Saskatoon volunteers revitalize old school tennis court into green space

Students and volunteers pose in front of Walter Murray Collegiate while transforming the old tennis court on June 5, 2022. (Miriam Valdes-Carletti/CTV Saskatoon)

The tennis court at Walter Murray Collegiate that hasn’t been used in 10 years will soon have a fresh new look.

Depave Paradise with the Saskatchewan Environmental Society is helping to transform the school's obsolete tennis court into a green space that will be filled with hundreds of flowers, fruit trees, bushes and vegetables.

Kristine Levesque, a teacher at Walter Murray Collegiate, says the Saskatchewan Environmental Society reached out to her last August about finding an unused concrete space to transform.

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“As soon as I saw that I thought ‘wow, we have a huge tennis court that hasn’t been used in over 10 years,’ … might as well turn it into something useful,” Levesque said.

Around 90 volunteers, including students from the school, were on hand Sunday to help move dirt around and plant more than 400 additions.

Levesque says the space will also give students a new area for learning as an outdoor classroom. The fruits and vegetables will be incorporated into the school’s nutrition program.

“My Grade 9 class was actually involved in part of the planning of the layout here so they got to give some of their ideas and what they want to see,” she said.

“They get to feel they’re a part of this and they’ve accomplished something.”

Zoe Arnold with the Saskatchewan Environmental Society says the goal of the organization is to find unused asphalt spaces and turn them into green spaces.

“Asphalt is an impervious surface which means that water just slides off the surface, so if we can replace it with plants we can allow the water to infiltrate the ground which is really helpful for things like flooding,” Arnold told CTV News.

The garden has been designed with the ecoregions of Saskatchewan in mind to have different areas to represent grasslands and boreal forests.