The three to eight year olds have each agreed to "adopt" Crown Hill's Baker Park located next to their school at 1405 NW 85th Street.    They patrol for litter each day before they play in the park’s meadow, forest and butterfly garden.  Their sharp eyes keep the park free of broken bottles, trash and even cigarette butts.

"They give the feeling that the park is loved and looked after,
and this discourages excessive trashing" says Andrea Faste, the president of the Whittier Heights Community Council.  "The children are nourished by the park's open and semi-wild spaces,and they, in turn, are nourishing the park."

Baker Park grew out of years of community effort to bring much needed open space to Crown Hill.  When the Parks and Recreation Department's Open Space Program purchased the half-acre Baker property in 1991, the area had the least open space per capita in Seattle after downtown.  But the city did not have the money to develop the property into a park, leaving it up to Crown Hill and neighboring Whittier Heights to create a usable public space.

Groundswell Northwest, a Ballard group that helps communities create parks (see SP 2/24 -ed.), and Whittier Heights Community Council received a grant from the Neighborhood Matching Fund to pay most of the major costs of the project, but the designing, planting and shoveling was the neighborhood's responsibility.

Cinquegranelli students, parents and director Gail Longo joined the school's neighbors in transforming the neglected property, that was attracting drug users and transients, into a model neighborhood park.  The students won a Department of Wildlife
grant to create a pond and butterfly garden, and they transplanted many of the existing plants to the park’s “natural area.”  They also participated in design workshops, helped raise money and contributed many of the 2,500 volunteer work hours required under the Neighborhood Matching Fund program.

When the rain isn't coming down in sheets, the children climb over two large granite boulders, hide in the maze of a giant rhododendron or look for life in the small pond.  The gracefully landscaped park does not have a standard play structure, which suits Longo just fine. She wanted the property's natural setting and large number of trees to be preserved. Rather than offering children another fancy and expensive climbing structure, she wanted her students to experience open space and be left to their own creative devices. Her school subscribes to the Montessori idea that if a tree can't be brought into the classroom, the classroom must be brought to the trees. Caring for the earth and observing nature is woven into almost every aspect curriculum at Cinquegranelli. 'Children can take part in the care-taking of land, but they need to be taught how to do it,” she says.

The children’s stewardship of Baker Park has also linked them to schools around the world.  They have sent books about their favorite places in the park to Somalia, Ecuador and Italy.  In exchange, they received books and drawings about the land where other children play.  Taking care of the park corresponding with children about the places they live is important to Anne Moser, a parent at the school.  “It helps the children appreciate how small our world really is,” she says.