Welcome....

The Evergreen State College built its reputation on being an institution of innovation. We have a new opportunity to innovate by creating an outdoor learning environment that would serve our students and build bridges to the broader South Puget Sound community. Currently our landscape is dated and out-of-step with current trends in western landscaping, namely to drought tolerant plantings instead of water, pesticide, and labor-intensive lawns. This plan would radically reduce the amount of lawns and invasive English-ivy. Many of the new gardens will be designed and installed by students. The goals driving design of these new gardens are:

• Improve educational value of plantings
• Celebrate cultural diversity
• Foster social justice

As well as

• Promote environmentally sustainable garden design
• Create low maintenance designs
• Improve wildlife habitat
• Integrate existing mature trees and shrubs into proposed designs
• Work within existing irrigated beds
• Reduce water and energy usage
• Remove as much lawn as possible while meeting needs for inviting places to sit
• Improve aesthetics in the core of the campus
• Create opportunities for students to link theory with praxis and
• Integrate the arboretum with the forest trail system.
  
  In Spring of 2003 we installed a waterwise pollinator garden with support of the City of Olympia's water conservation program. With the construction of the new Seminar II building we installed two new teaching gardens: roof gardens and a post-glacial forest. By modifying the plantings around the lab buildings we are creating a Laurasian Landscape that educates visitors about the influence of continental drift and evolution of the world flora. In the Spring of 2004, we will install a medicinal herb garden at the Organic Farm. Over the next ten years with capital funds and donations, the campus hopes to install additional teaching gardens including a basket and deer knot gardens.