Calvin Coolidge High School Greenhouse Garden and Outdoor Classroom
It started out with Coolidge High School students wanting to renovate an abandoned greenhouse in their schoolyard. It so happened the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Potomac Chapter was looking for a site for their 2010 Legacy Project — an ongoing initiative by ASLA wherein a worthy project is selected to receive free landscape materials exhibited by vendors at the annual ASLA National Conference.
Chaired by NCPC staff on behalf of CapitalSpace, a partnership with the Calvin Coolidge High School, the Calvin Coolidge Alumni Association, the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization (OPEFM), the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the Architecture, Construction, and Engineering (ACE) Mentoring program developed and implemented this schoolyard greening project at Coolidge High School.
Highlights of the Project
- ASLA volunteers held five mentoring sessions with Coolidge students about the Landscape Architecture profession. Students created the image boards, did tree measurements and percolation tests.
- Fifty students and community members attended a one-day design charette facilitated by ASLA and CapitalSpace staff. The participants created a campus landscape master plan and a garden design for the area outside of the greenhouse.
- The master plan includes seven distinct gardens, each with a different ecological purpose and learning objectives: rain garden, edible garden, butterfly gardens, meadow garden, shade garden, memorial garden, and marquee garden.
- 200 volunteeers helped build the gardens in twoweekends.
- 37 vendors supplied $150,000 worth of landscape materials including paving and retaining walls, irrigation, lighting, benches, planters, plants, trees, gravel, mulch and gardening tools.
- OPEFM acquired the necessary permits and provided more than $200,000 worth of in-kind construction services.
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