Photo: Lois Brink
When Lois Brink’s kids were in elementary school, she was struck by how uninviting their schoolyard was. But Brink, a landscape architect and professor at the University of Colorado Denver, saw a solution. She and her graduate students designed more vibrant, greener spaces, dubbed “Learning Landscapes.” These schools saw increases in math and writing scores and overall school performance. In 2000, she formed the public-private Learning Landscape alliance and over the next three years, with communities, it designed and converted 22 schoolyards in Denver’s industrial crescent. All told, between 2000 and 2012, with citywide voter support, the initiative converted every single public elementary school campus in Denver, totaling 306 acres. It led to a $1.3 million boost in state funding thanks to increased student enrollment, and 1,284 tons of carbon sequestered each year across all the green schoolyards.
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