Environmental Laboratory for Sustainability and Ecological Education (ELSEE)

Formerly a broken concrete parking lot, this 0.32-acre site in the heart of San Jose, California has been transformed to a teaching garden model called The Environmental Laboratory for Sustainability and Ecological education (ELSEE). The tenants include Middlebrook Gardens, a design/build sustainable landscaping company, The California Native Garden Foundation, The CNGF Nursery and Propagation Center, and Freshness Farms, a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) that operates the onsite Aquaponics farm. ELSEE supports a healthy land use model for urban environments that is both economically and environmentally sustainable. The vision of ELSEE is to have this type of model adopted by 10,000 schools in California by 2020. photographs courtesy: ELSEE