Our team worked closely with MIT planning and facilities staff to ensure that design and construction methods complied with their campus-wide standards. Large boulders positioned throughout the site help to tie together the garden’s different areas: stream bed, bioswales, perimeter plant beds and lawn paths. The dry stream bed creates a visual connection to the bioswales, with the basins reading as a terminus to the “stream.” An intricate planting mixture of trees, shrubs, perennials and bulbs was used throughout the park to ensure year-round interest, color and seasonal change. The site was regraded to not only allow the creation of the dry stream bed, but also to accentuate the contrast between the paths, stream and bioswales, adding interest and visual complexity to the relatively small park. The park features a dry stream bed using locally sourced boulders of sufficient size and scale to work in a large-scale, public setting with adjacent campus buildings. A lawn sloping down to bioswales overgrown with weedy vegetation served as the starting point. Photography: Justine Handīergstrom Garden, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)Ī new park was created to bring life to an underused space on campus, manage stormwater and showcase a large Picasso sculpture. Custom-blended planting soils were produced on site and utilities rerouted or rebuilt to accommodate the project and ensure long-term reliability of the site infrastructure.ĭesigner: Halvorson Design Inc. Extensive tree and site protection measures were implemented to ensure that valuable trees were not impacted during construction. The project required close work with designers and horticultural staff to ensure that the newly created gardens flourished in this very visible, public setting. The new wrought iron fence was fabricated using a custom-made casting to match the historic, Egyptian revival gates at the cemetery’s entrance. Within the lush tree and shrub plantings of the new garden, freestanding granite benches overlook a granite inscription wall and black granite reflecting pool. A 450-linear foot Canadian Mahogany granite wall, spaced with wrought iron panels, replaced a perimeter chain link fence to enclose the area and provide additional burial sites within a park setting. Unfortunately, this clinic and garden were demolished in 2006 to make way for a new residential development.ĭesigner: Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architecture / Photography: Steve Dunwellīirch Gardens reclaims a narrow, underutilized space along the east perimeter of this historic cemetery. A new pond was created and wet site-tolerant plantings established around it. Weathered boulders were chosen to create a stepping stone bridge across the water. Custom elements included a runnel and a granite fountain installed on the terrace. The site was planted extensively throughout. We graded the site to make the landforms for children’s play, then sodded and stabilized with tall grass mixes. A ribbon of water wove through a series of spaces that mirror the stages of a child’s recovery from trauma – a cave-like ravine for the security of home, a woodland for exploration, a mount for climbing, an island and pond for discovery, steep and shallow slopes for challenge, and a large glade for running and playing. Natural watercourses inspired this intensively inward-oriented and evocative landscape. ICAD: Institute for Child and Adolescent Development All of the work occurred within a active cemetery site, with numerous historic monuments sensitivity to site, existing trees and historic monuments was critical.ĭesigner: Julie Moir Messervy Design Studio / Photography: Justine Hand The project required new paths, a regrading of the entire site, and extensive specimen trees, shrubs and perennial plantings. Great care was needed to move the boulders from the quarry to their positions in the new garden without breaking or scaring the boulders, which were then positioned to create a natural feel of rock outcrops and allow for seating in some areas. Large excavators carefully loaded the boulders onto trailers for transport to the site in Cambridge. Weathered granite boulders were sourced from an old quarry site on Boston’s North Shore. Extensive grading was required to create landforms that blend into the landscape. New garden space and pathways serve as an expansion of the existing area known as Spruce Knoll.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |