Chicago Botanic Garden
Children’s Campus
The Chicago Botanic Garden is one of the great gardens of the world, a living museum known for its extensive, diverse plant collections, exquisite horticultural displays, critical plant conservation research, and in-depth educational programs. We are the ideal setting for teaching and learning about plants and their role in our lives, and we are already a recognized leader in environmental education. Creating a new Children’s Campus will boost our capacity to serve students, use the latest in learning methodology, and bring national recognition to our excellent educational programs.
The Campus will be a hub of activity with many opportunities for learning and discovery and will enable us to welcome more families with children, summer campers, teachers, and school groups to the Garden. It will give greater flexibility to our staff and new types of activities for exploration of the natural world. It will allow the Garden to broaden its service to the child-centered community of our region.
The first planned elements of this campus are a new, beautiful entry drive and turn-around and the Grunsfeld Children’s Growing Garden, both funded, currently under construction, and scheduled to be completed in the late summer of 2011. The new entrance provides a safe and direct drop-off point for the more than 600 school buses that come to the Garden every year and a beautiful, planted pathway for families and non-school groups to move from the parking lot to the campus. The circle drive will provide handicap parking spaces to accommodate the increased number of special needs children who will be using the Growing Garden and the entire Campus when it is completed.
Summer camps and other program participants of all abilities will use the Grunsfeld Children’s Growing Garden starting in the spring of 2012 as an active, hands-in-the-soil planting zone where they will grow food and ornamental plants, learn about the native species of our region, and get inoculated with the sheer joy of gardening. Children and families of all backgrounds and abilities will have access to an enclosed, protected space that allows them to actively explore and learn about the natural world. In addition to the 83,000 family members who take part in on-site programs, an estimated 10,750 low-income Chicago Public School students will benefit annually through field trips to the Garden. Participation by approximately 1,500 children with disabilities will be made possible by features such as raised beds, wide paths, and sensory plantings that heighten the experience and engage all senses. Another 2,000 teachers from early childhood through high school will gain techniques, lesson plans, and the materials to implement them through the Garden’s many teacher professional development programs offered each year.
The campus plan also includes a Discovery Cove on the lake just across the west road. This area will provide opportunities for studying aquatic plants and animals that inhabit our wetland ecosystems and for learning about the critical role that fresh water and its conservation plays in all our lives. Plans for this aquatic feature have been developed and fundraising is actively underway.
In preliminary planning is the main “green space” zone of the Campus. Grass, herbaceous and sensory plants, paths, benches, and a water feature are envisioned for this half-acre zone, which will bring alive the pollinator story that makes plants possible.
At heart of the campus plan is a new Children’s Learning Center. Since it opened in 2006, the current Children’s Learning Center has been home to the Chicago Botanic Garden’s award-winning education and family programs serving youth from pre-kindergarten through high school. From Camp CBG, serving children ages two through twelve, to science and college preparatory programs for middle and high school students, all of our programs are based on an experiential learning philosophy using the Garden as a living laboratory for hands-on exploration.
The new Children’s Learning Center, by virtue of increasing classrooms from three currently to eight, including two early childhood spaces, will dramatically increase both the numbers and ages of children who can be served on a year-round basis at the Garden. Along with a natural lighting feature, the building will be naturally ventilated, solar panel energized, green-roofed to achieve thermal insulation, and “rainwater capturing” to conserve run off for gardening uses. It will be our goal to achieve the highest (platinum) LEED rating, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The building will be both a center for teaching and a teaching tool in itself that can educate visitors of all kinds about human and earth friendly design and provide a model to inspire others. Integrated teaching tools, like wireless computer communications, active use of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, and smart boards that capture and create written documents from “white board” jottings will be used primarily to focus children’s attention and engagement on the living world.
The new Children’s Learning Center and its surrounding campus will provide transformational change for the Garden’s children’s education programs. We will be teaching the citizens and scientists of tomorrow through hands-on science, state-of-the art teaching methods, and by real world example.