A worldwide exemplar for playgrounds positioned in flood-zone communities, Playscape features five unique ecology zones, each and every fostering cultural and environmental consciousness via sustainable, biodiverse and drinking water-mindful layout.
The Battery Conservancy and NYC Parks have
opened the highly predicted, 1.5-acre Battery
Playscape — featuring an
remarkable array of play selections for small children of all ages and capabilities.
Battery Playscape was imagined publish-Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and serves as a
worldwide exemplar for playgrounds situated in flood zone areas.
The park capabilities 5 ecological zones, every single inspired by topography produced by
h2o shaping the land:
Bluff has five granite slides
Riverbed and Marsh characteristic salt-tolerant gardens, elevated tree
houses, and sand/h2o participate in
Meadow options a biodiverse array of conifers, indigenous shrubs, grasses
and blooming perennials and
Dune characteristics an undulating climbing structure and ShowBox — the
initial improv/puppet theater in a New York Metropolis playground.
Warrie Price tag, president and founder of The Battery Conservancy, says the
Playscape was created to “immerse small children into the purely natural wonders fashioned by
plants, trees, sand, and historic stone when creating an understanding of
accommodating local climate.”
The Battery Conservancy initiated Playscape’s style submit-Sandy, when The
Battery survived the total power of the 15-foot storm surge. Accounting for
sea-level increase grew to become a focal level of the style procedure, and Playscape
succeeds in transforming local weather issues into resourceful enjoy and discovering
prospects.
Designed by BKSK Architects and Starr Whitehouse
Landscape Architects and Planners with custom
fabrication by Maglin, the new Playscape triples the
size of the former Battery playground. The existing space accounts for the
growing number of Lower Manhattan households, growing elementary educational institutions and
maximize in visitation by small children from all 5 boroughs — as properly as site visitors
to New York City.
“The Playscape will provide as a product for imaginative engage in and resilient style and design
for years to arrive. From drinking water-absorbent bioswales to a magnificent puppet theater,
this playground is truly distinct from any other in New York Town,” stated NYC
Parks Commissioner Gabrielle Fialkoff. “As the ultimate piece of The Battery
Master Strategy, this 1.5-acre playground completes the a long time-lengthy procedure of
revitalizing this historic web page. We thank the Conservancy for their leadership
in reimagining this playground and establishing The Battery as a thriving
waterfront park and a location for New Yorkers and travellers from around the
planet.”
Playscape — which gained a 2020 Benefit Award from the American Society of
Landscape Architects New York Chapter — marks the last important construction
milestone in the 25+ 12 months background of The Battery Conservancy’s function to
revitalize The Battery, New York City’s oldest continually used community room.
The $18.3 million challenge was funded by means of grants and donations from the Lessen Manhattan Development Corporation, the MTA, Mayor Invoice de
Blasio, City Council Member Margaret Chin, and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.
By means of partnerships with NYC Parks, New York Condition, the National Park Provider,
and personal people and corporations, the Battery Conservancy has elevated
far more than $170 million. Today, The Conservancy — driven by its motivation to
environmental stewardship, historic authenticity, design and style excellence,
modern instruction, and openness to all — spearheads the revitalization of the
city’s birthplace park. The Battery’s breathtaking harbor views, expansive
gardens, bike paths, grand lawns, and family points of interest make it 1 of New York
City’s premier cultural places.
The Battery Playscape will be open up year-round from 8 am to dusk and is absolutely free to
all users of the public supervising and/or accompanying young children. Found at
the northeast corner of The Battery, adjacent to the Staten Island Ferry
Making and SeaGlass Carousel, the Playscape is available from State
Road and South Street. Nearest community transportation options involve the 4/5, 1
and R/W subway strains, bus routes and new bicycle routes.
Published Dec 27, 2021 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET
As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible,LAM will be making select stories available to readers in Spanish.
