Designing School Gardens for All

Abstract

School gardens are places where children spend most of their time besides their home. You need to bear in mind that there are two important points in design of a school garden. First one is that design of a school garden should be simple. The second one is that it should fulfil users’ needs. Functions of school gardens are to guide children for playing, fun and learning; to encourage creativity; to improve ability, and to gain team spirit. In a traditional design idea, design is a product which is only created by designer. Whereas users are an active participator of all design process in the modern design idea. Therefore, design is a collective product of designers and users. Ensuring active participation of users into design process makes them to adopt and protect school garden after it is implemented. In this article, a design of a school garden which is located in Yenipazar district of Aydın province, Turkey, designed by collaboration with teachers and students is discussed. All phases of school garden design process are presented in detailed design, perspective drawings, and animated film.