This study explored how three schools went beyond perceived barriers to establish and integrate naturalized pond environments into their educational settings. A case study of Anson Taylor Public School, SATEC Porter Collegiate Institute and Kawartha Heights Public School examined the impact of the planning, designing, implementing and maintenance of these environments had on the school community. The results from a critical analysis of the literature, focused interviews, pond initiative profile documents and photo history of the projects was analyzed and used to develop a series of principles, phases and associated tasks for a participatory design process for establishing ponds on school grounds. The outcome of this study is discussed in terms of the need for diverse natural play/learning environments on school grounds and a new approach to designing aquatic environments to improve the success rate of maintaining and sustaining ponds as diverse learning environments for school communities.