Hello Sacredearth,

You did not mention what program or course of studies you're currently in. This is not meant to be critical, but I'm trying to figure out how this garden design fits with your project (thesis?) goals. What you have outlined could be the thesis for a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture student after 4 years of studying what you have mentioned.

Again, not to be critical, if at this stage you're trying to determine what a garden plan looks like in order to create one of your own, it may be best to focus your project on something which better suits your area of expertise. Not to mention what makes a particular garden successful is not easily gathered from a plan, but rather how the plan responds to the context - the climate, location, soils, history, physical surroundings, etc.

Reading over your inquiry again, it seems like you're looking to program a garden. To what degree do you intend on designing the garden? Are you simply setting parameters in which the garden will function (ex: suggesting suitable plants and approach), or are you actually creating a graphic, visual plan (which sets out the entire site, the plants and other features within it)? If you could clarify that, it would be a great help for others helping you.

I can suggest going through your library - a lot of books (especially those with a historical bent) often have plans (i.e. bird's eye view) of gardens with appropriate labelling etc.

- Audric

Thank you for your response!

I am happy to clarify the context for my project. I am a senior at College of the Atlantic in Maine pursuing a degree in Human Ecology with a focus on environmental education and botany. My senior project is meant to take the focus of my studies and translate them back to the northwest where I plan to return for graduate school. Basically I have spent 3+ years studying botany, gardens and education in the northeast and I am using my senior project as a way to translate those experiences back home (the northwest).

My senior project is only to develop the comprehensive plan - not to physically install the garden. With that said I am writing/designing the plan with the intention of some day actually building the garden.

And, yes I have considered that whatever I come up with needs to respond to the various conditions under which the garden will be created.

In my plan I will set parameters and create a graphic, visual plan.

Yes, I have considered the library. They have a plethora of resources on designing and creating gardens and all the things to consider.

What I'm looking for in my literature review are the documents that people/organizations/committees/etc create before actually installing a public (not personal) garden. These documents might be created in search of funding or for a community to review or for any other reason. I am particularly interested in gardens that focus on educating the public on the native flora of a region.

Thanks again!

If you haven't already come across Rachel and Stephen Kaplan I suggest you start there. No doubt they have a web-site (I haven't checked) but their book "With people in mind" may help you on your way.

I am also confused, SacredEarth, and I'm just an amateur.

A "garden" could be an acre or two or a thousand acres. It could be like one of our local gardens, which happens to feature both re-constituted prairie and the existing asset of old growth trees. It's located along a lakeshore. In such a case, the "plan" has to start with the existing locationÂnot something imposed from a distance, whether of time or space. Actual ground is involved and strongly influenced the paths, structures, parking and car access, etc.

It also functions as an education center, running ecology awareness courses for children and youth in the summer, hosting wildflower and foliage tours in their seasons, and raising money / educating about sugar production through several weekends of pancake breakfasts that use maple syrup from trees in the garden. That's just a bare minimum of their program.

I'm just guessing, but wouldn't a garden with an education mission be critically dependent on a very specific location?

Wellspring

Ok, I think I'm beginning to understand this. Plans are at the end. First, there is an inventory of what is at the site, and its relative importance. Then there is a discussion of where site management should be headed. The direct fallout from the discussion should be the beginning of a plan.

How much of a pest have you made of yourself at Acadia? Seriously, I'd start there.

Find a garden of the type you are talking about. Ask them what they did. There is also a magazine called "Public Garden" or "Public Gardening" or something like that, which is put out by some society, I can't remember which one, anyway, all the arboretums belong to it (sorry if arboretums is not the plural, I'm in a hurry). There are lots of articles in there discussing this issue.
The public gardens I've been involved with have plans that include the environment they are working with, and their goals. That is put down before the plan is attempted. Unless it is a small garden or a small educational center. Those gardens sometimes grow catch as catch can, depending on the whims of staff or volunteers. Often they just grow out of the head of someone who has good taste and a good sense of what can be done. Sometimes they are disasters that die or wash away. Often educational gardens fail because no plans are made for their long-term maintenance. That is true with garden programs as well.

I think a garden with an education mission doesn't necessarily have to be dependent on a specific location. A garden plan can be based off a vision or an idea and then a piece of land can be found that fits the vision. With that the vision and/or the location can be altered to work together.

If I have a vision to create a garden that displays the native flora of the north cascades couldn't I write the plan before finding the actual piece of land? Plants can be planted, soil can be altered, etc.

