Program Details
Perennial Garden Club
Enrichment & Access
Bishop Walker School for Boys
The Bishop Walker School has partnered with the Perennial Garden Club to develop an urban educational landscape that integrates curricula with rich, hands-on experience. Phase I of the project, “Embracing Arms”, included the establishment of a welcoming entrance garden, an outdoor classroom and a shade tree canopy. Phase II, the “Living Classroom”, brings the landscape to life with a laboratory providing the spaces and tools necessary to integrate the curriculum with nature. In the Living Classroom, students check the rain barrel, dig in the worm pit, paint observations on permanent easels, observe butterflies in their natural habitat, feed the birds or count rings in tree stumps.
In addition to creating wonderful experiential spaces for the students, this unique partnership supports faculty professional development. Each year, a faculty “Perennial Fellow” is chosen to steward the partnership, including sharing teaching materials with the faculty, serving as a liaison between the school and the garden club and applying for additional resources as needed. Faculty members are also able to attend the annual American Horticultural Society’s Youth Garden Symposium and creates wonderful opportunities for the school community to come together to plant and harvest vegetables in the raised garden beds or to perform periodic maintenance of the various elements of the landscape.