front cover of Creating Outdoor Classrooms
Creating Outdoor Classrooms
Schoolyard Habitats and Gardens for the Southwest
By Lauri Macmillan Johnson, with Kim Duffek
University of Texas Press, 2008

Schoolyards have come a long way from the barren playgrounds that many people remember. Today's school campuses often feature gardens in which students can learn about native plants and wildlife, grow vegetables and fruit, explore cultural traditions, practice reading and math skills, and use their imaginations to create fun play spaces. And for a growing number of urban students, these schoolyard gardens offer the best, if not the only, opportunity to experience the natural world firsthand and enjoy its many benefits.

This book is a practical, hands-on guide for creating a variety of learning environments in the arid Southwest. Filled with clear, easy-to-use information and illustrated with photographs, drawings, and plans, the book covers everything necessary to create schoolyard gardens:

  • An introduction to schoolyards as outdoor classrooms and several types of habitats, including art gardens, cultural history gardens, ecological gardens, literacy gardens, and vegetable gardens
  • Design theory, including a history of garden styles, and design principles and design elements
  • Beginning the design process, including identifying participants and writing a design program that sets out goals and requirements
  • Conducting site research and synthesizing design elements to arrive at a final design
  • Design essentials, including project funding and design features, maintenance, accessibility, safety, and project evaluation and revision
  • Wildlife ecology, including elements needed for survival such as food and shelter
  • Creating gardens for pollinators and other wildlife, including hummingbirds, butterflies, bees, moths, bats, and flies, as well as pest control
  • Lists of native plants for various kinds of habitats and nurseries that sell native plants, as well as books, web sites, and other resources for learning more about native plants and wildlife

This guide will be essential for landscape architects, school personnel, parents, and students. Indeed, its principles can be used in designing schoolyard habitats across the country, while its information on gardening with native plants and wildlife will be useful to homeowners across the Southwest.

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front cover of No Species Is an Island
No Species Is an Island
Bats, Cacti, and Secrets of the Sonoran Desert
Theodore H. Fleming; Illustrations by Kim Kanoa Duffek
University of Arizona Press, 2017
In the darkness of the star-studded desert, bats and moths feed on the nectar of night-blooming cactus flowers. By day, birds and bees do the same, taking to blooms for their sweet sustenance. In return these special creatures pol­linate the equally intriguing plants in an ecological circle of sustainability.

The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in the world. Four species of columnar cacti, including the iconic saguaro and organ pipe, are among its most conspicuous plants. No Species Is an Island describes Theodore H. Fleming’s eleven-year study of the pollination biology of these species at a site he named Tortilla Flats in Sonora, Mexico, near Kino Bay.

Now Fleming shares the surprising results of his intriguing work. Among the novel findings are one of the world’s rarest plant-breeding sys­tems in a giant cactus; the ability of the organ pipe cactus to produce fruit with another species’ pollen; the highly specialized moth-cactus pollination system of the senita cactus; and the amazing lifestyle of the lesser long-nosed bat, the major nocturnal pollinator of three of these species.

These discoveries serve as a primer on how to conduct ecological re­search, and they offer important conservation lessons for us all. Fleming high­lights the preciousness of the ecological web of our planet—Tortilla Flats is a place where cacti and migratory bats and birds connect such far-flung habitats as Mexico’s tropical dry forest, the Sonoran Desert, and the temper­ate rain forests of southeastern Alaska. Fleming offers an insightful look at how field ecologists work and at the often big surprises that come from looking carefully at a natural world where no species stands alone.
 
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