Angular and lean, the new St. Pete Pier in St. Petersburg, Florida, folds its way for 1,380 feet from land to water. Under a bright, hot sun, even 10 feet may be just a few too many, Alternative Medicine.
The pier’s many shifts, crossings, and cantilevers, made possible by more than 400 concrete pylons, make the journey seem rather effortless, however. This new addition to St. Petersburg’s urban infrastructure is more of a networked arrangement of spaces than a single object, the latter a fatal flaw that compromised the previous pier and contributed to its obsolescence and eventual demolition.
Subtle transitions allow the new pier’s architecture and landscape to take turns and communicate in a cohesive language while surfaces move up and down and laterally in plan and section. The roughly 3,000 feet from the beginning of the Pier District, which begins downtown, to the Pier Head building at the end aren’t all visible at once. Instead, the trip is divided into a series of manageable segments with plenty of respite along the way. Residents and tourists of all ages move along shared walks that begin with gateway elements consisting of an elaborate pergola, an outdoor market, and mature plantings preserved from the previous pier. Visitors quickly transition from downtown speed to park speed. Free trams share a curbless space and pass by varied programs that promote buy-local culture, public art that changes dramatically at night, sculptural play areas that integrate earthwork with native plantings, and a central civic plaza whose grand expanse and water features accommodate programming large and small.
New restaurants and pavilions allow one to pause, eat, listen to live music, people watch, get close to the water, and maybe even help sample it and learn something new about the bay at a nonprofit-run ecological discovery center. The broad palette of experiences leads to the Pier Head, where fishing is allowed and where beer is served (and in demand)—even on Mondays at 11:00 a.m.—at the rooftop bar. One may, in fact, decide to never get to the Pier Head, and the experience would not be the lesser for it given all the new options.
The integrated plan mixes plazas, buildings, canopy structures, and native trees and vegetation throughout. Photo by Rich Montalbano/RiMO Photo, LLC.
The attraction to and reliance on the edge where land meets water in Tampa Bay was reinforced by St. Petersburg’s original urban plan, which made the pier’s importance to the city both crucial and inevitable. The first platted plan of the city, drafted in 1888, shows broad 100-foot-wide rights-of-way, organized into a regular grid that covered about two-thirds the size of New York’s Central Park in an urban plan that one would have expected for a much larger city. The only interruptions to this rectangular order were a lake, a park, and a pier.
Reservoir Lake, later known as Mirror Lake, provided the city with an essential spring-fed water supply. Williams Park, initially a wily vegetated grove named after one of the city’s founders, became the urban center. The crisp geometry of a single pier, prominently shown in the 1888 plan with its cardinal axis running east–west, however, underscored its importance as an essential artery connecting city and bay. The built structure jutted 3,000 feet into the water and carried the city’s first rail cars. The eponymous Railroad Pier lasted more than 50 years until it was torn down in 1952. Six other piers followed, each with its own claim to St. Petersburg history and identity, before today’s Pier Park opened on July 6, 2020. As a prominent symbol since the city’s founding, it’s difficult to think of St. Petersburg without the pier and the pier without St. Petersburg.
The city’s subtropical surroundings at the time of its founding also played a role in its urban form. The dense ecologies of saw palmetto, slash pine, and cabbage palmettos nearby, and the irregular, water-filled pockmarks of a karst landscape only a few miles away, looked nothing like the city’s Cartesian plan. To city founders who came from as far as St. Petersburg, Russia; Detroit; and Philadelphia, the urban plan must have conveyed an aspirational stability that augured a prosperous future where its connection to the water would be essential. Both Pier District design teams incorporated some of these native ecologies and geomorphologies into their plans, not only to ensure the landscape’s longevity in a tough coastal setting, but also to celebrate it as part of the city’s regional identity.
