A warm spring morning at York Correctional Institution brought together UConn landscape architecture students, correctional officers, incarcerated women, faculty members, and volunteers for an unusual kind of classroom experience. Armed with shovels and native plants, the group worked to transform portions of Connecticut’s only state prison for women, putting months of planning and design into practice.

“Landscape architecture is not just about creating attractive spaces. It’s about understanding how people experience their environments and designing places that support the way they live, work, and interact.”
— Sohyun Park, associate professor of landscape architecture

The project is part of a broader partnership between UConn’s Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy in the School of Public Policy, the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, and the Connecticut Department of Correction. Its roots can be traced in part to IMRP’s educational international immersion experiences through the Institute’s International Justice Exchange and collaboration with Amend out of UCSF. The collaboration creates opportunities for Connecticut delegations to visit correctional facilities in Norway and other European countries where the  approach to incarceration centers on rehabilitation, normalization, and the health and well-being of both incarcerated people and staff. Those travel experiences – including the most recent in May of 2026 – demonstrates how the physical environment, including access to plants, gardens, and thoughtfully designed spaces, can shape the way people experience life and work inside a correctional facility.

“They are still prisons, but when you see people in those facilities, the immediate feeling you have is not bleak or depressing. It’s hopeful.”
— Andrew Clark, director, UConn Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy

Back in Connecticut, those lessons have helped inform a broader effort to rethink correctional environments. For the landscape architecture students, the York project offered an opportunity rarely available in the classroom: following a design from site analysis and community input through implementation, while adapting to the practical realities of a secure correctional environment. Along the way, they gained a firsthand understanding of the people and spaces behind prison walls and saw how even small changes can contribute to a more welcoming and humane environment.

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Read the full story from UConn Today to learn more about how the IMRP, UConn students and faculty, and the Connecticut Department of Correction are working together to rethink correctional spaces in Connecticut.