This paper describes an interdisciplinary and multi-grade collaboration between 5 horticulture and English classes at Clemson University and eighth-grade students at a local middle school. The focus of this collaboration was to design and install sustainable learning landscapes at a local elementary school. The nearly 200 students and three teachers involved in this project are working to create a collaborative electronic working environment, as much as sustainable schoolyards. This paper explores some of the issues involved in this effort to link students across classes and campuses: what kind of course management system is best suited to this type of collaboration; how can teachers be trained to work the electronic environment; how can students create coherent communities electronically; how can the differing availability of computer hardware from school to school be effectively bridged; what kinds of knowledge can elementary, undergraduate, and graduate students bring to the collaboration; how can three teachers manage this?

This collaboration seeks to bring authentic interdisciplinary and multi-grade assignments to enhance learning and communication skills for all the students. So far, students in first-year composition have done research for juniors in a landscape design class. First- and second-year students have written plans for incorporating sustainable lifestyle changes into their lives and are now sharing their reports on the outcomes of their efforts. From here, we attempt to calculate the combined impact of their efforts this semester, using the "ecological footprint" concept and online resources such as those found at the Center for the New American Dream (www.newdream.org). We are now in the process of bringing the eighth-grade class into the collaboration and are still trying to figure out issues of technology access.