57. Garden Park Community Design
I am proud to report that Rhyne Designs was given the Children’s Choice Award for pro-bono design work at the Garden Park Apartments, a facility that houses formerly homeless families. These apartments are part of a supportive housing program created by the Contra Costa Interfaith Housing non-profit. The facility, located in Pleasant Hill, includes two apartment buildings and a community center with numerous programs for the families, including some great after-school activities for the children.
The Garden Park Apartments already had several nice outdoor spaces, but there was one part of the grounds with only bare dirt and cracked asphalt. Rhyne Designs volunteered to create a landscape design to bring this space to life. The staff that runs the many programs for the children said they already had a lot of ideas for what to do with the space. Their first priority was re-paving the asphalt area so that they could play basketball and other sports. They also liked the idea of a lawn play space and planting along the edges to screen the old fencing. Although they already had a vegetable garden, they said they would enjoy having raised beds for flowers that can be cut and brought back to their apartments.
Rhyne Designs created a landscape design that incorporated all those ideas and presented it to the resident community for input, including sitting down with some of the children to get their ideas. It was really fun to work directly with the kids, they selected the specific plants for the garden from photos, and I was surprised at their plant knowledge!
From there we created drawings for installation and they began looking for sources of donated materials. This is when Al Beltran and his company Pacific Coast Landscape got involved, donating many things including construction work and plant materials. (They also received the Children’s Choice Award for their key contributions.) With his crew’s soil preparation work and delivery of plants, the project was ready for planting.
For the actual plant installation, a group of volunteers joined some of the parents and children that lived there to have a fun day in the dirt. I started off the process by marking the location for each plant, and the volunteers gathered on a nice Saturday last Fall to get the plants in the ground. It was great to have residents and kids involved in the garden installation, the perfect way to connect people to their environment and give them pride in their homes!
Although Rhyne Designs typically works on large residential gardens, we feel it is important to contribute to the less fortunate in the community. We know that good landscape design is important for everyone, especially when it gives children a chance to interact with nature. It was a real pleasure to be able to contribute our landscape design services to the fantastic work that Contra Costa Interfaith Housing is doing!
References:
Contra Costa Interfaith Housing web site: https://ccinterfaithhousing.org/
Pacific Coast Landscape Management, Inc. : http://www.pacificcoastlandscape.net/