Outdoor learning at Bloom School Sarajevo: an interview with Mirna Krpo, our new team member

At Bloom School Sarajevo, a private Montessori school where lessons are taught in English and Bosnian, outdoor learning is part of every subject. Our Bloom Earth programme began with a landscape architect who turned a dump into a living space, and it was later shaped by a forester and an agronomist. This year Mirna Krpo, also a landscape architect, joins our team to continue it. We asked her about the land, the children and the years ahead.

Inheriting the vision

How does it feel to step into a project with this history, and what do you hope your own profile will bring to it?

For me, stepping into a programme with such a history is both a responsibility and a privilege. I really respect the fact that the Earth programme has evolved through different professions and perspectives. I don’t see my role as replacing what came before me, but as continuing that story and adding another layer to it.

As a landscape architect, my work has always been about much more than designing beautiful spaces. I am interested in how people experience a landscape, how they interact with it and how a space can influence wellbeing, learning and a sense of belonging. I hope to bring that perspective to Bloom, combining design, horticultural knowledge and practical work with children, while allowing the landscape itself to continue evolving with them.

During their walk through the garden and forest, children aged 9-12 collected natural treasures and brought them back to school to create this beautiful autumn corner.

A landscape architect's eye 

You share the founder of this programme’s profession but come from a different place and generation. When you walk the grounds today: the forest, the orchard, the greenhouse, the paths and the parkour the students built, what do you see, and what do you imagine this space could become?

When I walk through Bloom’s grounds, I don’t see separate elements: a forest, an orchard, a greenhouse, paths or a parkour area. I see one living landscape with many different possibilities for learning.

As a landscape architect, I naturally notice spatial relationships, vegetation, seasonal changes, areas that are being used well and areas that still have potential. But I also try to look at the space through the children’s eyes. A tree can be much more than a tree, it can provide shade, become something to observe through four seasons, a place to gather, or the beginning of a lesson.

I would like the landscape to continue becoming a place that children actively shape rather than simply use. My ideal is not a perfectly finished garden. It is a landscape that keeps changing because children are planting, experimenting, observing, building, caring for it and leaving their own small marks on it.

The children aged 3-6 take care of the Bloom school garden and flowers every day.

How the garden becomes a maths, science and language classroom

Our philosophy says the Earth school is not a separate subject but a thread woven through the whole curriculum. How do you understand that idea, and how might you help teachers use the land to bring a language, math's or science lesson to life?

This is actually one of the things I find most valuable about the Earth programme. Nature should not exist as an isolated subject because the real world is not divided into subjects.

A garden can naturally become a mathematics classroom when children measure planting distances, calculate areas or count seeds. It becomes science when they observe germination, roots, soil, insects or decomposition. It becomes language when they describe what they have observed, research a plant, write labels or keep a garden journal.

We have already started doing some of this through measuring planting distances, labelling plants and recording our work in the garden journal. My role can also be to help teachers recognise these connections and create opportunities where their classroom concepts can become something children can physically experience outdoors.

The children are planting bulbs for spring flowers.

Why children learn by doing

We want children to live a concept first and then understand it, rather than learn it by heart. Could you describe an activity you'd love to do with the students where the land itself becomes the teacher?

One simple example would be planting bulbs in autumn.

Instead of first explaining the entire life cycle of a bulb, I would let the children handle the bulbs, examine their structure, prepare the soil, measure the correct depth and spacing, plant them, label the area and water them. Then we wait.

For months, very little is visible above the soil. The children experience patience before we even need to define it. They experience seasons, dormancy, temperature and plant development through something they have personally planted.

When the first shoots appear in spring, the scientific concepts suddenly have a memory attached to them. They are not only learning what happens to a bulb, they remember putting it into the ground themselves. I think knowledge becomes much more powerful when experience comes before explanation.

The children were tending the plot where they planted kale, which they need to water every day.

