The Tam Beautification Club and Parent Teacher Student Association [PTSA] partnered to arrange a campus beautification day on April 22, Earth Day. These groups worked with volunteers from the Tam community to weed and pick up garbage.

All members of the Tam community were invited to work at the event, including students, parents, and Mill Valley Middle School students who may soon be attending Tam. Volunteers worked mainly in Orange Court and on the corner of Miller Avenue and Gomez Way. The day was scheduled to go from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.; however, several volunteers stayed until 5:30 p.m.

“I liked doing something for Earth Day,” sophomore Rebecca Preis said. “[The event] wasn’t that large, but it was nice to do something to help the earth when most people don’t do anything specifically on that day.”

Sophomore and Tam Beautification Club co-leader Dessie Vartholomeos considered the day a success.

“After a long five hours of work, looking over Orange Court, it made me happy to see what a fantastic job everyone did,” she said. “We all put our heart and soul into fixing it up.”

The club leaders, Vartholomeos and sophomore Jessie Clements, wanted to create the beautification day to work as a community on something that was relevant to the school.

“We got lots of work done and left it better than when we started,” Vartholomeos said.

Two days after Earth Day, the Tam Beautification Club continued thier cleanup of Orange Court by removing the orange trees.

“The orange trees were dying, and we thought it would be awesome to plant new trees,” Vartholomeos said.

The club obtained permission from the principal and head custodian to remove the trees. Clements and Vartholomeos are unsure if they will be planting orange or another type of tree to replace them, as orange trees do not grow well in Mill Valley. In fact, while removing the so-called orange trees, it was discovered that one of them was actually a lemon tree.