Teaching Gardens

Getting Our Hands Dirty

Not all learning happens inside the classroom. In fact, sometimes the most powerful discoveries take place in nontraditional settings. Our Teaching Gardens (Native Plant Teaching Gardens, Friends Community Garden, and Sensory Gardens) offer students at every grade level opportunities to explore and record natural phenomena, apply classroom theory to solve ecological challenges, and cultivate a passion for stewardship.

Native Plant Teaching Gardens

Friends Community Garden

Four Lower School students standing in the teaching garden with an Upper School student pointing to a bird house feeder

Sensory Gardens

Our Gardens

Explore the different types of Teaching Gardens located throughout Friends School's 35-acre campus below.

Native Plant Teaching Gardens

History:

In partnership since 2005, Friends School of Baltimore and the Guilford Garden Club (GGC), led by Kay McConnell H’22, P’02, ’05, ’10, have created a series of award-winning Native Plant Teaching Gardens throughout the campus. Conservation and education are at the heart of the project. The gardens employ Chesapeake Bay watershed native plants that thrive with minimal care, attract pollinators and other wildlife, and absorb surface water along The School's campus.

Since the start of this partnership, McConnell and GGC have continued to work closely with Friends students, faculty, families, and the extended community to provide garden plans and planting supervision. Schoolwide plantings and clean up days offer students opportunities to work alongside experts. Faculty members incorporate the gardens into their curriculum, using them for artwork, science, and even coding classes. Students of all ages enage with the gardens- recent classes have included stormwater management, biodiversity, plant classification, invasive species management, and more.

Learn more about the origin of the Native Plant Teaching Gardens.

Purposes:

Native Plants

Wildlife Support

Native plants attract significant wildlife (insects, butterflies, birds, mammals) to use as food and shelter, making them ideal for plant, insect, and ornithology studies. The wildlife, in turn, bring other plants to these gardens. Friends' Native Plant Teaching Gardens are within the Piedmont zone, but since Friends is located near the coastal plain and faces salt runoff from the roads and paths around it, the garden edges do not mimic Piedmont zone conditions. For this reason, plant species on the edges of the gardens often feature plants that thrive in saltier locations (like those found on Maryland's coastal plain).

Water Management

Managing storm water runoff has been a constant challenge on Friends' campus. The School's bowl-shaped site acts as a funnel for rain and snowmelt, which makes its way to Stony Run, a creek on the western border of the campus that ultimately flows into the Chesapeake Bay. The Native Plant Teaching Gardens are able to slow this process by employing Chesapeake Bay watershed native plants that absorb surface water and improve water quality as they filter pollutants and build topsoil.

Sustainability

The Native Plant Teaching Gadens are a central part of sustainability at Friends. In addition to managing water as it pours over the campus and reducting stream and bay pollution by filtering runoff, it also provides students with places to study, draw, and learn about the ecosystems, and even the opportunities to get their hands dirty in planting and mainting the garden beds.

Learn more about sustainability at Friends.

Nature Trail Map

Blog

Blog

Press

Press

Inspired Design: Ideas in Action at Friends School of Baltimore by Kay McConnell & Julie Moir Messervy

Friends School in Baltimore - A Sustainable Landscape Model by Sue Barton

More Maryland Gardeners are Turning to Their Native Roots by Susan Reimer

The Journey and Stories of Hometown Habitat by The Meadow Project, with Little Friends Garden Planting photographs.

Native Instinct by Baltimore Style

Contact

Contact

Friends Community Garden

History:

In 2009, Stony Run Meeting joined the gardening efforts on campus. GGC members, Stony Run Meeting members, and Friends Upper School Sustainability Club worked together to design and build the Friends Community Garden. In this vegetable garden, organic gardening practices yield harvests shared with the CARES food pantry.

The Friends Community Garden also engages students in powerful lessons about healtful eating and the obstacles facing those who cannot afford fresh food. Classes visit the garden year-round, drawing inspiration for poetry writing, still-life painting, and lessons about soil ecology.

Sensory Gardens

History:

Our Pre-Primary Sensory Gardens envelop Friends’ youngest learners in a variety of shapes, fragrances, and textures designed to stimulate learning and discovery. With lamb’s ear to touch, herbs to smell and taste, and four-foot tall grasses in which to explore, these outdoor learning oases invite children to slow down, look closely, and pay attention to their surroundings.

Aquaponics

Aquaponics at Friends:

Upper Schoolers with a passion for sustainable agriculture grow vegetables and goldfish in a self-contained symbiotic system they’ve designed and constructed from scratch. Students in the Aquaponics Club share daily responsibility for monitoring levels of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in the soil-free nutrient solution, and harvesting crops for donation to CARES Food Pantry.