Community Design Center Designs Award-Winning Tree Garden

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The University of Arkansas Community Design Center has won national recognition for designing a living museum where visitors can touch, lean on, even climb the artwork. What’s on display? Trees.

A great lawn bordered by a promenade of stately oaks and a wildflower meadow wrapped by maples that flame into fall color are some of the outdoor galleries designed to help visitors see — and remember — the trees from the forest.

“We liken the trees to paintings in a museum,” said Stephen Luoni, director of UACDC, an outreach program of the UA School of Architecture. “By arranging them in outdoor galleries, we help visitors to appreciate and remember their particular characteristics.”

The award-winning garden will transform an unpromising site. Originally a penal colony farm, the parcel is carved with hedgerows and drainage ditches. New buildings and changes to topography were ruled out due to the site’s location in a riparian floodplain. The one mandate from the client, County Judge Buddy Villines, was to help people learn and remember individual species of trees.

“It’s really about place making,” Luoni said. “What I like about these outdoor rooms is that they don’t prefigure how visitors will move through the site. You could go here 100 times and have a different experience each time.”

Each room will have a distinct character that celebrates the passing seasons. The Bosque Plaza, for example, was inspired by the classic Asian rock garden, with a surface of fine granulated rock accented by stands of flowering trees that will bloom into color in spring and fall. Under-story, mid-story and upper-story trees are arranged “like a bouquet, with colors arranged to maximize their floral effects,” Luoni said. Other rooms include the Tupelo Foyer, the Great Lawn, the Red Room, and the Fibonacci Garden, a court garden inspired by the proportioning system of the 12^th century Italian mathematician. These geometrically defined garden rooms emerge from a less formal forested cluster that contains drainage channels, bicycle paths and vegetated windbreaks.

To realize the scheme, UACDC worked closely with Patty Erwin, an Urban Forestry coordinator with the Arkansas Forestry Commission, and Laurie Fields, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the UA School of Architecture.

Work has already started on the Garden of Trees. This summer crews are developing accessible gravel trails that meet guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The planting of 4,000 saplings will begin this fall.

“We’re committed, and we’re going to make it happen,” said Buddy Villines, the county judge and chief executive officer for Pulaski County. Villines plans to establish a private foundation that will realize the plan over time and oversee ongoing maintenance.

“How many people have an opportunity to see a forest grow up?” Villines asked recently. “I won’t live to see this mature, but my children and their children will. This is a real unique opportunity for our community.”

Founded in 1995, the University of Arkansas Community Design Center has provided design and planning services to more than 30 communities across Arkansas. The center’s planning has helped Arkansas communities and organizations secure nearly $62 million in grant funding to enact suggested improvements. In addition to revitalizing historic downtowns, the center addresses new challenges in affordable housing, urban sprawl, environmental planning, and management of regional growth or decline. The design center also offers hands-on civic design experience to students who work under the direction of design professionals.

To access sample project images, visit the UACDC Web site at http://uacdc.uark.edu/.  For more information on the ASLA award, visit http://www.asla.org/.

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