Children at a Prince George’s County public elementary school in Chillum have a new outdoor classroom and garden this spring, five years in the making.
Wildcat Way, named for the mascot of Cesar Chavez Dual Spanish Immersion Elementary School, includes picnic tables, permeable paving, gravel paths, compost bins, raised beds, and newly planted native trees and perennials. Areas have been planted to grow into wildflower meadows.
At a ribbon-cutting June 15, Principal Laura Guzman said “Today we celebrate not only what’s been built, but the generations of learning, discovery, community that will grow here because of it.”
Parents and volunteer master gardeners from Hyattsville will help water and maintain the space this summer, once the contractor who installed the plants has helped get them established, according to Kate Wunderlich, a parent at the school and volunteer leader of the project.
Hyattsville artist Wenceslao Almazan-Romero, also a parent at the school, designed outdoor signage.
At the beginning of the process, students made drawings and had conversations with designers that helped determine the layout and uses of the space. In recent weeks students planted wildflowers and tried out nature journals kept in hutches under benches.
The State of Maryland awarded $145,000 in revitalization funds to the project in 2023 through a grant to the Hyattsville Community Development Corporation via the National Capital Strategic Economic Development Fund.
The foundation Nature Sacred, based in Annapolis, invested another $70,000 in the project for construction, interpretive signs and programming with students in the space. They also provided design services, helping convert the concept plan made in 2021 by the Neighborhood Design Center into a completed designs.
The school’s parent-teacher association contributed $10,000 to the project as well. Following a permitting process that spanned 2024 and 2025, construction moved forward quickly this winter and spring.
