Stop in and visit our gardens

Students at the Capitol Hill Cluster School are as likely to find their classrooms outdoors as inside. Our extensive gardens are living classrooms that support lessons on art, science, math, literacy, and geography. Stop by and visit our gardens at each campus: play, explore, relax, and learn.

Peabody Early Childhood Center
The gardens at Peabody were developed nearly fifteen years ago. There are sixteen distinct areas wrapping around three sides of the school building and edging the playground. The gardens include a diverse array of plants, including many native trees, shrubs, grasses and flowers that promote biodiversity and attract pollinators such as insects, butterflies, and birds. Students use them for everything from art projects to science lessons.

The newest, the Louise Chapman Children’s Garden, was dedicated in Spring 2010 in honor of retiring teacher Louise Chapman’s enduring passion for gardening with children.  This “Edible Schoolyard” area features thirteen raised vegetable beds, allowing each classroom to design, plant, maintain, and harvest its own garden. An additional nine boxes near the playground were just completed in August. This Playground Garden is being used with the school’s new garden-based literacy curriculum, “The Story of Food: Growing Healthy Readers,” which features hands-on gardening projects, field trips to local farms, a focus on nutrition and healthy eating, basic ecology education, and classroom cooking experiences for students.

Watkins Elementary School
The Watkins Living Classroom is a labor of love begun over twenty years ago by parent Molly Dannenmaier, who had the vision and energy to transform what had once been a neglected, weed-choked space into what is now a thriving garden program. Work in this space is continued today by Master Gardener and former Cluster parent Barbara Percival. In one of the most active school garden programs in the city, Watkins students grow healthy food in the Edible Schoolyard (modeled after Alice Waters’ original “teaching garden” in Berkeley, California) which they later cook and eat.

They also engage in hands-on learning about the impact plants, and people, can have on the Chesapeake Bay and Anacostia Watersheds in the Wetland Garden, and observe how seasonal and other climate changes affect plants in the Gardens of the Seasons. Finally, students study the way that plants, animals, and insects depend upon each other for food, shelter, and reproduction in the Wildlife Garden and can let their imaginations run wild in the Dinosaur Garden, playing among plants that haven’t changed in (literally) eons!

Stuart-Hobson Middle School
Stuart-Hobson’s garden program is the Cluster School’s newest, but it is no less ambitious than those at Watkins and Peabody. In 2006, Stuart-Hobson students won a garden design from local non-profit DC Appleseed for their submissions in an idea competition entitled Solving DC’s Problems. The nationally-known naturalist landscape design firm of Oehme, van Sweden and Associates developed a plan for a Native Plant Garden that could become a habitat for native birds and insects, and also memorialize beloved sixth-grade science teacher Nancy Cunningham, who died in 2002.

Phase One of the garden was completed last year and now hosts monarch butterflies. Phase Two, to be called the Bird Walk, will incorporate a student-made fused-glass birdbath, bird feeders and houses, and a patio and bench, all nestled among native plantings. Phase Three, a Water-Permeable Path coming from the school’s entrance will follow as funding becomes available. The tile mosaic overlooking the garden was created by students as a part of an arts integration project.

In addition, a sloping concrete wall was replaced by a Terraced Garden helping prevent storm water overflow, a major cause of pollution in the Anacostia River, and teaching students about the ways to better manage storm water in urban areas.

Our Partners
The Capitol Hill Cluster School garden program has been made possible by the tireless efforts of parents and former parents, teachers, students, community members, and volunteers from numerous organizations, as well as contributions of time, money and expertise from groups including the Capitol Hill Community Foundation, Casey Trees, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Concern Inc., the DC Cooperative Extension Service Master Gardener Program, Environmental Concern, Frager’s Hardware, FRESHFARM Markets, Greater DC Cares, Hands on DC, Lands & Waters, Living Classrooms of the National Capital Region, and the National Wildlife Foundation. The Cluster School owes them an enormous debt of gratitude for making the gardens grow and helping the students grow their understanding of the natural world.