In an increasingly urbanized world, it’s becoming more and more difficult for community members to immerse themselves in the beauty of nature. As concrete jungles expand, so does the challenge of reconnecting with natural elements, making built green spaces a valuable, and arguably crucial, alternative.
Teaching students how to integrate these spaces into the community is the goal of the landscape architecture program at Texas A&M University. By using natural elements to create built facilities, the department aims to transform developed cityscapes into efficient, working greenspaces. Throughout their college experience, landscape architecture students receive hands-on experience that can benefit the community, like their project at the Becky Gates Children’s Center, or BGCC.
The center is an early learning facility in College Station that accommodates nearly 200 children ages 1 to 6 years old. The centeris affiliated with the School of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M with the goal of giving back to Aggie students, faculty and staff with affordable child care and student employment. It also gives unique opportunities for hands-on experience, like the landscape architecture project that transformed their aged playground into a 39,000 square-foot nature- based exploration space designed by sophomore students at Texas A&M.
The project began in the fall of 2018 in LAND 211 — Landscape Design I — led by A&M Associate Professor of the Practice Ken Hurst, Ph.D., PLA. With 27 years of experience in the field, Ken aims to incorporate hands-on learning in his classroom as frequently as possible.
“Part of our work and foundation in the course was child development and what types of
facilities and things children look for at different ages,” Ken says. “I provide the background knowledge they need to successfully create the project. I give them ideas, I give them some critique, but I don't tell them how to do it — it's their expression.”
The students met with Erica Ritter, executive director of BGCC, for an initial consultation to go over the design requirements. They then visited the facility for a site visit, where they were able to map out the space and visualize their own ideas. From there, the students were tasked with creating a design that incorporated nature-play elements as the main idea.
“We wanted a nature-based playground, and the students went above and beyond in delivering that,” Erica says. “We had a checklist of items that we wanted to include, but rather than, for example, just put in a sandpit, they created this aesthetic- feeling area with sand that’s bordered with large rocks that the kids can then climb on and jump off.”
This natural feel allows students to connect with nature within the comfort of the childcare facility, providing benefits that exceed those of a plastic playground. According to the American Psychological Association, exposure to nature is associated with “improved attention, lower stress, better mood, reduced risk of psychiatric disorders and even upticks in empathy and cooperation.”
With their in-class experience, the sophomores were able to design a green space that would both serve the needs of BGCC and foster a healthy outdoor learning environment. “There were a lot of really good ideas within each student project, so what we did is we had a graduate student meet with myself and Erica and we compiled all of the best parts of the student work into a single design proposal,” Ken says.
The BGCC nature play area was completed and opened for use in September 2021 and was funded by a $750,000 donation from Texas A&M. The final product of the collaborative effort includes outdoor art stations, child-size garden planters, a hillside slide, a paved bicycle and scooter track, a small log cabin village, a wooden amphitheater with tree stump seats and a dry creek that winds across the grounds.
“Our goal was for everything included in the new playground to draw the children towards nature because that stimulates their imagination and creativity and allows them to make observations,” Erica says. “It was great that we were able to achieve that while simultaneously providing students the experience of designing a landscape architecture project for early childhood use, because there’s a lot of regulations that go into it that they may not have been introduced to otherwise.” Since completion, the new BGCC play area has been awarded OLE Texas! state certification and is currently in the process of obtaining Nature Explore Classroom national certification. It continues to inspire young minds, and highlights the potential of student-led initiatives and the impact of incorporating nature into childhood learning environments.
Texas A&M landscape architecture students continue to shape the Brazos Valley through other community projects such as an all-abilities playground in central College Station, Aggie Park and– more recently–a master plan for the Boys and Girls Club of the Brazos Valley.
“We want to give our students real world experience and hear from real world clients,” says Dr. Hurst. “It allows them to recognize that their job is to interpret the dreams of the client and to try to make those dreams a reality. Also, it's a lot of fun.”
