Green Corridor » gardens

June 19th, 2010, 6:55 pm

Six weeks seems so long, but not when the time is short. From assisting a local community garden, to exploring urban gardens, vertical farming, container gardens, and finally signage, the Urban Agriculture group took quite the ride to the end of the six week long Green Corridor course. Our project ideas were ever changing and growing. This week concluded the chaos, with a presentation of our final piece; the signage. The journey of the signage was not easy either. From traditional poster-style-bulletin-boards, to banners, to stencil and lights, the signage evolved to the cedar post bird houses unit that it is now. Through it, we hope to achieve an artistic and aesthetic appeal, as well as to draw our audience to the ‘urban arts community’ – our temporary name for the site located between the ecohouses on California Ave.

The signage was originally modelled with 5 posts of differing heights to represent a hand, on top of which text and items were to be placed. From here the birdhouses concept was borrowed towards the new and final signage. The choice of using no text, but rather birdhouses was to turn heads twice, and have a symbolic meaning. Through the clustering of the birdhouses on the post, we hoped to achieve our initial goal of representing community. The presence of local birds, we hoped would make the piece interesting, eye-catching, and representative of how we felt of the land, Green Corridor, and its surrounding environment.

At the conclusion of our six weeks with Green Corridor, the Urban Agriculture group shared their experiences of frustration, satisfaction, and accomplishment. We built our project on the basis that it would be functional, with or without our presence. We hope for future students of Green Corridor to build upon (and improve) what we have initiated, allowing for this project to be an inspiration to the community for years to come.
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This just in…Wildflower group decides on landscape design!

June 17th, 2010, 1:08 am

The design in the red square is our final choice

The Wildflower Group’s next phase involved choosing a final landscape design. We had narrowed down our choices to 3 types of designs. The first design option was something simple and easy-a square foot garden (square shaped garden beds). The pros of this design are that it is easy to build, access and maintain. The cons are that aesthetically, it’s a little boring. The second design option involved something a little more complicated design wise. This option included a slightly more detailed design with curves or an outline of a symbol. The same pros and cons applied as the first option. Lastly, our third design option was a much more detailed landscape design that incorporates weaving pathways within the garden. The pros to this design are that aesthetically the design is exciting, fun and the addition of pathways invites pedestrians to come on in and explore. The cons to this design option are that to build it, will add considerable more work for our team in the plotting and upkeep. In the end we compromised. Our final choice for the garden combined elements of our first design- squarefoot gardening- and our third design- an elaborate design. The official design is the one with the red square.
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