Building School Gardens

Started during the 2006–07 school year, Building School Gardens installs gardens at Chicago public schools to achieve the following purposes:

• Improving school campuses as vital open space for Chicago residents;
• Developing a curriculum connection in the classroom to the garden;
• Utilizing art as a part of the garden; and
• Encouraging student involvement in creating, installing and maintaining the garden.

Based on each school's curricular interests, Openlands works with garden teams to identify the goals and elements of every garden, hires subcontractors to carry out the designs and structural elements, and provides all of the materials and oversight for installation. Elements of the customized gardens may include:

• Benches for outdoor classroom seating for any subject;
• Raised vegetable beds for growing food and healthy eating;
• Native plantings to study insect and animal habitats, as well as ecological history of Chicago; and/or
• Ornamental gardens with ABC, color, or literature-inspired themes.

Most recently, Openlands has used the Building School Gardens framework to tap city funding for asphalt removal on Chicago Public School campuses—seven of these green spaces have been developed so far, with nine additional gardens planned. Although the environmental benefits of a living permeable surface are tremendous, the visual and social impacts of these new landscapes are also notable. According to Openlands Education Director Jaime Zaplatosch, "You can see the difference these gardens make on both the students and the campuses: students appear more at ease in the gardens, which are a lot more pleasing to the eye than a barren asphalt surface." (Click on the before-and-after image at the left to enlarge.)

Through Building School Gardens, Openlands has installed 40 school gardens to date. The Boston Schoolyard Initiative and the Learning Landscapes Program, in Denver, are the only other programs in the country comparable to Building School Gardens. Openlands recently released our Building School Gardens manual and thank BMO Harris Bank for its support.

Openlands accepts Building School Gardens applications on a rolling basis. We do not currently have funding available, but we do have funders reach out to us on a regular basis looking for school gardens to fund. There are different sources of funding available depending on the scope of work. We encourage you to fill out our  application.