place to help students with any questions or feelings they may have.
Stutts said she's hoping that Zahra's Garden will help the students.
"With the garden, they can understand that something good can come out of something bad," Stutts said.
WSOC
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/LH3JSJEF3VBLRJLJQESEAG34AM.png)
