New Skills for the Garden of the 21st Century

The main aim of the project was to create an outdoor learning environment for the Master of Landscape Architecture. The aim was to create an area where students could engage with living systems such as soil, vegetation and water over time. The aim was for them to learn to understand these systems and intelligently influence their logic. Thanks to the practical orientation of the learning environment, the garden closed a gap in the curriculum of the Master of Landscape Architecture. For us at the Chair of Being Alive, it has long been important for students to have access to an piece of land. This is the only way for them to learn important landscape architecture skills – such as observing on site, designing over time and the importance of maintenance.

The central framework conditions, such as access to the space, storage location for garden tools and the most important collaborations, were already in place before the Innovedum application was submitted. This is why we focused primarily on the methodological development of the teaching format in the actual implementation.

As a first step, we set up various workshop formats for landscape architects to examine soil and vegetation. This enabled us to get to know our piece of land better and to develop exercises for the students. We were then able to test these workshops in the different semesters and refine them from year to year.

In a second step, we developed the methodology so that the students could develop their own ideas and projects in the garden. Here, too, we tested different approaches – e.g. how much time the students spend in the garden or how specifically our task was formulated – and refined them based on our findings and the feedback from the students.

In a third step, we set up the documentation for the outdoor learning environment. This is because it is crucial for the projects initiated by the students that knowledge is passed on from semester to semester. Two formats in particular have proved successful. One is a garden journal in which the students document their findings. On the other hand, we have created a website that presents the project and is available to students as a resource for their own ideas (https://thegarden-zurich.arch.ethz.ch/home).

The outdoor learning environment has now established itself as a permanent fixture in teaching at the Chair of Being Alive and therefore in the Master of Landscape Architecture. Over the past two years, we have set the framework so that the project can continue in the future with few changes. However, this was only possible because we were able to experiment with different teaching formats during the development phase. On the one hand, very concrete workshop formats (e.g. production of plant charcoal, soil samples, drawing a plant, soil chromatographies, etc.) proved successful, with the students being very closely accompanied by us. On the other hand, it was more challenging to stimulate the students› own interventions. However, we learned, also thanks to feedback from the students, that it helps to spend a lot of time in the garden. While we initially only had 3-4 sessions in the garden, our lectures now take place exclusively in the outdoor learning environment. That was an important decision for the project.

In the meantime, the learning environment has also become well-known among the students and they keep contacting us when they want to implement their own ideas in the garden that are not part of our own course. We also notice that the new students look forward to lectures in the garden.