© 2007 Phillip Carter Photography
Bishop O’Dowd High School’s Living Laboratory
Oakland
Gardening experience: The Living Laboratory was started 6.5 years ago.
Garden size: 3 acres
Showcase feature: High school students helped design and install every part of the Living Laboratory, in the process experiencing the power of working hard as a group to heal this hillside site, which—once an abandoned part of the campus—was covered with weeds and debris, severely eroded, and sometimes a crime site. Since 2000, students, faculty, and volunteers (with guidance provided by Todd Jersey Architects) have transformed this hillside into an outdoor classroom and laboratory. The heart of this ecological restoration project is its aquatic ecosystem, in which rainwater is collected from the school’s roof, tumbles down the waterfall, is stored in underground cisterns, used in the pond, and finally filtered through seasonal and year-round wetlands. The Living Laboratory, an oasis for biodiversity in the midst of the city, has expanded the walls of the classroom, and urban kids—alienated from nature—get the magic.
© 2007 Phillip Carter Photography
Other garden attractions:
- Established native plants receive no summer water.
- Plant communities found at this site include grassland, chaparral, mixed woodland, redwood forest, freshwater marsh and pond, and redwood forest.
Gardening for wildlife: Pacific chorus frogs found the pond on their own shortly after it was installed. Tall trees, a wide variety of flowering and berry-bearing native plants, wild brushy areas, and the waterfall and pond have attracted sharp-shinned hawks, black phoebes, cedar waxwings, Western flycatchers, and four species of woodpeckers, among other birds. Ten species of butterflies, bees, skunks, and fence and alligator lizards are found in this garden.
© 2007 Phillip Carter Photography
Garden Talks: 11:00 “Native American uses of California native plants” and 3:00 “Ecological restoration techniques for an eroded hillside site” by Annie Prutzman, Living Laboratory Director and Environmental Science teacher.