Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation

Sharon Gamson Danks is an environmental planner and founding partner of Bay Tree Design in Berkeley, California. As a researcher, writer, and hands-on designer and planner, she has visited and documented over 200 green schoolyard and park projects in North America, Europe, Great Britain, and Japan and has helped over three dozen schools transform their grounds into vibrant ecosystems for learning and play.

An inspiring palette of school grounds possibilities for parents, teachers, students, designers, planners, and school administrators.

Author Sharon Danks broadens our notion of what a well-designed schoolyard should be, taking readers on a journey from traditional, ordinary grassy fields and asphalt to explore what's being created in the growing movement toward "green" schoolgrounds in the United States and around the world. This book documents exciting examples from more than 150 schools in 11 countries, illustrating a vast range of possibilities in outdoor classrooms for learning and play.

More than 500 vivid color photographs showcase some of the world's most innovative green schoolyards including: edible gardens with fruit trees, vegetables, chickens, honeybees, and outdoor cooking facilities; wildlife habitats with prairie grasses and ponds, or forest and desert ecosystems; schoolyard watershed models, rainwater catchment systems, and waste-water treatment models,; renewable energy systems that power landscape features or the whole school; waste-as-a-resource projects that give new life to old materials in beautiful ways; K-12 curriculum connections for a wide range of disciplines from science and math to art and social studies; creative play opportunities that diversify school ground recreational options and encourage children to explore the natural world firsthand.

The book grounds these examples in a practical framework that illustrates simple landscape design choices all schools can use to make their schoolyards more comfortable, enjoyable, and sustainable. And it describes a participatory design process that schools can use to engage their communities in transforming asphalt to ecosystems.