Sharon Danks
Sharon Gamson Danks is an environmental planner and Principal/Co-Founder of Bay Tree Design in Berkeley, California. Bay Tree Design is a women-owned landscape architecture and planning firm that collaborates with clients to develop lively outdoor spaces including ecological schoolyards and edible landscapes.
Sharon's schoolyard ecology background includes research, writing, and hands-on design and planning with school communities in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. She has visited and documented over 160 green schoolyard projects in North America, Europe, and Japan over the last ten years. This has helped her develop design guidelines and best practices for green schoolyards and informs her work as an author. Since 2001, Sharon has helped schools use a participatory master planning process to transform their grounds from ordinary asphalt into vibrant ecosystems for learning and play. These schoolyards follow ecological design principles and reflect each school's unique community, curricula and site-specific ecology.
Sharon Gamson Danks and Bay Tree Design are currently working as Master Planning Strategists for a large green schoolyard program with San Francisco Unified School District. In 2008, Sharon and Bay Tree Design designed a Sustainable Schoolyard exhibit for display at the US Botanic Garden. Ms. Danks has directed three hands-on schoolyard ecology conferences for the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance and serves on their advisory board. She also serves on the national advisory board for the Community Built Association. Sharon has written a number of green schoolyard-themed articles that have appeared in Landscape Architect Magazine, Orion, New Village Journal, and Green Teacher. In addition to a MLA-MCP from University of California, Berkeley, Sharon holds a Professional Certificate in Natural Resource Management from U.C. San Diego Extension and a BA from Princeton University.
Sharon is also the mother of two expert playground testers, ages 6 and 8.
EcoSchool Design™
http://www.ecoschools.com/
Bay Tree Design, Inc.
http://www.baytreedesign.com/