News
Photo by Vera Comploj
The Robert W. Wilson Overlook at Brooklyn Botanical Garden has received an Honor Award from the Boston Society of Landscape Architects and a Merit Award from the Perennial Plant Association.
Weiss / Manfredi was the Overlook’s lead designer; Wolf Landscape Architecture designed its plantings, and SiteWorks LLC was the landscape architect of record.
Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts, Rendering by A\Z Landscape Architecture
Colby College has broken ground on the largest academic building in its history, the 74,000 square foot Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts. The new building will be a hub of student activity, hosting performance areas and studios for music, theater, dance, and film.
Wolf Landscape Architecture’s design will surround the building with outdoor spaces for teaching, performance, and informal gathering. The new spaces will feature meadows, a rain garden, and diverse plant species native to central Maine, helping to connect the building not only to its campus surroundings but to Colby’s natural setting.
Wolf Landscape Architecture teamed with architects William Rawn Associates and civil engineers VHB to make the Gordon Center a sustainable and engaging setting for Colby’s vibrant programs in the performing arts.
At today’s botanical gardens, nature isn’t necessarily “civilized, clipped, and classified,“ writes James S. Russell in The New York Times. “The Brooklyn Botanic Garden hasn’t discarded taxonomic collecting or spectacular floral displays but has steadily brought more of an ecological ethos to its intimate 52 acres. The new plant groupings are comparatively disorderly, host insects and birds, and change constantly with flowers, seed pods, and leaf colors constantly popping and fading.”
The new ethos, he writes, is evident in the “shaggy clouds of vegetation” at the head of the Garden’s Cherry Esplanade, where “a long neglected 1.25-acre slope has become the Robert W. Wilson Overlook. It now hosts a sinuous path lined by white concrete retaining walls. It zigzags up amid a maturing meadow in what look like calligraphic brush strokes.”
On the Overlook’s slopes, grasses and perennials from across North America are assembled based on the layered structure of a meadow, combining their diverse survival strategies to create a resilient plant community.
“Textures and color are subtly enhanced in this meadow,” Russell writes. “Tiny intertwined flowers, leaves and stems hug the soil, including wild strawberries flopping over the top of retaining walls. Mr. Wolf likened the planting idea to ‘very fine threads woven together,’ creating, in effect, small ecological habitats. ‘Even in winter there is an architecture of interlocking plants stems and seedpods,’ he said.”
The Overlook was designed by WEISS / MANFREDI Architecture / Landscape / Urbanism. Wolf Landscape Architecture designed its plantings, which introduce over 40,000 new trees, shrubs, grasses, cacti, and perennials into the Garden’s collection. The project has also been featured in Architectural Digest and New York Magazine.
Upper photo by Brooklyn Botanic Garden; lower photo by Vera Comploj.
Our renovation of the town common in Manchester-by-the-Sea is nearly complete.
The new landscape provides a welcoming stopping place for residents and visitors, complements the town’s historic structures, and improves universal access to the town hall. By replacing asphalt with permeable pavers and reducing the total paved area, it also helps protect the waters of Sawmill Creek and Manchester Harbor.
A new garden opened today at Garden in the Woods, the 45-acre home of the Native Plant Trust and one of New England’s outstanding public gardens. The Curtis Cottage Garden honors the legacy of Will Curtis and Dick Stiles, the garden’s creators, by transforming the foundations of their cottage into a domestically scaled garden where visitors can spend time with native plants.
Wolf Landscape Architecture designed the garden in collaboration with the Trust’s expert staff, laying out its paths, walls, and plantings. The garden’s plants will extend the surrounding Woodland Garden’s season of bloom late into the summer. Even in its first spring, the Curtis Cottage Garden provides a quiet stopping place and a foreground to dramatic woodland views.
This spring, new plantings are reinvigorating the landscape around Boston’s historic Arlington Street Church. The predominantly native plantings include Eastern Beebalm (Monarda bradburiana), shown here.
