Auburn, businessman team up to beautify Fayetteville school

It’s pretty good educator who can teach a young person math, science and the ability to think, all without the student even knowing they’re being taught.

An Auburn University horticulturist, along with some fine school teachers, is doing that and making beautiful improvements in the Fayetteville community at the same time.

Ann Fleener is a horticulturist from Auburn University, but for months now she’s had a special job here in Fayetteville, Ala., working to make the schools campus more attractive.

“I love it…I love my job,“ Fleener said.

A few years back, Jimmy Persell and his wife Chris developed the Farm Links Golf Course in Fayetteville, just across the road from the school. 

Mr. Persell is a well-known and successful businessman in Talladega County. He contacted Auburn University and asked for help in making the 17-acre Fayetteville School campus a prettier place.

“They told us to dream big. ‘Think Disney’ is what they said,“ Fleener said.

If you tell a young, enthusiastic horticulturist to think big, you might want to get out of the way.  Working with Mr. Persell, Farm Links Golf Course and Dr. Patsy Lagen, the principal of Fayetteville School, Ann Fleener went to work. 

Over 30 varieties of trees, most native to Alabama, were planted, and students were involved in everything. Fleener said that students learned not only horticulture, but they incorporated math and science in all of the projects.

“At the end of the lesson, I remember asking them or pointing out that we had done math and science, and one of the boys said, ‘I’ve never had so much fun doing math.’ And that’s why I’m here, that’s why Auburn is interested in it and why Mr. Pursell is interested in it,“ Fleener said.

Some of the school property is a natural wetland. Most of us might look at this area and say, ‘well there’s not much we can do with this,’ but not Ann Fleener.

“Definitely, I mean that area over there has so much potential once we have the boardwalk, I mean even without the boardwalk a lot of times they go to the edge of the wetlands and pull plans and learn about the wetland environment,“ Fleener said.

Ann Fleener and teachers here at Fayetteville work with students in this garden area at the school. Today, 4th-graders smell and taste different herbs and plants used in food.

Teachers like Amanda Spurling love what Auburn and Ann Fleener have brought to Fayetteville School.

“We want our students [to know] that even though we live in a small area, to realize that they’re part of the global world around them, and by using the Internet and looking at different species of butterflies, it’s more that our little school in a little bitty town, it’s more than that, it’s the connection to the world around them,“ Spurling said.

Jimmy Pursell saw this campus and thought it only made sense to make it prettier, make it stand out for what it is… the centerpiece of a very nice community. 

And, Ann Fleener says she’s not trying to create a bunch of young horticulturists ... what she’s trying to create is, “thinkers… students that know how to think and know how to think for themselves, and can solve any problem because of the skills that they’re learning.“