Roses to the Chapel Hill High School students, teachers and parents who joined together to create the school’s new Yearbook Portrait Garden, and to the sponsors and community supporters who made it possible.

The new garden replaces an old TV dish antenna in front of the school. The dish has been removed, and new plants, gravel walkways, paving stones, latticework and garden bench have taken its place.

Needless to say, it’s an improvement.

Students, teachers and parents did the labor.

The Yearbook Garden was made possible by a $1,400 grant from the Strowd Roses Foundation’s Student Enrichment Grant.

Other support came from local businesses including the North Carolina Hammock Co., Witherspoon Rose Culture and Fitch Lumber, which provided the garden bench, roses and other supplies, respectively, at a discount.

The garden makes a lovely backdrop for yearbook photos and other portraits.

Roses to Margaret B. Pollard Middle School, a Chatham County school in Chapel Hill, which was recently named a LEED Gold certified school by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Pollard is the first Gold Certified LEED for Schools 2007 middle school in North Carolina.

LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – is a certification that recognizes buildings, homes or communities that have been designed and constructed to encourage human and environmental health through water conservation, energy efficiency, sustainable building materials and indoor environmental quality.

Pollard was built with specific attention to sustainability and environmental friendliness, as well as classroom acoustics, natural daylight and numerous high performance energy features.

The 117,215-square-foot building serves 650 students and contains spaces available for public use.

The building incorporates a ground-source geothermal mechanical system; high-output, dimmable T-5 lights; a solar hot water pre-heat system; and spray foam insulation in the exterior wall cavity to reduce energy loss through air infiltration.

Roses to Chase Lewis, a local homeschooled sixth-grader, who came up with a potentially life-saving invention that earned him a spot as one of the 10 finalists in the national Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge.

Chase invented a travois with wheels designed to help refugees, such as those recently fleeing famine in Somalia, easily transport their children, the elderly or ill to safety.

A travois is a transport device that was used by the Plains Indians, consisting of two long poles with a platform or frame between them.

Traditionally a travois was dragged by a horse or other animal, but Chase’s model is equipped with wheels and designed to be pulled by a person.

It transfers most of the weight of the load onto the wheels, he says, and is “lightweight, inexpensive and easy to assemble.”

Chase will present his prototype during the final competition Oct. 15-16 in St. Paul, Minn.

The winner will win $25,000 and the title of “America’s Top Young Scientist.”