Each day, the Christopher Donovan Center and Day School helps elementary-age students who cannot attend public schools due to special needs.  This weekend, it got a little help for itself as nine Lowe's Home Improvement stores banded together with local volunteers and the school staff to build a new playground and refurbish the school.

"It's unbelievable what they've done," said Christopher Donovan Center President Helen Bradbury.  "They've gone above and beyond.  Words can't express the gratitude I feel."

About 70 volunteers spent Saturday and Sunday putting up fencing, installing new playground equipment, replacing the school's windows, landscaping and many other tasks as part of Lowe's Heroes Program.  The six-year-old program selects a nonprofit each year for which it donates equipment, supplies, and volunteers for a weekend project.  This year, all the Lowe's stores in the district - which extends from Seekonk to Brockton - pooled their funds to work on one project.

When Bradbury's husband, a Lowe's employee, suggested the school apply for the program, it was a great fit.

The school serves children who struggle in traditional classrooms, who do not have alternative options, and who need a therapeutic learning program. All of the students have language-based disabilities, and most students have compromised immune systems due to illnesses or other medical issues, said Bradbury.

"We give them the quality of life without the isolation," Bradbury said.

The center, which opened in 2007 and moved to its Recovery Road location in Wareham from Carver last December, is named for Bradbury's son, Christopher,  whose life was taken from him in 2005 when he was just 22.  Christopher was a plumber by trade, but he enjoyed working with children and helping people with special needs.

Lowe's had an additional connection to the school: when the business was coming to town, they rented the building that was now the school to use as its hiring office.

"It's like we're coming back home," said Jessica Pacheco, the district human resources manager, who was amazed how much work the group had completed by Sunday at noon.  "The volunteers may not have known each other, but they all came together as a group."

And the group had many skills that helped the project.

Henry Regalado, an educational technician at the school, recruited his grandfather to help install windows.   His mother, an employee of the Lowe's in Kingston, helped all day on Saturday with a number of tasks including fence building and landscaping.

Pete McCarthy, the Raynham store manager, and Will Martinez, operations manager in Raynham, installed a play set with swings and a slide that retails for about $2,000.  (They haven't tallied the total costs, said Melissa Williams, the human resources manager in the Wareham store.  There have been, unsurprisingly, many trips to Lowe's over the weekend to pick up more supplies.)

McCarthy brought his children who, he joked, "were doing quality control," of the new playground equipment.

The family participation was particularly impressive to Bradbury.  "Chris would be proud," she said of her late son, "we're touching the lives that he can't."

But she said that she won't see the real rewards of the effort until the school fully opens for the year after September 15.

"The reward will be in the kid's faces when they're playing," she said.