WEISS/MANFREDI’s design for the Overlook introduces an elegant switchback pathway with sculptural retaining walls, enhancing circulation in one of the Garden’s most visited areas.
On November 6, Brooklyn Botanic Garden opened the Robert W. Wilson Overlook, designed by WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism. Wolf Landscape Architecture designed the Overlook’s plantings, which introduce over 40,000 plants into the Garden’s collection.
Taking design cues from the adjacent Diane H. and Joseph S. Steinberg Visitor Center — another project designed by WEISS/MANFREDI and the winner of over 20 design awards — the Overlook has been reimagined, reconstructed, and replanted in its entirety to create an immersive landscape that brings new life to one of BBG’s most extraordinary vistas.
Together with the Visitor Center’s living roof and the Native Flora Garden, the Overlook completes a nearly continuous ribbon of meadow-inspired plantings, each part a distinct response to its site and to the Garden’s mission. Gathering grasses and perennials from across North America, it combines their diverse survival strategies to form a robust, resilient ecosystem that will evolve over time, inviting a diversity of insect life while building healthy soils.
The Overlook’s striking visual planes and ever-evolving landscape will add to the Garden’s inherent drama through four seasons.
New York Magazine covered the opening.
The Overlook, foreground, takes design cues from the Garden’s visitor center, background, also designed by WEISS/MANFREDI.
At the fall Town Meeting, citizens of Manchester-by-the-Sea approved plans to make the Town Common greener and more welcoming. The design by Wolf Landscape Architecture includes realigned walks, ADA-responsive access to the Town Hall’s front door, new benches and lighting, and native shade trees. The landscape’s restoration will be complete in 2020.
Upcoming lectures by Toby Wolf include:
Horticulture Director’s Talk
Native Plant Trust, December 7 2017
New Directions in the American Landscape
Morris Arboretum, University of Pennsylvania, January 12 2018
Connecticut College Arboretum, January 19 2018
Annual Conference
Ecological Landscape Alliance, March 8 2018
Know when to mow? Toby Wolf and Normand Helie have coauthored a short article for the Friends of the Public Garden describing how to manage urban lawns for resilience in drought.
On January 13, the Ecological Landscape Alliance and Wellesley College will present “Large Scale Landscapes: Exploring Ecological Options.” During the day-long symposium, speakers representing colleges and universities, public gardens, conservation organizations, and public-private partnerships will explore innovations in the design and management of new and historic landscapes whose scale presents special challenges and opportunities.
Wolf Landscape Architecture is proud to be a sponsor of this important and timely event.
In today's Boston Globe, Anthony Flint asks whether, ten years after its completion, the Big Dig has delivered on its promises. In his candid assessment, he saves his highest praise for the Big Dig's creation of the Rose Kennedy Greenway:
“The greatest success of the Big Dig is this: It established a new landscape for the city to flourish around. Buildings once overlooking a clogged highway now have a beautiful park at their front door. Buildings that had little value are now suddenly on a gold coast."
We've had the privilege of working on the Big Dig and the Greenway for nearly twenty years. Under various affiliations, Toby Wolf designed the Greenway’s Fort Point Channel Parks, Urban Arboretum, and Dewey Square Park, and over a mile of its streetscapes. Even when the project ended, his work continued, through Wolf Landscape Architecture's recent designs for new plantings on behalf of the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy. Ten years on, thanks to their innovative management, the Greenway continues to deliver.
Work is complete on the third phase of the renovation of the Boylston Street Border in Boston's Public Garden. Three quarters of the border's 900-foot length now benefits from improved drainage, reinvigorated plantings, and inviting places to sit.
The project's phased implementation has allowed our team to improve each year on the work that came before. This year we fine-tuned the planting palette, adjusted the soil mix, revised the transplant specifications, improved the way benches are installed, and eased curb installation by providing the granite quarry with full-size templates. These changes helped achieve an improved outcome at no additional cost.
