Beyond our specific requirements for compliance and our broad goals for children being in a natural environment, we articulated the following:
Goals:
- Make three distinct play spaces for each age group, paralleling the indoor classrooms, while still allowing for some mixed age group visiting.
- Construct ways for convenient, yet unobtrusive research observations.
- Retain as much of the original natural landscape as possible.
- Take into account the physical and political relationship of the CSC to the WCCC (adjacent daycare center).
- Solve long term drainage issues (water in the Page Building lower level).
- Incorporate the grounds of the two child facilities into the landscape vocabulary of the College, especially at the College’s stone entrance gate and near the Arboretum.
- Establish a sense of privacy and security for the CSC at the public, village corner of campus.
- Diminish play equipment and create more garden space.
- Build more areas and structures that invite dramatic play and social interaction.
- Create a series of “settings” (Robin Moore’s term) that children might discover along well-designed pathways.
- Re-establish the availability of moveable equipment (things that children can move about).
- Add water features, greenhouse, storage sheds, and benches.
- Provide many more opportunities to dig not only in sand, but also in real soil.
- Develop a multi-tiered approach to children’s gardening – experimentation, planting, and interaction with established plants.
- Incorporate plans and funding sources for maintenance of structures and plants.
- Establish networks of human resources to nurture the garden and its goals – teachers, children, parents, students, botanical garden staff, horticulturists, landscape architects, colleagues and friends.