Roots and Wings Garden at Key School

A garden planned by students, with fairy houses built by the kindergarten.

Boy running along a mulched path between garden beds at Roots and Wings Garden

WHERE

Annapolis, MD

SETTING

Education

PARTNER INSTITUTION

The Key School

Visit

Where it is

The Key School, Hillsmere Drive, Annapolis, MD

What happens here

Students come during the day for respite. The garden doubles as a teaching asset, showing them how to care for and interact with the natural world, and the planting supports educational and stewardship activities. Younger students from the neighboring First School come for the fairy houses, an installation anyone of any age can add to.

Find this Sacred Place

HOW IT CAME TO BE

The students found it first.

Key School students kneeling together to plant the Roots and Wings Garden

Final concept drawing of the Roots and Wings Garden at Key School, with a mulch path, gathering areas and perennial plantings

Drag to see the transformation.

The Need

The school already had a Sacred Place, but its boundary shifted over the years as the built campus changed around it. In 2018 a group of students rediscovered the Nature Sacred bench and made it the subject of a podcast. The old location no longer suited the school or its population.

The Vision

Stakeholder groups of Key students and faculty set the brief, and it was specific. They wanted gathering spots for both individual and group use, and enough of them that several groups could use the space at once without feeling crowded. They asked for bright colors, more bird houses, a curved pathway giving the site two entry points, and the existing stump kept. All of it is in the built garden.

The Transformation

The redesign relocated the Sacred Place to a central spot on campus and worked with what was growing there. Existing sine curve-like shrub planting was mirrored and enhanced. Additional perennials went in as ellipses drawn from planetary orbits, so the planting patterns take their shape from academic subjects. The pathway, with its offshoot, takes the curvature of a river and its tributaries. Three seating nooks were added, one bench and two boulder areas, each carpeted with sedge and sprinkled with spring ephemerals for a burst of whimsy. The tree stump the students connected with stayed. The plant palette leans native and naturalized, chosen for hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies, with every plant filling an ecological niche and the whole giving color, shape, and multisensory interest year round. Kindergarten classes listened to Tracy Kane's Fairy Houses, then followed the rules of the forest to build their own on site.

How a Sacred Place comes to be →

WHO TENDS IT