Cannon Elementary School in Grapevine spruces up with learning garden

Mercedes-Benz Financial Services was in the driver’s seat at Cannon Elementary on Friday to donate some green and help plant a little green.

The company presented a $50,000 check to REAL School Gardens at Cannon Elementary School in Grapevine for a new learning garden that will benefit local students for years to come.

That same day, 85 volunteers from Mercedes along with about 100 parents, staff, students and community members planted an educational garden that students at the STEM school will utilize throughout their school year.

Organizers said they will use the garden to apply real-world math skills, critical thinking and practice collaboration.

REAL School Gardens is a non-profit organization that creates learning gardens and then trains teachers on how to use them to provide hands on learning experiences that engage students and increase academic achievement.

Cannon Principal Tona Blizzard said the gardens enhance learning in science, math, language arts and other core subjects, which is “a perfect alignment” for Cannon’s STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — focus.

“This is incredible. This has been an unbelievable volunteer effort by the employees at Mercedes-Benz Financial Services,” Blizzard said.

“We are a school with a STEM focus. This garden will give our students real world, hands on experiences enhance their learning.”

At noon, Steve Goodale, vice president of Daimler Truck Financials presented a $50,000 check fromMercedes-Benz Financial Services to Scott Feille, executive director of the Texas Region for REAL School Gardens at the school to pay for the equipment and supplies to build the brand new learning garden.

“I work with the best colleagues in the world who have done an outstanding job of producing this REAL School Garden,” Goodale said.

“It is the core value of Mercedes-Benz Financial Services to give back to the community where we live and work. We get more from volunteering to do projects like this than we give.”

Feille said it was the fifth garden with Mercedes-Benz Financial Services.

“We could not have completed the projects without their financial support,” the vice president added.

“But more importantly, their incredible employees who volunteer to get their hands dirty to dig this garden so children can have a better education."

A community partner helps fund each REAL School Garden, and the Cannon garden was sponsored by Mercedes-Benz Financial Services.

During the week of Sept. 21, nearly 600 of Mercedes-Benz Financial Services employees in the Dallas-Fort Worth area volunteered on projects with 12 local nonprofit organizations.

This story was originally published October 1, 2015 at 2:58 PM with the headline "Cannon Elementary School in Grapevine spruces up with learning garden."