The Chicago Park District has tapped acclaimed architect Jeanne Gang to help it develop a long-range plan for the Museum Campus, the district will announce Wednesday.

The plan takes on added import because Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to give Star Wars creator George Lucas 17 acres just south of the lakefront campus for the filmmakers proposed museum of narrative art. On the peninsula just to the east, the district continues to transform Northerly Island, site of the former Meigs Field airport, into new parkland.

Citing those two projects, the district said in a news release that its the ideal time to define the vision and aspirations for this central space and economic engine.

The district and Gang will work with a recently-announced group of policy experts and lakefront stakeholders that Emanuel has charged with proposing transportation improvements for the campus, which includes the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Adler Planetarium.

Envisioned as a serene respite from city life, the campus often suffers traffic bottlenecks when there are Chicago Bears game or concerts at Soldier Field, which is just south of the Field Museum.

In July, Lucas announced that he had selected Chicago-based Gang to design the landscape around his museum as well as a pedestrian bridge linking the building to Northerly Island. Gang, winner of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant and the designer of the Lincoln Park Nature Boardwalk, is also part of the design team that has remade the peninsula with new hills and wetlands.

Beijing architect Ma Yansong is designing the Lucas museum building.

In its news release, the park district said that the long-range campus plan would focus on recreation, education, access and sustainability. The planning effort will also include interviews, panel discussions, workshops, surveys and online research.

The district has previously used long-range plans, which are known as framework plans to guide the growth of Burnham Park, Grant Park and Northerly Island.

The museum campus was created in the mid 1990s when the northbound lanes of Lake Shore Drive were shifted west of Soldier Field. That opened a continuous swath of parkland connecting the three museums.

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Architect Jeanne Gang to help Museum Campus planning

Pictured with youngsters and carers are chairman Con Attridge, left, with landscape architect Ollie May, centre, and Katherine Jackson, of Mott Macdonald, and Tiffany Bryant and Neil Wilson of Rose Road.

A sensory garden is to be created at Rose Road Association in Southampton.

First published in News

WORK has begun on transforming the garden at the Rose Road Association, in Southampton.

The Rose Road Associations Bradbury Centre in Aldermoor Road, which helps provide services to disabled children and young people in Hampshire, is having a sensory garden installed.

The renovation project is taking place in partnership with Mott MacDonald and the new garden will have new equipment, planting and new activities to enjoy.

Landscape artist from Mott MacDonald, Ollie May, said: Designing a sensory interactive experience for Rose Road has been a wonderful experience.

The design will enrich the lives and of the staff and children for years to come.

The grand opening of the garden is set to be on October 13.

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Garden set to be transformed at children's charity

GREENSBORO, N.C. Leaders of the Cone Health Healing Garden say they are ready to start construction on a two-acre $1.2 million project to help cancer patients.

Landscape Architect Sally Pagliai and her friend Mary, a cancer survivor, first started thinking about a healing garden for patients two years ago.

Both my father and my husband had cancer, Pagliai explained. I lost them both to cancer. The process of going through the whole chemotherapy treatment and being here [at Cone Health Cancer Center] an awful lot of hours, it just made sense for people to have an oasis when theyre going through a stressful time like that.

Pagliai said the staff at Wesley Long Hospital is warm and kind, and she wants employees and patients there to have a relaxing escape in nature.

The garden will include a wetland area, patios, boardwalk walkways and a community garden.

We will have raised brick beds that will be tall enough so wheelchairs can roll up to them and people can garden from their chairs.

The community has been incredibly receptive to the Healing Garden, which will be located in Greensboro not far from Friendly Center just outside the Cone Health Cancer Center.

Theyve raised $875,000 of the $1.2 million goal.

Because cancer touches all of us in some way, shape or form, people can relate to this, added Pagliai. Nature has a huge effect on helping people to heal. The whole idea of working here at this garden at this hospital has really helped me to heal also and to give back to such a wonderful community.

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Cone Health to construct healing garden for cancer patients

Henry at Hidden Falls*
The park dates back to 1887, when it was selected by Horace Cleveland, a nationally known landscape architect and park planner, as one of four major park sites for the City of Saint Paul. Except...