Construction of Phase 4 will begin in September 2016. To see project updates, to become a member, or to learn how to sponsor a bench or a tree, please visit the Friends of the Public Garden online.
On April 13, Toby Wolf will join Cornell's University Planner Leslie Schill, University Landscape Architect David Cutter, and lecturer Michele Palmer to present Cornell's green infrastructure initiatives at the North Atlantic Regional Conference of the Society for College and University Planning.
We hope you'll join us in Providence for our panel "Site, Campus, Watershed: Integrating Green Infrastructure in Sustainability Planning." Learn more about SCUP and its regional conference here.
A new study published by the Landscape Architecture Foundation affirms key environmental and educational impacts of the Bioswale at Cornell Plantations in Ithaca, New York.
Photo by Mujahid Powell
Built in concert with the Nevin Welcome Center and located at its visitor parking lot, the Bioswale greets visitors to Cornell's botanical garden with a bold display of plants—and it soaks up stormwater. Unlike conventional landscapes, which put runoff into drains and pipes, high-performance landscapes like the Bioswale help to restore natural water cycles using plants and soils. They cleanse and cool the runoff that flows from roofs and pavement, recharging local aquifers and protecting natural waterways from pollution, flooding, and erosion.
In the LAF study, Cornell researchers Michele Palmer and Mujahid Powell found that the bioswale is reducing runoff by 31% (78,000 gallons annually), cutting peak flows in major storms by 81%, improving soil health, increasing biodiversity, and galvanizing support for green infrastructure among the fifty thousand people who visit Cornell Plantations each year.
Toby Wolf authored the Botanical Garden's master plan and served as landscape architect for the Welcome Center and Bioswale while a Senior Associate at Halvorson Design Partnership, working in collaboration with landscape designer Irene Lekstutis, architects Baird Sampson Neuert, and civil engineers TG Miller.
The Welcome Center and the Bioswale have earned LEED Gold certification, and the Bioswale has been recognized by the Society for College and University Planning with its Honor Award for Excellence in Landscape Architecture. Dr. Christopher Dunn, the E. N. Wilds director of Cornell Plantations, has called the Bioswale "one of the premier gardens of its kind, inspiring other botanic gardens to create similar landscapes."
Find out more about the LAF study here, and about Cornell Plantations' Bioswale here.
Photo by Chris Kitchen
Schematic designs are complete for a pop-up park at the future site of Constellation Center in Cambridge's Kendall Square.
The new public space will bring lawns, seating, and color to the fast-growing neighborhood, and will provide Pablo Eduardo's sculpture Las Furias with a new setting of rolling landforms, reclaimed granite, and native plants.
On November 12, the Trustees of Reservations hosted the Ecological Landscape Alliance's annual Season's End Summit at Castle Hill on the Crane Estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts. The program went from strength to strength, with lectures by Tom Benjamin, Laura Kuhn, Ann Kearsley, and Lucinda Brockway as well as a panel discussion with Theresa Sprague, Miles Connors, and Michele Grzenda.
But there's nothing like seeing the real thing. So after lunch, while the morning's fog burned off, the Trustees' Operations Manager Bob Murray led a tour of Castle Hill's landscape and showed us how sustainable design is supporting historic restoration. Find out more about the Trustees' work at Castle Hill here.
The second phase of our renovation of the Boylston Street Border in Boston's Public Garden is nearly complete. Working with landscape architect Deb Howe, arborist Norm Helie, and civil engineer John Cusack, we have moved and planted trees and shrubs, improved drainage, and made space for two more benches. In the weeks ahead we'll add more perennials and bulbs, and the last tree will be planted early next spring.
The multi-year rejuvenation of the entire 900 foot length of the the Border is a project of the Friends of the Public Garden, who have posted a project update here. The Friends work in partnership with Boston's Parks Department to care for the Garden, the Common, and the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, and membership is open to all.