Last year, the Montville High School Athletic Booster Association got a brand-new LED sign installed at the intersection outside Montville High School. Now, Jeremiah Ross wants to make it look even better.

The parent of a Montville High School student and a local teacher, Ross is raising funds and recruiting volunteers to pay for a retaining wall and small garden that he hopes will make the sign a gathering place for students.

Members of the booster association raised about $16,000 last year for the LED sign, which displays game times and school announcements, to replace an older sign whose letters had to be manipulated manually. The new LED sign was installed at the corner of Old Colchester and Chesterfield roads last summer. It can be programmed with moving graphics, and the text has been catching the eye of parents and students driving by.

Ross said he wanted to add landscaping to the sign as soon as he saw it.

“When (they) got all the funding and (it) went up, I thought ‘that would be perfect for a retaining wall and a garden in front,” Ross said.

Ross worked with the school to design the additions, secured donations of the material for the wall and arranged for shrubs and plants. The wall will circle around the sign and could be a place for students to sit, he said.

Members of the Chief Petty Officer Association at the Naval Submarine School in Groton have volunteered to build it in June, and many of the materials will be donated. Ross said he plans to raise about $1,500 to buy the plants and filling material. Donors can deliver their contributions to the high school or mail them to the school’s athletic department with a note designating that the donation is for the wall and garden around the sign.

“It’s the icing on the cake,” Ross said.