A good example and an answer to mad_gallica's question is the Wild Gardens of Acadia (WGA) in Acadia National Park. I was employed by the national park as the one full time intern/gardener/interpreter at the garden and fell in love with the idea of a garden serving the purpose of a "living field guide." So many of the thousands of visitors I talked to this summer were grateful to be able to come from hiking a mountain into a garden that answered all their plant questions. WGA was started with a vision, not a piece of land. It took years for them to "finish" their original plan for the garden and each year it is growing and changing. They worked with what the site came with in terms of plants and space, but they molded the land to fit their vision.

I want to model that same idea for the north cascades.

My original post was more concerned with trying to find suggestions for accessing garden plans. I am happy that it has turned into an interesting discussion on the purpose of garden plants, etc. I am still wondering, though if anyone knows of a garden with pre-installation documents? I know the WGA has them so I would guess others do too.

Why would you have, as a senior project, something in which you've had no training nor seen any examples nor have college faculty who can direct you to such examples ?

It feels like you are looking for a needle in a haystack on this forum. Why not seek information from the area of your focus, the North Cascades. This may be useless, but I did a quickie search and came up with some potential contacts for you; perhaps some are acquainted with a garden with pre-installation documents that will bear a more direct relationship to your project:

North Cascades National Park Complex

North Cascades Institute

Washington Native Plant Society

North Cascades National Park Native Plant Nursery

Washington Biodiversity Project: Biodiversity Education

Hello Sacredearth, I don't know if this will be of any help to you but when we visited Seattle a week ago and went to the Washington arboretum they just happened to be having a ribbon cutting ceremony for thier new section titled the Pacific Connections Garden. This included separate areas for plants from Cascadia, Chile, China, New Zealand and Australia.

I will include the following link which you can use to access a PDF plan of this garden that might be of use to you. This was a combined effort of the University of Washington, the city of Seattle, and the Arboretum foundation to pull off this great new edition to an already stunning arboretum. What a beautiful place, it rained on us the whole time and we just didn't even care.

Maria

Here is a link that might be useful: master plan

If your focus is on ecology, changing the site to fit the plan seems to be counterproductive to the original intent. The only exception would be rehabilitative or restorative work, in which you are reestablishing damaged lands.

My experience with project planning - which is limited, so take this with a grain of salt - is that very little is independent from the site itself. If you are trying to impose a finished plan on a site that did not inform the design, then you are making more work for yourself. You can have a vision and you can plan the planning without a site, but designing without one is like shooting in the dark.

- Audric

I'm not really sure what you are looking for, but what I understand is that you are seeking a landscape design plan (which is a top-down drawning of a to be landscaped layout) as opposed to a business plan.

If you want plan views of landscapes, then search on landscape architect or landscape conractor web-sites for examples. Another alternative would be to go the the local bookstore or HD and to buy a book that shows ready-made landscape design plans and order the one that appeals to you. This will provide an example of a plan, plant list, and direxctions.

This is a tough subject to learn in school, but once you get it, it is actually very simple. We tend to want to "create" a comprehensive plan, but the reality is that you "uncover" a comprehensive plan if you are actually doing it right.

You know the goal:
"... a native plant garden ...

You have objectives:
cater to -
the visitors of the national park,
local visitors,
schools
and children

Now all you have to do is figure out what activities support those objectives, what experiences you want to give those people through those activities, and the physical requirements (what needs to be built) in order to carry those out.

Once you list those out, you organize them - a bubble diagram for graphic plans, a prioritized outline for word plans. This can be for anything whether it is for a landscape plan, or a strategy for a stealing your friend's girlfriend. This is still in the idealized concept stage of the plan.

You now have to get in touch with reality. Inventory and analysis of the site, the people who will use it, and other limitations and opportunities such as budget or time frame.

The next thing is to blend the bubble diagram and/or prioritized outline with your inventory and analysis. That is going to show you whether or not all those requirements you figured out to meet your objectives can meet reality and how you might have to adjust those ideal relationships or your prioritized outline to meet those realities.

Then you write out (or draw) the result whether it is a site plan or a zoning ordinance or whatever.

You use your creativity to bring that final plan together, but you follow the process that essentially dictates the result. You exercise restraint and discipline in choosing what to value in your inventory and analysis. It is easy to have a result in mind and to ignore the things that will tell you to do something other than your preconceived notion.

If you can get preconceived notions out of your head, this is a piece of cake and something that can help you solve all sorts of problems using rational planning.