Teaching-Learning Academy Reflective Garden Proposal

Background

During the 2009-2010 school year, Teaching-Learning Academy (TLA) participants – including administrators, faculty, staff, students and community members – addressed a shared concern with being too busy to reflect on what we are doing when it comes to teaching and learning. In response to this perceived sense of increasing acceleration, we developed a two-part study question: What do we mean by a sustainable, reflective learning culture? And how might we use that shared understanding to strengthen connections between various gaps on campus and between campus and communities beyond?

Proposal

In order to address this overarching question, we propose designing, constructing, and sustaining a Reflective Garden that would provide a secluded and inviting space for individual and collective reflection and respite on campus.

We offer these possibilities:

  • Consider this Garden being the first of additional outdoor reflective spaces on campus that might have various themes (e.g. a butterfly garden, children’s garden, a remembrance garden) and that could eventually be mapped in the way that our campus sculptures are.
  • Consider calling it the “Gittinger Garden” in tribute to Wayne and Anne Gittinger, the outside donors contributing the money to create it.
  • Create garden design working with alumna Janelle Gavin (who has a garden design company) and other students with design expertise including Saylah Leu (art major).
  • Incorporate native, fragrant, low maintenance plants that provide varied texture, interest, and color in all the seasons.
  • Provide for varied surfaces and varied seating areas such as a bench-type swing, rock perches, and table tops/surfaces that would be at various levels.
  • Incorporate a simple water feature that would recycle rain water.
  • Incorporate some kind of interactive opportunity so visitors could take/leave something (for example, a free poetry box/container).
  • Make the Garden handicapped accessible.
  • Use weatherized materials and provide for some kind of cover from the rain.
  • Consider including solar-powered lights, gaze balls, stepping stones (with quotations), wind chimes, mini-sculptures, hammock chairs, a bird bath, mosaic art
  • Invite other departments and programs into the creation of the Garden such as Industrial Design, Art, Engineering Technology, Fairhaven College, and Huxley College.
  • Identify potential Bellingham business owners and local nurseries to make Garden contributions, such as plants, mushroom compost, materials, and supplies.
  • Partner with Grounds Crew and Environmental Studies course(s) to help maintain and sustain.

Rationale

In the busyness of the academy, it is easy to forget the value of pausing and slowing down the pace. The Reflective Garden would serve as a reminder to step out of the busyness and our daily routines to reflect. It would also provide an inviting place to reflect in a natural, aesthetically pleasing environment.

Primary Audience(s)

Director of Facilities, Gardening and Grounds Crew

Additional Sponsors: The Gittingers, AS Board, AS Clubs, the Outback, Backyard Wildlife Habitat Group , Viking Village Advisory Board, Art Department, Industrial Design, local gardening clubs