Section 1: Building Your Lab - petrawoolf/OutdoorScienceLab GitHub Wiki

Section 1: Building Your Lab

Your outdoor lab can be as simple or as complex as you’d like. At a minimum, you need one container garden that is 4-feet by 5-feet and has access to sunlight. With multiple container garden areas, you can involve more students or have concurrent experiments throughout the year.

Building Your Outdoor Lab Raised Beds

I created an easy to follow guide to help anyone build raised bed gardens for use in their outdoor labs.

Materials List for Raised Beds

  • Lumber (for 24" high bed). I used cedar, which is more expensive but will last about 10 years.
  • (4) 2”x12”x5’ cedar boards (for the long sides)
  • (4) 2”x12”x4’ cedar boards (for the short sides)
  • (4) Pre cut cedar posts

Hardware (in a color-coded Ziplock bag):

  • 24 exterior-grade 5” deck screws (star-drive or Phillips head)
  • Other materials (pre-cut, to make installation easier):
  • Weed barrier fabric (20 sq ft)
  • Plastic ½ in. wire mesh (aka hardware cloth) for bottom layer

Build Books

Taking inspiration from Lego, I made a build book template for the raised beds. You can see or download four example PDFs.

Science Learning Equipment

I recommend buying or having the following equipment donated:

  • Wind sock
  • Outdoor thermometer
  • Rain gauge
  • Thermometers for use in experiments
  • Magnifying glasses
  • Soil ph testing strips
  • Bird feeders
  • Hummingbird feeders
  • Small shovels and tools for digging (used by students)

Recommendations and Best Practices for Building

I was fortunate to have 30 scout and adult volunteers come to my Eagle Project build day. I also spent more than 175 hours in advance doing research, project planning, and preparing. So in my case, building the lab went according to plan and we actually finished three hours earlier than expected. We built four large container beds.

Here are some specific recommendations based on what I learned to help the building of your lab go smoothly:

Brief your team in advance about what they will be building. It is helpful to show them diagrams during the briefing. Make sure to have several sets of tools on hand so that people can work simultaneously on different parts of the build. Determine in advance if you need to level the ground. You can also build small trenches rather than level the whole area. Of course, you should always have first aid supplies on hand if anyone gets injured. Remember sunscreen and bug spray, which people usually forget until it’s too late!