Stewardship as a community 

Students and all staff are meant to care for the land together, following the seasons and the real needs of the garden and forest. How do you see your role in bringing everyone into that shared responsibility, from the youngest children to the adults?

I see my role partly as a guide and partly as someone who helps create a rhythm around caring for the land.

There are meaningful tasks for every age. Younger children can water plants, collect leaves, recognize seasonal changes or help harvest. Older students can take more responsibility for planting, composting, maintaining beds, measuring, planning and documenting changes. Adults are important too, because children notice whether caring for a shared environment is something only children are asked to do or something the whole community genuinely values.

I would like stewardship to become natural rather than something we occasionally organize. The garden tells us what needs to happen: leaves fall, plants need water, vegetables become ready to harvest, something needs pruning, snow needs to be removed or compost needs attention. Following those real needs teaches responsibility in a very authentic way.

The children are harvesting the lettuce they planted themselves and have been caring for every day in our greenhouse.

Reverence and connection

Bloom hopes that a relationship with nature nurtures values like compassion, patience, a spirit of service and a sense of connection to others. Where have you experienced that in your own life, and how do you hope children will experience it here?

My own relationship with landscape architecture has taught me that working with nature requires patience. We can design and plan, but we cannot completely control a living system. Plants need time. Seasons have their own rhythm. Sometimes something we plant succeeds and sometimes it doesn’t, and we have to observe, understand why and try again.

I also see nature as a space where care becomes very concrete. When you plant something, you become responsible for something living beyond yourself. You water it even when there is no immediate reward. You protect it and wait for it to grow.

I hope children experience that here. Through caring for plants, animals, soil and shared spaces, they can gradually understand that their actions affect other living things. For me, compassion, patience and service do not necessarily need to be taught as abstract values — they can be practiced through small, repeated acts of care.

Children discovered how potatoes grow beneath the soil and took part in harvesting them themselves.

Looking ahead 

Imagine the students and the land a few years from now. What would make you feel the Earth school had truly grown under your care, and what challenges do you expect along the way?

A few years from now, I would not measure the success of the Earth school only by how beautiful or developed the landscape looks.

Of course, I would love to see a thriving greenhouse, productive garden beds, healthy trees and an increasingly rich and diverse landscape. But I would be even happier to see children walking outside and knowing what needs to be done without always waiting for an adult to tell them. I would like them to recognize plants they planted years earlier, understand the seasons of their garden, notice when something changes and feel that this landscape partly belongs to them because they helped care for it.

One of the challenges will be continuity. Nature works according to seasons, while school life has its own schedules, holidays and changing groups of students. Another challenge is allowing children genuine freedom to experiment while still giving the landscape enough structure and care to develop successfully.

If, after several years, we can look at the landscape and see both ecological growth and generations of children’s work within it, and if the students themselves feel responsible for protecting and continuing what others started, I would consider that a real success.

Children removed weeds, tidied the garden beds, and discussed the importance of regular maintenance in supporting healthy plant growth.

Frequently asked questions about outdoor learning at Bloom

What is the Bloom Earth programme?

Bloom Earth is the nature-based learning programme of Bloom School Sarajevo. Children care for the school's forest, orchard, garden and greenhouse every day and use them in lessons, measuring planting distances, observing germination and keeping a garden journal.

Does Bloom School Sarajevo offer outdoor learning?

Yes, outdoor learning is part of the daily routine at Bloom. Children water, plant and harvest their own crops, such as lettuce, kale and potatoes, and older students take on planning, composting and documenting the garden's changes.

How does Bloom connect nature with Montessori education?

The programme puts Montessori's Cosmic Education into practice, the idea that children should understand how everything in the world is connected. Working with soil, plants and seasons lets children experience those connections before they are explained in class.

How does nature-based learning support child development?

Caring for living things teaches patience, responsibility and care through repeated small acts rather than lectures. Because children plant and tend the garden themselves, scientific concepts such as seasons and plant growth stay attached to a real memory.