Wild Solutions on an Urban Pre-K-12 School Campus

Environmentally friendly "demonstration gardens" are commonly placed in isolated locations on school campuses. In contrast, the Nature Trail plantings that wind through Friends School of Baltimore exemplify the added benefits of a campus-wide approach. The project was initiated in 2005, and planted incrementally as a collaboration between the school and Guilford Garden Club. While habitat conservation and education were at the heart of the project from the beginning, the partners soon realized these gardens could also be used to slow and absorb surface water on the school’s sloping campus. Project founder Kay McConnell will describe the landscape's continuing development, and how each new garden heals a disturbance, solves a problem, or both.