Former parking lots are now the setting for native plantings that are resilient and representative of the region. Photo courtesy W Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
The Pier District, which is composed of the new Pier Park fronting Tampa Bay and the Pier Approach that leads to it, begins at the eastern edge of Straub Park, a leafy, 10-acre greenway that houses the city’s Museum of Fine Arts and sits on the edge of the city’s downtown waterfront. The Pier District creates a series of interconnected outdoor spaces where the public has an opportunity to speed up, slow down, and stop. The linear experience that one would expect from any other pier is instead one of ample diagonals, grade changes, and shifts in framed views that expand the experience in every direction.
All age groups, ethnicities, and athletic inclinations seem comfortable here. Despite the many activities and people that the Pier District accommodates, the presence of security staff and other public safety accoutrements that are part of almost every public space today seem to fade to the background. Couples lean against one another to catch water views, wedding tents are assembled and disassembled, grandmas keep a watchful eye on nearby tricycles, young parents seem to have enough room to let kids run around without major consequences, and they all seem to fit right in without getting in each other’s way at a destination that asks for no reservations or entrance fees. The district seems to provide for everyone and is a welcome counterpoint to the quiet and more traditional if soporific Straub Park that frames its entrance. Having had an opportunity to experience St. Petersburg before and after the new pier, its social, economic, and environmental center seems to have shifted east toward the water with this new destination.
In 2014, Ken Smith, FASLA, and Rob Rogers, the principals of New York-based Ken Smith Workshop and Rogers Partners Architects + Urban Designers, respectively, teamed up with the Tampa office of ASD | SKY to enter the competition to replace the previous pier with their winning Pier Park design. The second key part of the Pier District plan was the 20-acre Pier Approach, led by Barbara Wilks, FASLA, the principal of W Architecture and Landscape Architecture, also based in New York. Wilks, who teamed up with St. Petersburg’s Wannemacher Jensen Architects, connects the city’s edge to Smith’s and Rogers’s Pier Park to the east. The complementary projects transform the Pier District and render it unrecognizable from its former self.
Early iterations of the pier tried to balance the recreational and the functional. Though it met the practical needs of accommodating the flow of goods as part of the city’s first rail line, the pier and its waterfront quickly became a place for leisure. Postcards memorialized the pier’s bathhouses, ballrooms, recreational fishing decks, and civic events that welcomed thousands and defined the St. Pete Pier as a reliably exciting destination. The recreational amenities eventually edged out the loading docks and warehouses, even if the needs of rail cars and private vehicle access remained.
Versions of the pier have come and gone, celebrating the spirit, economic aspirations, and technologies of their time. Hundreds of incandescent lights earned the Electric Pier (1906–1913) its name. The open-air deck of the Million Dollar Pier (1926–1967) fit thousands and served as the setting for lavish celebrations. The Inverted Pyramid (1973–2013) that preceded today’s Pier Park was boldly iconoclastic, designed by the architect William Harvard to maximize unobstructed water views at the ground level, much like the Pier Park design team would be expected to do nearly 50 years later.
Ken Smith Workshop’s Tilted Lawn folds the park’s topography to create a 360-degree vantage point; its sculptural oculus casts dynamic shadows below. Photo by Rich Montalbano/RiMO Photo, LLC.
An open ground plane was an aspiration that ran its course at the Inverted Pyramid. The temptation to clutter it with kiosks, signs, vehicular access, parking, fish-cleaning stations, and retail proved too hard to resist. What was once a striking architectural object slowly became crowded by a collection of smaller things at its base. Its story is perhaps cautionary given the propensity to look at the open space around carefully designed architecture as low-hanging fruit for misguided retail retrofits. The harsh and unforgiving marine environment took its toll on the Inverted Pyramid soon after its construction, requiring ever-increasing upkeep that created ongoing structural and financial challenges despite renovations. As iconic as the Inverted Pyramid was when it was first built, it slowly became the proverbial cake left out in the rain that no amount of marketplace consulting could save. It was demolished in 2015.
