Invigorating Future Land Stewards - Breaking Down an Outdoor Classroom That Never Stops Inspiring With Mike McCord

Raised garden beds, wildflowers, vegetable wash stations, rainwater collection stored in old olive transport drums with solar-powered pumps, pollinator housing, a geodesic dome greenhouse, benches made from repurposed materials, hammocks shaded by coniferous trees ... can you picture a place more ripe for hands-on learning?

Community Foodscapes is a Georgia-based, full-service, edible landscaping company with a permacultural and
educational flare. Although most of their jobs are residential, founder Mike McCord treasures any opportunity to use landscaping as a means to inspire community-wide joy. Touched by the mission driving Atlanta’s Booker T. Washington High School, Mike knew from the start that this endeavor would be one to remember.

“The school works with the conventional STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics curriculum, but they include Agriculture as a fifth pillar,” says Mike. “They have required agriculture classes and a FFA (Future Farmers of America) student group. It was motivating to think that every student attending this
school would have opportunities to interact with this project.”

Branching off from a one-time fruit tree lecture Mike (a certified arborist) presented at the school as a favor to a
friend, the staff was eager to learn more about his design work in the city. Before long, Mike was back, scoping out a site for what would become an educational garden and lab.

“We met with the principal and faculty members like science teachers, culinary teachers and facilities managers to imagine what this space could be,” says Mike. “There’s this concept in permaculture called zones of use where
you have concentric circular shapes or almost a bubble diagram showing the frequency of someone engaging with different areas. You can use that to inform where different components go. One example is annual vegetables and herbs. You want to check those almost daily to see if they are wilting, ripening or experiencing a pest. We chose this part of the campus because we knew there would be eyes on the space.”

Visible to staff entering the building from the parking lot, this gated and mostly sunny location was spot-on with what Mike and his team had in mind. Involving the staff in the intricacies of results-based decision-making processes was made simple with the client communication tools ingrained in Community Foodscape’s operations. Before that initial meeting, the team sent the school a detailed comprehensive site analysis (CSA). When visiting the site, Mike carried a binder, essentially a portfolio with a catalog of plant and material options clients can virtually order off of like a menu. In addition to the staff, however, a slew of perspectives remained to be sifted through before establishing the master plan for this project.

“There were some specific elements the admin team wanted, and we incorporated those in a real conceptual first draft,” says Mike.“ The school then gathered feedback from several classes of students. They gave us good input, and we made some tweaks. We went back and forth a few more times. That whole process took
months. It can be challenging to sneak design review time into a curriculum plan. At the same time, we always want to encourage our clients to break out of the status quo, like why not rethink the idea of having a lawn or grass at all?”

Day one of installation: The first order of business was to remove all existing turf—without heavy equipment. Access was limited and with the hillside slope, entering the site with so much as a skid-steer loader presented difficulty. Knowing that they would be planting a lot of vegetation soon, the team foresaw the efficiency in eliminating soil compaction. So, they used a sod cutter, breaking up the first inch of root growth and tossing
remnants onto a compost pile on site.

“Then, we started on the infrastructure,” says Mike. “That meant installing the automated drip irrigation system for the whole garden, constructing the cedar raised beds, the PVC pipe geodesic dome greenhouse frame, the three-bin composting system and the shed with the connecting rain barrels and solar pump. Some drainage infrastructure was pre-existing on the site that we had to address in the design with an overflow rain garden that we added along the perimeter. The parking lot-facing section turned into a wildflower meadow with a
summer cover crop of cowpeas and buckwheat. There were a lot of different ideas culminating here.”

The goal was to offer as many ties to available courses as possible so that, at any point in a student’s high school
experience, there would be a reason to venture to the outdoor classroom. The Community Foodscapes team built the 4-foot by 4-foot cedar beds so classes could have designated mini gardens. Bees, cared for by a third party, bring endless discovery opportunities for young scientists. In the next phase, Mike hints at adding a fruit tree orchard to the meadow with berries and vines lining the fence.

“I think one of the most important things we can do for the next generation is to get kids in the dirt,” says Mike. “The average graduating class at Booker T. Washington has about 600 students, so 2,400 are walking those halls year by year. We want to motivate these students to go outside and interact with their environment. Let’s get everyone learning about worms, bugs and plants.”

Mike is not just a landscaper. He is also a business consultant, helping general contractors and other landscape business owners retain employees and grow. As such, he knows the power of word-of-mouth advertising. Doing good, quality work and seeking out projects that align with his values has been paramount to his success with Community Foodscapes. When reflecting on what led to this project, Mike recognizes how relentlessly
staying true to himself over the years paid off with a chance to exercise his passions and impact countless others.

Mike McCord

Founder of Community Foodscapes

470-600-2636

cofo.mike@gmail.com

www.communityfoodscapes.org