We hope you find this site informative and helpful in the development and use of children's landscapes.

If you have suggestions about resources, or information that other visitors to this site will find helpful, please fill out one of our suggestion forms. For general comments, send us an e-mail.

11/1/97 Access the Georgia Outdoor Classroom Council Resource Guide for lots of helpful information about creating and using an outdoor classroom in k-12 educational settings. The Guide is geared toward Georgia schools, but it contains lots of information that will be useful to people in other places as well. Let me know what you think, or if you have any additions, corrections or suggestions.

9/12/97 Check out the new Children's Landscape References page under "Resources" for bibliographic information relating to a variety of aspects of children's landscape design.

7/20/97 See the home page for important news about this site.

4/17/97 In response to a number of requests from educators around the country, I have made available online a detailed proposal that I prepared to introduce school administrators to the concept of discovery gardens for schools. The proposal discusses aspects of the discovery garden concept in detail and offers suggestions for how the school landscape may serve as a uniquely valuable instructional resource. The proposal is available in 3 .pdf files, so you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to download it. You can follow links on the proposal page to download Acrobat Reader from the Adobe home site. I hope you find the proposal useful. I would like to know what you think of it. Please send comments to discoverygardens@mindspring.com

3/21/97 I've been working on site navigation this week -- long overdue. I've finally mastered the JavaScript code to change two frames with one click, so getting around should be less cumbersome (particularly in the Resources section). Please let me know if you encounter any glitches. I'm afraid I only know enough code to be dangerous, I have no idea what it all means. I've also added a page to keep people posted about conferences and workshops relating to children's landscapes. Please send me information about anything going on in your area and I'll be happy to post it.

3/10/97 I'm sorry it's taken so long between updates. I've been in the process of turning in my master's thesis (several years after "finishing" school), so I've been *KINDA BUSY.* But all that's behind me now and I will be able to get going on this site again shortly. For anyone who's interested (or just really, really bored), my thesis (in landscape architecture at the University of Georgia) is called: Islands of Enchantment and Enlightenment: Designing children's gardens as play spaces and outdoor learning environments. It traces the evolution of the playground movement and the history of children's gardening; discusses contemporary play and developmental theory as they relate to children's environments; and details modern playground theory, as developed by educators and developmentalists. Ultimately, the thesis proposes a new paradigm for children's outdoor play environments. As you may have guessed, it's WAY TO LONG for a master's thesis (200+ pages), but at least it's got a lot of pictures.

2/16/97 Yes, I've been very busy again this week, and haven't spent enough time working on this web site. I know you're all very impatient. I know that Spring is springing (we've got daffodils, forsythia and redbuds blooming down here!). But, I am adding a new feature starting this week. The Discovery Gardens' Cool Book of the Week will spotlight a different book each week (hence the catchy name) that has *something* to do with children's landscapes. Check out the inaugural selection!

2/9/97 Things have been going slower than I had hoped, and I haven't been able to work on the site this week as much as I would like, but I have started the Teacher Resources page. Check it out and then send inyour own ideas for what should be added!

2/2/97 We've added a page on public children's gardens. Check it out for a very special link. We've also been working on the water features page. Our list of outdoor classrooms online is growing, but slowly. Please be sure to let us know about your outdoor classroom! Mostly we've been trying to repair faulty links on the online resources pages. If you follow a link and it doesn't work (or it does work but appears inside the main frame of our site), please send us an e-mail!

1/18/97 Check out our listing of outdoor classrooms online, and be sure to fill out our form to add your own outdoor classroom or school garden to our listing.