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Henry at Hidden Falls* - Video

in Kennett Square, Pa.

In 1906, the industrialist Pierre du Pont saved a private arboretum from destruction by buying it, but what began as an act of preservation soon morphed into a quest for display and opulence.

First came a formal flower garden walk. After he and his wife, Alice, went on a grand tour of Italy, he constructed an open-air theater inspired by the Villa Gori in Siena. The conservatory followed and, in time, came to house a winter garden, an array of potted exotic plants and a ballroom with one of the worlds largest private pipe organs.

Two separate and grandiose Italianate fountain gardens followed, along with other outdoor displays, and the original 200 acres grew to around 1,000.

After du Ponts death in 1954, Longwood Gardens became and remains a popular public attraction. More than one million visitors a year arrive to savor an experience that includes outdoor summer concerts where polychromatic fountains dance to music, and the shows end with fireworks.

This summer, the director and trustees of this institution unveiled what may be the most radical garden of all: an enormous hilly meadow that turns Longwoods gaze to the landscape of the surrounding Brandywine Valley.

More than three miles of mown paths and boardwalk wind through and around an 86-acre field of grasses and wildflowers. Fresh and green when completed in June, the Meadow Garden is now tall and daubed with patches of color the butter yellow of sunflowers, the muddy violet of the joe-pye weed, the intense purple of the ironweed. The meadow is full of bees and butterflies, and goldfinches seem to dance above it.

There is something about the meadow that reaches deep; it is vital and still, nostalgic and bleak like the memories of childhood and of dreams. It has reduced some visitors to tears, said Tom Brightman, an ecologist in charge of its management. Its the influence of the plants, the wind, the sky, the sun, the moon. Theres something underlying there, in the pysche. Perhaps that is why visitors have been arriving in unanticipated numbers to savor it.

But forget the idea of self-sustaining nature. The creation of this meadow was years in the making. Its cultivation will be endless.

The lead designer, landscape architect Jonathan Alderson, has imbued the experience with obvious cues that this is a place where wilderness was crafted. The grass paths may seem simply there, but they were laid out carefully to lead you through a journey where vistas would shift into focus and stop you in your tracks. Its central loop ensures a different way back. A peripheral path between the meadow and its woodland border offers orchestrated views and takes you over three bridges and past four pavilions.

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At Longwood Gardens, a new meadow for the ages

Amazing Waterfalls in Iceland - GoPro Drone
Master Landscape Architect, Guy Stivers of Stivers Associates, shares a highlight reel of various waterfalls throughout his recent Iceland trip, accompanied by his son Garrett Stivers. These...

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Amazing Waterfalls in Iceland - GoPro Drone - Video

Written by Herald Staff, plainview@antonnews.com Sunday, 07 September 2014 00:00

Michael Veracka, a Bethpage resident, has been promoted to associate professor at Farmingdale State College. Veracka teaches in the Department of Urban Horticulture and Design in the School of Business. He is also department chair.

An award-winning landscape architect, Veracka has worked across the country designing and creating gardens, from small urban spaces to large country gardens. He is the creator of the Sustainable Garden at Farmingdale State College, a new half-acre demonstration garden focusing on contemporary strategies and practices relating to responsible resource use; conservation and innovation; product development, and food production. In 2013, the State University of New York designated the garden as one of Six Big Ideas with Unlimited Potential.

I am thrilled to be able to position our horticulture students to have real-world opportunities within our curriculum to learn firsthand how to create, construct, and maintain natural and built systems that underscore Farmingdale State Colleges commitment to sustainable land practices, Veracka said. The involvement of our students prepares them to enter the work force where knowledge and skills of landscape sustainable practices are increasingly desirable.

At the root of Verackas work is a reverence for nature and a respect for the natural environment. His landscape gardening is particularly well known throughout New England. He is a graduate of Providence College (Rhode Island) and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design. He maintains a home in Providence.

The School of Business enrolls over 2,200 students in the Departments of Business, Computer Systems, Global Business Management, Visual Communications, Urban Horticulture and Design.

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Bethpage Resident Grows At Farmingdale

Its that time of year when the aspens are starting to turn gold, football is back on TV and hikers might want to wear neon orange when theyre out walking in the woods.

