The Evergreen State College is in the process of creating a collection of teaching gardens to foster environmental education. Through these gardens we commit to:

• use no pesticide or chemical fertilizers
• use non-invasive species with an emphasis on natives
• reduce lawns and existing invasive plantings
• use post-consumer recycled materials when possible

Up until recently landscaping around buildings at The Evergreen State College functioned merely as green fringe with no educational value. Efforts are underway to transform these spaces into teaching gardens and venues for public art. Students designed and installed many of the gardens. Students also designed interpretive panels for these various gardens using their original artwork as illustrations. In the future we hope to collaborate with artists in residence working with students to create public art in natural settings that evoke a sense of place. Come learn about the exciting new outdoor learning opportunities and efforts to create a sustainable eco-culture at The Evergreen State College.

The Gardens as of 2009

Basket Garden

This garden seeks to provide basketmaking materials for tribal artists who struggle to obtain enough plant material to keep traditional arts alive. We hope to serve the needs of local tribal artists as well as grow harvestable material used in traditional European basketmaking arts. Evergreen faculty and students use the garden to learn about basket making and traditional ecological knowledge.

Laurasian Landscape

This garden demonstrates that kinship exists among plants (and thus people) from the North American and Eurasian continents. It creates the opportunity to learn about relations between different people and closely related plants. With related plants from North America and Eurasia this garden also creates a means to learn about how continential drift and land bridges influenced plant speciation.

Longhouse Ethnobotanical Garden

Faculty member Marja Elohoimo collaborated with students, tribal members, and campus facilities to prepare this site and install approximately 100 species representing various habitat areas. The garden was named “s’ulex” by Upper Skagit elder, Vi Hilbert. This word refers to gathering and creating possibilities from what nature offers.

Medicinal Herb Garden

Students installed this European ethnobotanical garden on the campus Organic Farm with a four-square design that mimics a Persian-inspired garden layout common during the Renaissance. A traditional yew hedge encloses the paths and parterres (geometric planting beds). The herbs are labeled according to the humoral system which was central to medieval and Renaissance healing practices in Europe.

Native Plant Demonstration Gardens

Numerous areas around the Seminar II building and a small area on Red Square demonstrate the usefulness of native plants for horticulture. Using native plants reduces use of water, pesticides, and fertilizers. They also rarely become weedy.

Post-Glacial Forest

The Post-Glacial Forest is a recreation of the vegetation that occured in the region as the Vashon glacier receded from its terminus south of Olympia. The plant palette is based on pollen core samples taken from wetlands in the Puget Sound area. The late glacial period samples from which the plant palette was primarily derived range in age from 14,000 to 8,000 years old.

Prairie Roof Garden

The Prairie Roof Garden, located atop the library building, consists of indigenous food plants and native medicine plants from local prairies. Prairies in the South Puget Sound provide evidence for a complex and positive relationship between indigenous peoples and plants. These cultural landscapes provide habitat for many rare and endangered species that depend on these human manipulated habitats.

Primitive Plant Garden

This garden creates an opportunity for people to learn about the evolution of various groups of plants from spore bearing species that appear earliest in the fossil records, such as ferns, to the more recently evolved flowering plants.

Rain Roof Gardens

The Roof Gardens located atop the Seminar II building were established to reduce the impact of the buildings by mitigating the increase in impervious surfaces created by the new construction. Rainwater captured by the new gardens and not used by the plants, drains to the ground near the building where it then recharges the groundwater on site. The gardens also reduce energy use by insulating the roof.

Waterwise Pollinator Garden

The garden here has been planted with species that attract butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees. Its purpose is to educate about the excessive use of pesticides in backyard gardens and how they impact pollinators as well as point out the significance of reduced pollination rates. The plants in this garden are also drought tolerant, needing little supplemental irrigation during the dry months of late summer.

Our Teaching Gardens

• Improve the educational value of plantings on campus
• Celebrate cultural diversity
• Foster social justice
• Promote environmentally sustainable garden design
• Create low maintenance designs
• Improve wildlife habitat
• Reduce water and energy usage
• Link to our forest trail system
• Improve aesthetics in the core of the campus
• Create opportunities for students to link theory with praxis

Thank You

The teaching gardens have been made possible in part due to the generous contributions of the following institutions:

The City of Olympia, The Evergreen Foundation, Sound Native Plants, Washington Department of Transportation, and the WSU Cooperative Extension Native Plant Salvage Project.

A special thanks to all the students, too numerous to list, who have invested their creative energy and sweat into making the gardens a reality. You know who you are.

Future Plans

We hope to create additional gardens in the future including a deer garden that showcases plants less likely to be browsed by deer. Plans for a labyrinth and bamboo gardens are also in the works as well as a memorial, inspirational garden.