The design of the two new projects—the Pier Park and the Approach—that together make the new St. Pete Pier District was the result of two different selection processes that took place at different times after a previous competition faltered. In the end, the 20-acre Pier Approach cost $20 million, and the 12-acre Pier Park cost $56 million, with a total price tag of $93 million that included ancillary projects such as new seawalls and underground utility infrastructure for the district. Together, the Pier Approach and Pier Park create an armature of spaces that is a departure from the historic linear pier’s singular axis.
The success or failure of an undertaking of that scale and civic import would predictably depend on the ability of potentially disparate landscape teams to work together. Both design teams underwent a rigorous and extended review process with heightened public scrutiny given the history of a previous pier competition, which granted a unanimous win to Michael Maltzan Architecture in 2012 but eventually rejected it in 2013 by community referendum. Given that false start, whatever came from a subsequent competition would likely be seen as a vindication or a fool’s errand.
Janet Echelman’s Bending Arc hangs gracefully above the karst-inspired landscape below it. Photo courtesy Brian Adams/Studio Echelman.
The integration of substantial public art components, the largest of which was Janet Echelman’s Bending Arc, with an impressive footprint of nearly 50,000 square feet, came after schematic plans were completed for the Pier District. The challenging chronology hardly matters now, judging from how seamlessly the sculpture is integrated by the W Architecture and Landscape Architecture team. Colorful Adirondack chairs are moved about the space below it, and circular berms rise and fall subtly from the lawn to become seating, karst-inspired land art, and unintentional bicycle ramps that probably weren’t expected to be among the mix of planned uses.
Echelman’s ephemeral net hangs delicately overhead, its changing shadows casting softly on the ground during the day and its dramatic colors shifting spectacularly at night. The sculpture was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s words “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” and refers to the role of Spa Beach (on the Pier District’s northern edge) in the 1957 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the rights of all citizens to use the beach without discrimination. The pier’s symbolic and literal embrace of inclusivity mirrors the city’s advances elsewhere on this front given the discriminatory legacy of its waterfront parks and piers. The Million Dollar Pier and thousands of green benches that were once a part of St. Petersburg’s public landscape, for example, were unwelcome symbols of segregation to its Black citizens. Now, for the first time in the city’s history—more than 100 years—two Black women are serving on St. Petersburg’s city council, and the St. Pete Pier has become a proud symbol of inclusivity for the city.
Bending Arc references the city’s struggles with civil rights and Spa Beach’s role in a Supreme Court ruling that favored nondiscriminatory use of public space. Photo courtesy Brian Adams/Studio Echelman.
W Architecture and Landscape Architecture’s Pier Approach strives to create spaces for all, and the project carefully integrates public and vehicular access to parking areas that are accessible yet largely screened from view. The Pier Approach project includes a stormwater management strategy that overlays paths, bridges, swales, and ponds to encourage wandering and exploration, a cantilevering pedestrian deck where egrets, herons, and ducklings can now be observed, and a popular shaded playground that is nested into a berm and, judging from the decibels of a few site visits, is quite successful. New shade elements are most dramatically on view at the entrance Market Plaza and Pavilions, where a solar canopy defines the space. Existing oaks that suffered through years of soil compaction in the former parking areas are given a new life on the north side of the Pier Approach, where a ferry terminal is planned. Large circular retaining walls protect their roots while doubling as seat walls. The Pier Approach sets the stage for Pier Park to the east while keeping the consistency of the rugged material palette of concrete, metal, wood, and native plantings of both projects and the geometry of diagonals that links them.
Pier Park’s winning move to eliminate cars from the pier was a bold departure from all previous pier iterations. Highly controversial, the move nearly caused the team to be eliminated, they said, and the risky decision was berated by the public for being insensitive to visitors looking for easy access to the Pier Head. “The tram was a good response to that…it was complicated to figure out how to not have curbs [for fire trucks and emergency vehicles] and make it feel narrow and shared,” says Ken Smith. “[The city] did have a design to put a traffic circle,” adds Wilks. “Luckily it was also more expensive.” The other two finalist schemes [ALMA/Alfonso Architects, Inc., and Destination St. Pete Pier/St. Pete Design Group] both kept cars.
