Education Goes Green: Salmon Creek Falls Environmental Education Center in Northern California

Last fall, as part of the Planet Durable team, I entered the Open Architecture Challenge 2009 Design Competition -- a project sponsored by Architecture for Humanity addressing the unique challenges schools face in trying to provide smart, safe and sustainable learning spaces. Our research involved visiting the Salmon Creek Falls Environmental Education Center located in Occidental, Northern California in charming Sonoma County. We were very fortunate to meet Victoria Johnston, a green building professional and life long environmentalist who has been behind this six-year architectural and landscaping initiative at Salmon Creek Charter School and Harmony Elementary School.

Victoria generously provided us with a fun and detailed technical tour of this impressive facility, explaining the logistics of what it takes to form a leading initiative such as this one. We started our tour at the Center’s most innovative piece in green building design, an impressive 6,150 square foot cafeteria with a catering kitchen, auditorium, foyer and two offices. The building integrates passive and active solar, cutting edge non toxic building materials, a living roof and 99% of the rainwater is collected and directed to the 10 acre wetland on site. Experientially, the Center will allow kids to grow organic food in the Outdoor Garden Space that in turn will be used in the cafeteria to prepare healthy locally grown organic meals.

As a volunteer and parent of the Harmony Union School District, Victoria had run the first School wide Garden program for Kindergarten through 5^th grade students teaching organic gardening, cooking the garden space and nutrition. This program transpired into a highly successful ambitious project teaching students, teachers and greater community, the responsibility of land stewardship on fifty acre piece of watershed between a creek and a redwood forest. Thanks to Victoria's relentless persistence and energetic enthusiasm, she was able to raise a grant of $1.2 million from the California Coastal Conservancy and consistently attracted donors to make this $4 million green school project, a dream come true.

We were later guided to the Observation Deck to view the Salmon Creek Falls. We also visited a straw bale greenhouse and discovered the Outdoor Garden Space where gorgeous herbs, vegetables, native plants, flowers and fruit trees were delivering fragrant scents in the early evening breeze. Not far from us, kids were playing, laughing and enjoying life in this unique place. What a dream for a child to be in a school surrounded by the majestic redwood forest, a structure allowing them to experience nature in the classroom!

Learning exactly how Victoria raised funds and managed the creation of the Salmon Creek Falls Environmental Center within her community was very insightful and educational. I received a great deal of wisdom from Victoria who shared a unique philosophy in life full of spontaneity and confidence. ”Ask for Pie in the Sky, visualize it and it will be brought to you if you really want it!” Victoria says with a smile.

Our visit was a very inspirational day for anyone who has dreams they want to see manifest.

I believe cultivating an idea and making it successfully grow comes from a place of strong commitment to preserve and educate our environmental consciousness and is rooted deeply in early life. Victoria’s background reinforces this as her father was one of the first people in the county to use solar hot water system and her mother had a passion for gardening, arts and crafts and living in harmony with nature. Victoria says she owes her “joie de vivre” and dedication to our environment to her nurturing and trusting parents allowing her to follow her heart from birth.

Likewise, in my experience, as a professional educator with many years teaching young children from diverse socio-economic and academic backgrounds, as well as being raised by a strong environmentalist father in France, there is no doubt in my mind that the building foundation of trust in yourself and of your convictions starts as early as possible in life. This inspirational and informative visit has convinced me even more that environmental education should be implemented in schools as early as kindergarten and be sustained throughout elementary grades and high school!

Following this wonderful visit at the Salmon Creek Falls Environmental Center, we were graciously invited at Michael and Victoria’s eco-house that they designed and built together in 1997, before green building was on the radar. The house is an absolute wonder from both aesthetic and eco-building standpoints, perched majestically above the clouds and surrounded by centennial redwoods in the beautiful Sonoma hills. There, in this peaceful and beautiful environment, we made a toast to green education, new friendship and celebration of life.

For more information about the Salmon Creek Falls Environmental Center if you would like a tour, or to contact Victoria for professional consulting send an email to Victoria:

Greenlight Consulting

Victoria Johnston, LEED AP

mvraj@sonic.net or call 707 874-2546

If you want to learn more about Harmony Elementary and Salmon Creek School visit their website @ htp://www.harmony.k12.ca.us