Climate Ready Schools

Schools are a significant component of public space in our cities and communities. They are hubs of learning and play where children develop and build on relationships with each other and the natural environment. Schools also provide a vital space for habitat restoration, community placemaking and environmental literacy.   

How school grounds are designed plays a major role in how a community or city will, or will not, adapt to climate change.

Students from Irma Coulson Public School sitting by the tunnel. Image Credit: Cam Collyer

About The Program

Evergreen’s Climate Ready Schools builds on our 30-year legacy of transforming school grounds across Canada into nature rich play and learning environments for both children and their community. This program is the next stage of our intensive work to green Canadian school grounds. 

With Climate Ready Schools, we bring best practices from around the world and combine them with the lessons and relationships Evergreen has built through transforming over 6,000 Canadian schools, impacting over one million students thus far. 

Though Canadian school grounds cover hundreds of thousands of acres of land and are found in nearly every municipality, they are an underappreciated asset hiding in plain sight. 

Currently, Canadian school grounds are mostly covered with asphalt and concrete, significantly contributing to the Urban Heat Island Effect. Within the larger global context of climate change, Canadian school grounds are also becoming major hotspots for flooding during storms. Therefore, it is essential to build climate-resilience within our communities and cities to ensure that these landscapes serve a deeper ecological purpose. 

Canadian school grounds need to be redesigned for our children, communities and the natural world.  

Through our participatory design process, the Climate Ready Schools program engages with the entire school community in creating and championing a tailor-made solution for their school grounds. 

Based on our core principles, in each project we:   

• Adapt to the changing climate through managing stormwater on site while respecting the ecological landscape  
• Nurture child development: physically, intellectually, cognitively, emotionally and socially  
• Support a significant increase in outdoor play and learning and serve the community by adding value outside of school hours  

Water Play, ICPS. Image Credit: Cam Collyer

The Irma Coulson Public School Pilot

Situated in Milton, Ontario, the Irma Coulson Public School (ICPS) Pilot is a partnership between Evergreen and the Halton District School Board that transformed ICPS's school ground into a climate adaptive landscape for outdoor learning and community use becoming Canada’s first ever climate ready school. 

In collaboration with Berlin-based landscape architect, Birgit Teichmann, along with local Canadian landscape architects, the ICPS Pilot integrates lessons from Berlin’s Sponge Schools project, designed to ensure that school grounds can absorb 100% of rainfall on the school site, while mitigating flood risk in their neighborhoods.  

To learn more about this partnership and how the school grounds were designed, watch the ICPS Pilot Video Case Study here.

The Irma Coulson Public School Pilot not only sets an example of how Canadian school boards can extend the use of their school grounds but also provides a sense of pride and ownership in public space through participation and stewardship that champions the school and community.