The central plaza’s fountain faces the Tilted Lawn and provides ample gathering areas with several access points to the pier. Photo by Rich Montalbano/RiMO Photo, LLC.
While the convenience of being able to drive to the end might seem like an obvious advantage, it would have meant negotiating and interrupting an otherwise panoramic experience of the water, free from the unpredictability of drivers. The argument for cars is hard to understand today when one sees people of all ages using the entire length on weekends and weekdays and exceeding all expectations of user counts. “We forget how much we have advanced in the last six years societally about cars and shared spaces,” says Rob Rogers. According to City Architect Raul Quintana, Pier Park is on track to far exceed the Inverted Pyramid’s visitation record, with almost 69,000 guest visits during opening week alone and despite the COVID-19 pandemic’s challenges.
The beginning of the pier where the ground starts to peel up and over Tampa Bay is anchored by a space called the Tilted Lawn, which has a dramatic oculus cutout and a grouping of large, hand-operated umbrellas. The lawn accomplishes multiple goals through its monumentality. Not only does it elevate the ground plane to create a vantage point in an otherwise flat surface that defines most piers (and Florida), but it is large enough to accommodate the oculus whose shadows animate the space underneath throughout the day and create one of the pier’s more dramatic if minimalist stopping points. As the backdrop of two fountain splash pads with angular shapes that rise from the ground to the west, the Tilted Lawn works at the urban scale of the pier’s central plaza by creating an edge that complements a broad flight of stairs leading to Spa Beach to the north, a restaurant pavilion to the west, and a vegetated area known as the Cultural Grove to the south. The water features serve as playgrounds as well as angular geometric forms that foreground the horizon and serve as a counterpoint to the billowing passing clouds. When dry, the fountains become land art, their long triangular forms tapering to the ground. The exterior faces of the fountain’s perimeter berms are pigmented to define the grade change around them, which creates a noticeable boundary that highlights their footprint and provides a visual cue for the downslope that helps people navigate its edges.
Beyond the central plaza, Ken Smith Workshop’s overwater planters called Coastal Thickets on the northern edge of the pier provide a dramatic and refreshing pause that immerses pedestrians in native ecological habitat. Consisting of four 30-foot-wide segments that stretch for almost a quarter mile, the elevated (and labeled) planting beds constructed on structure over water incorporate a zigzag path that at times extends over the edge and provides another key vantage point to view the city and understand the ecology of the region. Had they been smaller, perhaps they would be more vulnerable to the elements, but their sheer scale has so far ensured a lushness whose green is a pleasing contrast to the pier’s many concrete surfaces.
At the Pier Head, the building at the very end of the St. Pete Pier designed by Rogers, a 30-foot cantilevered roof floats over an equally large terrace as if it were an urban-scale porch that serves as lookout, event space, and dining destination. The building accommodates a breezeway and stairs in the middle of the core, which lets in a constant breeze. The structure prioritizes panoramic views to both bay and city, east and west, and slightly twists its axis to emphasize a wider view that doesn’t just look back at the pier’s main alignment but includes views of the beach to the north and a broader swath of a city that is now Florida’s fifth largest since its founding more than 130 years ago.
The Pier Head building relies on a relationship to the lawn and event space at its base to complete the experience of the pier’s terminus. Fishing now happens on a generous deck on the east side of the building—an improvement from the previous pier, where visitors had to dodge anglers and stomach fish-cleaning stations before arriving at the end. Together, the landscape of the ground plane at the Pier Head creates flexible open spaces that can accommodate a few dozen or a few thousand.
