Wildcat Way
An outdoor classroom, built by parents.
A green corridor along the side of the school where kids learn outside — designed with the community, funded by grants and neighbors, and built on weekends by people who live here.
What it is
A classroom with no ceiling.
Wildcat Way turned an unused strip of ground into a place teachers can take a class and families can use on weekends. Raised beds, native plantings, seating, rain barrels, and signage the students helped write.
For classes
Teachers book the space for science, reading and Spanish lessons. Resources live with the committee.
For families
Open to families on weekends. Bring a book, bring a snack, pull a weed if you feel moved.
For the block
Native plants, shade and stormwater capture on a street that needed all three.
How to help
Community workdays are the whole engine.
Planting, painting, building, hauling mulch. No skills required and no minimum stay — an hour on a Saturday genuinely moves it forward.
- Workdays — announced in the calendar and the WhatsApp group.
- Watering weeks — a household takes a week over the summer.
- Student ambassadors — older kids who show visitors around.
- Master Gardener workshops and summer yoga in the space.
The signs
Read the walls.
Eight interpretive panels run the length of the corridor, written with students and illustrated by Wences Almazán. They work as a self-guided tour — start anywhere, read what catches you.
Look Up
The canopy, the sky, the weather. What is happening over your head.
Look Down
Soil, roots, worms. The half of the garden nobody sees.
Look Around
Who else lives here — pollinators, birds, the neighbors.
Learn It
How a teacher turns a garden bed into a lesson.
Environment
Stormwater, shade and native planting on a street that needed all three.
Student ambassadors give the tour on workdays and at ¡Sí Se Puede!. Ask one.
County priorities
This is the county’s own plan, built in a schoolyard.
Wildcat Way is not a garden project the PTO invented. It delivers two of the priority recommendations in the PGCPS Climate Change Action Plan, on one campus, with volunteer labor.
- Priority Recommendation #1 — Support environmental justice through climate curriculum, training, and partnerships.
- Priority Recommendation #7 — Commit to climate resilient land management.
Read the plan: PGCPS Climate Change Action Plan — executive summary (PDF)
Built with partners.
Nature Sacred, EnviroCollab, the Hyattsville CDC and PGCPS all put something real into this. So did several hundred families.