Now is not the best time to prance through the forest wearing a moose antler hat, said Mike Porras, regional spokesman with Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Hunting is one of the safest outdoor sports, and hunters are required to take an education course that stresses safety before they buy a license in Colorado, he said. Still, wearing more visible clothing during the season isnt a bad idea.

Archery season began Saturday, Aug. 30, for deer and elk and will expand on Saturday, Sept. 6, to include moose until the bow hunting season ends Sept. 28. The small game and waterfowl seasons opened Monday, Sept. 1, around the state as well, and muzzle-loading rifle season will run from Sept. 13 through Sept. 21.

Every hunting season has specific legal requirements, regulations and limits for different animal species and geographic areas, Porras said.

In Colorado, the overall trend in the number of hunters has been downward in recent years, he said. The average hunter is a man in his 50s or 60s, and fewer young people are following in the hunting tradition of their parents.

At the same time, the number of people interested in hunting has been going up nationally, and more young people are discovering archery thanks to the popularity of The Hunger Games movies in the last couple years, he said. Archery is cool again.

People are picking up hunting for some of the same reasons others who may not have grown up around agriculture become farmers or gardeners. They might not agree with industrial meat production and want to provide organic meat for their families in a way they feel is more ethical.

Patrick Hoppe, 46, of Summit Cove, was practicing with his compound bow at the Summit County archery range in Dillon Thursday and said he enjoys hunting because of the way it allows him to put food on the table for himself, his wife and their three young sons.

Its easy to eat beef or chicken or something like that because someone else kills it, but when you actually have to look that thing in the eye and pull the trigger, it makes you think twice about it, said Hoppe, a landscape architect who is hoping to harvest an elk with a friend on a local bow hunt this weekend.

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In Colorado, start of bow hunting season marks beginning of fall

WASHINGTON Architect Frank Gehry is revising the design for a memorial honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower near the National Mall because of objections that delayed the project.

On Thursday, Gehry's Los Angeles-based team proposed eliminating metal tapestries on the sides of the memorial square, along with some columns. The designers are trying to win approval from the National Capital Planning Commission. The federal panel rejected a design in April.

Three stainless steel tapestries depicting the Kansas landscape of Ike's boyhood home were part of Gehry's original design. With two removed, one long tapestry would remain as a backdrop for a memorial park. The site includes statues of Eisenhower as president and World War II general.

Eisenhower Memorial Commission spokeswoman Chris Kelley Cimko said the group hopes the changes help to move the project forward.

Even with the changes, some critics oppose the use of tapestries and columns in the memorial.

Justin Shubow of the National Civic Art Society said the Kansas landscape is unrecognizable in Gehry's design.

Eisenhower's family has opposed the large columns and the inclusion of metal tapestries, calling for a smaller-scale approach. The concept has received mixed reviews from civic art and planning experts who must approve the design for the project to move forward.

One concern has been preserving views of the nearby Capitol between the memorial's huge columns. The view corridor is wider under the revised design with fewer columns, the memorial group said.

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Architect revises design for Eisenhower Memorial

Published September 04, 2014

Architect Frank Gehry is revising the design for a memorial honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower near the National Mall after objections delayed the project.

On Thursday, Gehry's Los Angeles-based team will propose eliminating metal tapestries on the sides of the memorial square, along with some columns. The designers are trying to win approval from the National Capital Planning Commission. The federal panel rejected a previous design in April.

Three stainless steel tapestries depicting the Kansas landscape of Ike's boyhood home were part of Gehry's original design. With two removed, one long tapestry would remain as a backdrop for a memorial park. The site also includes statues of Eisenhower as president and World War II general.

Eisenhower Memorial Commission spokeswoman Chris Kelley Cimko said the group hopes the changes help move the project forward.

Eisenhower's family has opposed the large-scale columns and the inclusion of metal tapestries, calling instead for a smaller-scale approach. The concept has received mixed reviews from civic art and planning experts who must approve the design before the project can move forward.

One concern has been preserving views of the nearby U.S. Capitol between the memorial's massive columns. The view corridor is wider under the revised design with fewer columns, the memorial group said.

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Architect Frank Gehry revises design for Eisenhower Memorial in DC