Garden Design & Rationale Oscar Newman

Design

Location & Community

This is a school garden located at Chicago Academy Elementary School, in

Chicago’s Northwest Side. The school, a former City College building, houses a K-12

elementary school, a high school, and the offices of a school management organization

that coordinates a student teacher program for the schools onsite as well as others in

the city. The garden primarily serves families and students in the elementary school,

though there have been efforts to reach out to teachers in the high school. Note that the
schools are independently administered and there is not much formal coordination

among the personnel.

Reasoning Behind Key Features

Gardens serve many purposes. This garden is no different. The main features of

the garden are to create an outdoor learning space, to create an area for reflection, to

showcase connections between local gardening and local ecology, and to draw upon

the cultural traditions of the community that comprises the school.

As of the 2018-2019 Academic Year, the outdoor learning space is established

within the garden. It comprises an area of bark chips bordered by medium-sized shrubs.

Within the bark chip area, there are log circles obtained by a member of the school

Garden Committee from a local nature center managed by the Chicago Park District. In

addition to these, there are also camping pads, tarps, and other seating materials stored

in the Science Lab, which is close to the nearest entrance.

The street to the East of the school is fairly busy, and traffic noise can be an

issue. When the Garden Committee

planned this space in the fall of 2018,

incorporating shrubs to define the space

was a primary consideration. Creating a

visually defined space was

accomplished with major school

community work crews that year.

 The purpose of this space is to offer students an opportunity to learn in a different

space. Whether they are journaling, reading independently, or are otherwise engaged in

typical school activities, the outdoor learning space offers a pleasant alternative to the

classroom. Additionally, for biology teachers, there is an abundance of plant and

invertebrate life easily observed within the space and in the lawn and trees adjacent to

the space.

In the drawing that accompanies this rationale, there are three proposed areas:

planters showcasing native plant

species, and a formal reflection

area. There is also an outdoor

learning space with planters and

seats used by primary

classrooms. Creating a

reflection space was something

discussed extensively by the

Garden Committee. We discussed a

central feature, such as a flowering tree

with space to sit or stroll nearby. After

the school community suffered several

losses in recent years, discussions took

place regarding a memorial space, yet

there is not yet a consensus on how that might happen. Therefore, a more general

approach is to create a space for reflection that can be used in many different ways.

Like the outdoor learning space with the log rounds, this space can be used in many

ways: from mindfulness to physical or academic activities, this space allows for

divergent outcomes.

By incorporating native plant species and encouraging native pollinators, the

garden also becomes a space where nature awareness and science inquiry come

naturally. Moreover, in providing habitat for migratory animals like butterflies and birds,

there are connections between social science, ecology, and biology. In a school that

primarily serves recent immigrants to the US, studying, appreciating, and caring for

animals that cross international boundaries serve as a metaphor for celebrating the

diversity of our school community. Finally, in the hilly space adjacent to the school

building, I propose to place a sundial. During the morning, this area gets excellent light

and this feature would highlight connections among astronomy and phenology.

To the North end of the school front, there is an outdoor learning space currently

used by primary classrooms with planters. There are benches and another woodchip

place enclosed by planters. Teachers lead

classroom projects on plants, especially on plants

used for food to showcase connections between

the garden and what we eat.

In Chicago Public Schools, the meals served at the

cafeteria (breakfast and lunch) arrive at the school

ready to be warmed and consumed. Future plans for the garden include showing a

more profound connection between what grows in the soil and what nourishes our

students. This theme can serve to illustrate the choices we make in systems of food.

Connecting different areas of the garden are stepping stones. I propose that

these be used to involve the visual arts and parents. We can create tile mosaics set in

concrete rounds. These could be placed on the lawn and would not interfere with

current landscaping maintenance (outsourced by the school currently). Tile mosaics

could also be a legacy project for graduating 8th grade students or one that involves

parents and the greater school community. Likewise, the benches near the reflection

tree have planters in the back, but could otherwise be decorated with tile mosaics.

Some parents at the school are involved in construction, and art projects with tile

mosaics have been successful in the past.

Finally, on the North end of the school, near the primary outdoor classroom,

there are two 4’ X 4’ X 4’ compost bins. In the past, I have coordinated student teams

from either the middle school or the high school to bring buckets from the cafeteria

(located on the third floor on the North side) and supervised by school security. Since

the buckets need to be cleared daily during a time when most teachers are teaching,

this process has required collaboration among many people at the school. Weekly

maintenance (turning the compost, adding brown matter) has been done by after-school

clubs.
Maintenance

An effective school garden committee comprises members of all the stakeholders

in the space. Ours includes classroom teachers and educational support staff, members

of the administration, school engineers and custodians, parents and other community

members, and finally students. Middle school students (6th to 8th grade) have served

as the primary workforce for the

creation and ongoing work of the

garden. In order to be truly

successful, however, there should be

coordination with parents, especially

for food grown in the primary planters,

because there is a need for a lot of

work during the summer, when the

teaching staff is not in

attendance. In recent years,

there has been some

coordination with staff of the

urban school leadership

organization housed in the

school: for example, their staff

volunteered to monitor

saplings planted around the

school in the 2017-2018 school year.

In order for this project to truly flourish, the ongoing work of caring for the garden

and cultivating native plants for animals must be a community-wide project. Rick Kool,

professor in School of Environment and Sustainability at Royal Roads University in

Victoria, British Columbia notes “Simply getting people together, outside, working in a

caring capacity with nature, perhaps even intergenerationally, may be as important as

the healing of nature itself.” (Quoted in Louv, 2011)

Themes

The themes from the Garden course that most resonate with these plans are the

themes of Gardens as Heritage and Gardens as Teaching and Learning Spaces. In

Leah Penniman’s article, “By Reconnecting with the Soil, We Heal the Planet and

Ourselves,” Penniman states, “One of the projects of colonization, capitalism, and White

supremacy has been to make us forget this sacred connection to the soil.” Working in a

garden allows all students to rekindle ancestral, human connections with land and soil.

Getting kids outside to work and use a garden space is a way of meeting many

previously established goals for the school. From English and language arts instruction

to science, there are many possibilities for what can be accomplished in the garden. In

addition, by using the garden to draw connections between animal seasonal migration

to immigration, the space is uniquely tailored to our school community.

Finally, there is a theme that has not been explicitly explored in class, but one

that undergirds the work that people do in gardens: Gardens as Hope. Our school

grounds are located in the middle of a large city. As a result, the soil contains a variety
of substances that trace to the history of settlement, transportation, construction, and

heating in the area. And yet, this can still be a place that can nourish pupils and provide

aesthetic triggers for inspiration and reflection. In ​Braiding Sweetgrass, ​Robin Wall

Kimmerer details the tragic environmental history of the Onondaga watershed in

Upstate New York, but reminds us:

But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in
the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us.
Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy.
(Kimmerer, 2013)
References

Kimmerer, R. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass (First ed.). Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed

Editions.

Louv, R. (2011). The nature principle : Human restoration and the end of nature-deficit
disorder (1st ed., Listen Alaska). Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Penniman, L. (2019). By reconnecting with soil, we heal the planet and ourselves. Yes!
Magazine, (89), 18-22.