Ruth Parnall, co-founder of Learning by the Yard, is a registered landscape architect  and a credentialed botanist.  She is a specialist in native landscape restoration and is a founding member of the MA Native Plants Committee.  She has served her town since 1987 on conservation, open space, zoning, and master plan committees.

A studio teacher and mentor to students at the Conway School of Landscape Design, Ruth also writes, lectures, and leads workshops on native plants and ecological design.  She is currently the consulting landscape curator at Manitoga/The Russel Wright Design Center, a National Historic Landmark in Garrison, NY.

Ginny Sullivan is an early childhood educator with advanced degrees in both ecological landscape design and curriculum development. She is co-author, with Wendy Banning of Lens on Outdoor Learning (Redleaf Press 2010) Ginny has taught young children, trained teachers, taught parent education, and run schools in both New England and California. She has served as an elected member of the Northampton School Committee, and both founded and chaired the Northampton Education Foundation. She is a trustee of the Conway School of Landscape Design and a member of the Professional Development Committee of the North Carolina Outdoor Learning Environment Alliance.

Ginny has designed children’s environments, preschool through high school, and is particularly interested in the natural world as a context for children’s language and cognitive development. Her projects include The Early Learning Image Gallery, a web-based learning tool for educators developed with the support of the North Carolina Association for the Education of Young Children (NCaeyc). This project uses detailed images paired with children’s dialogue to demonstrate how children’s learning in the outdoors aligns with early learning standards.