Rooftop Healing Garden

Article by Moira Sheridan for the News Journal

At some point near the end of the construction design process for the expansion of the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital, planners realized something was amiss.

A long, narrow strip between the old and new buildings would mean patients would look out on a flat, black rooftop spanning the two sections. Creating a more inspiring view, as it happened, was something only a garden could do.

"This needed to be a healing place; it's not a playground or a place to be super loud. It's really a meditative garden," says Kay Holbrook, an associate administrator at Nemours who led the expansion project. "We wanted to keep spirits up and bring nature in."

To do that, they consulted with families, staff members and architects about the best way to adapt the space. Rodney Robinson Landscape Architects, a Delaware firm with experience designing not only public and private spaces, but also those related to health care and healing, was tapped to take on the challenge.

The recently completed Japanese-style garden marries the space beautifully, allowing a peaceful view and a private getaway for patients, families and staff.

Unusual in that it is a garden within the hospital, located off the pediatric intensive care unit on the second floor, it beckons through every glass door and window. Two entrances allow access for patients and families, as well as hospital staff and visitors. Patients' rooms on the second floor look directly out, while those on upper floors look down from above.

Some were initially skeptical about the plan, recalls Geoff Anderson, an associate with Rodney Robinson Landscape Architects.

"You're creating a garden where there's no soil, no water and very little sun?" he remembers one of the planners asking. Working between two buildings meant adapting to the confined space and low light levels created by both exterior walls, a space made trickier by its second-floor location.

The pathway is a pre-cast, concrete paving system on pedestals, and rocks from the construction process were placed amid the planting beds. An irrigation system, which was extensively tested for soundness, ties into the drainage system.

From the bubbling water feature at one end to the three-piece sculptural ceramic wall at the other runs a serpentine path with alcoves veering off at intervals.

"Because one of the main concerns for the staff was to create privacy, we started using vegetation to create veils between 'rooms,'" says Anderson.

In order to maintain privacy, yet avoid creating an opaque green wall that would obstruct views, they focused on shrubs that will eventually grow up to manageable heights. The path has a lovely, swooping flow, and even though the plantings are young, it's easy to imagine abundant greenery before too long.

Flowering trees like dogwood, redbud and magnolia will enliven the garden in spring, but color isn't meant to be the focus. A calmer, green theme prevails, using masses of ferns, hostas and Solomon's seal as groundcovers for the shady areas.

Evergreen woody plants such as rhododendron, cherry laurel, yew and aucuba will provide winter interest, along with nighttime lighting. Tactile elements appear in the various tree barks, particularly Stewartias with their mottling and paperbark maples with their curling, cinnamon-colored bark. Even the sculpted wall invites visitors to touch its rolling surface.

A millstone fountain makes a soft noise, and the borrowed view of the mansion grounds beyond with their spectacular sunsets promise a healthy start to this unique garden.

Please visit Rodney Robinson Landscape Architects, Inc. on our website, www.rrla.com.

1812 Memorial Park renovation complete

From the Lewes Chamber of Commerce:

1812 Memorial Park was a defense battery during the War of 1812 and the site is marked by a granite monument placed by the National Society, U.S. Daughters of 1812. Four large guns on the upper lumps were contributed by the government. Between them is a small gun believed taken from a pirate vessel abandoned in the creek. A three- inch naval gun on the lower terrace, used during World War 1, was placed by the American Legion in 1930.

Please visit Rodney Robinson Landscape Architects, Inc. on our website, www.rrla.com.

Garden makeover underway at Woodburn

From delawareonline.com:

No one is certain what the grounds of Woodburn, the governor’s house, looked like in 18th century Delaware.

Charles Hillyard III, who built the Georgian-style mansion in 1798, left no detailed seed lists nor did his neighbor to the east, John Dickinson. And old photographs of the property show little of the grounds.

But for first lady Carla Markell, the revival of the gardens at Woodburn isn’t a restoration. Instead, it’s all about creating a public space that is cost-effective, low-maintenance and with a classical, long standing feel to it that matches the period of the house.

“I was very sensitive about making any changes about anything” with either the building or the grounds at Woodburn, she said. “I wanted to make sure we did it right.”

So Markell called on experts every step of the way as she worked first on the home interior and now on the gardens.

With the gardens, she started with Paul Redman, director at Longwood Gardens.

Redman recommended she talk to Rodney Robinson, a Wilmington-based landscape architect.

Then, Markell decided to contact former first lady Elise duPont, whose garden Markell said she admires, and she also recommended Robinson. So on a hot day during the summer, Markell and Robinson met on the grounds of Woodburn. 

“He said: ‘Oh my, this is a garden in distress,’” Markell recalled. A fountain on the grounds was more a Victorian style than 18th century, the English boxwood shrubs were dying and a lift elevator that provided access for people with disabilities was unsightly. And there was no shade on a hot summer day. 

Robinson came up with a vision for Woodburn that kept the collection of governors’ trees in place, salvaged materials like flagstone for new uses and created a new [accessible] ramp with landscaping. Some of the boxwood that was still healthy was saved and a new, low fence was added to link Woodburn with the adjoining state building Hall House so the two buildings form one campus. 

“It brings the whole property together,” Markell said.

The garden and grounds work is a public-private partnership that includes a matching $100,000 grant from the Longwood Foundation and other private gifts, she said.

“Mrs. Markell asked me to look at the entire landscape,” Robinson said. “There’s quite a nice collection of trees and we knew that we had to work with them.”

Rather than remove everything, Robinson said, “we did a lot of editing.”

“We wanted the plantings to be simple and elegant and not over-planted,” he said. In addition, the main driveway has been moved because it was crowding the house.

Much of the entrance, fencing and site work has already been completed. But over the next few months, two new gardens and additional landscaping will emerge on the grounds. Much of the work is expected to be complete by spring.

Robinson said the old garden was a formal rose garden. The problem, he said, is that roses tend to be high maintenance. In addition, many of the older boxwood plants were in poor condition. A shallow pool in the garden was leaking.

“We took all of that out,” he said.

Two new features will replace the old formal garden.

A traditional, late colonial style “parterre” garden with four equal quadrants will be planted. Four flowering crabapple trees will anchor each of the quadrants and they will be surrounded by flowering perennials, said Ken Darsney, the state horticulturalist for the Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs.

ASLA Green Roof: A Case Study

Click through (image above) to check out a virtual tour of the demonstration green roof atop the American Society of Landscape Architects headquarters in Washington, D.C.

From greenroofs.org: 

The ASLA headquarters green roof was undertaken to demonstrate the environmental and aesthetic benefits of green roofs and to encourage more widespread use of green roofs. A retrofit project, the green roof replaced the original membrane roof on the [headquarters] building. One of the signature elements of the design is the use of two 25’-wide elevated “waves” formed by a structural skeleton filled with rigid insulation and covered with a green roof system. The waves rise to 6’2” and 5’4” above the walking surface, which positions flowering plants at eye level and creates an intimate, semi-enclosed space.

PennDesign Fall 2013 Lecture Schedule Announced

Snakes in the park

One RRLA, Inc. associate recently had a close encounter with these two Northern Copperheads (pictured above) during a lunchtime walk with her Miniature Schnauzer in Alapocas Run State Park. The low areas near the Brandywine River in Alapocas Woods are a known habitat for copperheads, one of only two species of venomous snakes native to Delaware.

We notified the Parks Department about the snake sighting (a third was spotted lounging in the cracks of a low boulder wall near the foot path). Visitors to the park, especially those with small children and dogs, are encouraged to be aware and use caution, particularly during the snakes' mating seasons in the spring and fall.