Unlike previous iterations of the pier, the complementary language of landscape and architecture contends with the threats of climate change and storm surge while providing ample space for public gathering, whether it faces city or bay. Along the north side of the pier, a breakwater reef structure made of native lime rock and oyster shells dampens the erosional effects of onshore wave action and allows the natural formation of a sand beach. In a place where hurricanes continue to shape the ecologies and landforms of the region and are capable of carving gaps in barrier islands like one did in 1848, the new St. Pete Pier sets a standard for resilience in one of its more visible and popular public spaces. A prominent emblem of 21st-century urban infrastructure, the St. Pete Pier embraces the city’s primordial connection to the water as an opportunity and looks to shape the future of the region and beyond for many years to come.
Spaces leading up to the Pier Head include a low central fountain, the Coastal Thickets overwater planters, and the Tilted Lawn. Photo by Rich Montalbano/RiMO Photo, LLC.
Ken Smith, FASLA, Ken Smith Workshop
“I love all the big moves that we did, but what really makes them work is paying attention to the grading. I did most of the grading on the site, and I did it several times because it kept changing over time. When I’ve been teaching and practicing, it’s very common for landscape architecture practitioners to say grading is a real art form, and I believe that. Engineers do functional grading, but landscape architects do grading that is actually expressive of place. At St. Pete, the landscape is flat, so we had to pick up the grade a bit because the new pier is lifted up higher than the old pier for sustainability and storm surge reasons. We had a landform that is one elevation, and we had to lift the pier up to a higher elevation, so part of the plaza and the Tilted Lawn is about how you lift that up and do it in a way that is actually interesting and really expressive of creating spaces. It’s a little bit weird, but I was thinking of the French garden and André Le Nôtre, who would lift up terrains to change your perspective and perception of space.”
Barbara Wilks, FASLA, W Architecture and Landscape Architecture
“I’m really proud that we saved almost all of the trees and they are sitting in a landscape and really look like they belong there. We built an oak pine forest that is one of the habitats of Central Florida. We had a lot of pine, which people seem to like; providing that landscape was a nice contrast to the mostly hardscape of the pier, and people seem to enjoy it.
I’m pleasantly surprised that people adopted it. The client called and said they are doing drum circles on the lawn! It’s great as a landscape architect to design a place that people respond to and enjoy. The sculpture had a lot to do with it. We got people to the water’s edge—that was a big one. Combining the two sections and creating the circulation pattern that fit Rogers’s scheme, I think we did a good job on that. It really all works as one thing.”
Project Credits
Client The City of St. Petersburg, Florida.
PIER APPROACH
Prime Consultant W Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Brooklyn, New York. Architect of Record Wannemacher Jensen Architects, St. Petersburg, Florida. Civil and Structural Engineers Kimley-Horn, St. Petersburg, Florida. Playground Consultant Earthscape, Wallenstein, Ontario, Canada. Lighting Consultant/Structural Engineer for Art Arup, New York. Electrical Engineers and Security VoltAir, Tampa, Florida.
PIER PARK
Design Architect Rogers Partners Architects + Urban Designers, Houston and New York. Executive Architect ASD | SKY, Tampa, Florida. Design Landscape Architect Ken Smith Workshop, New York. Executive Landscape Architect Booth Design Group, St. Petersburg, Florida. Lighting Design Renfro Design Group, New York. Design Structural Engineering and Marine Engineering Thornton Tomasetti, Tampa, Florida. Structural and MEPS Engineering TLC Engineering Solutions, Tampa, Florida. Civil, Marine, and Environmental Consultants Stantec, Tampa, Florida. Coastal Engineer Humiston and Moore Engineers, Naples, Florida. Geotechnical Engineer Terracon, Tampa, Florida. Fire Protection and Life Safety Code Consultant FP&C Consultants, Inc., Kansas City, Missouri. Environmental Permitting Landon Moree, Palm Harbor, Florida. Construction Manager Skanska, Tampa, Florida.
Roberto J. Rovira, ASLA, is a landscape architect and educator based in Miami, where he chairs the landscape architecture program at Florida International University and runs Studio Roberto Rovira.
The first proposals for a spate of developments designed to meet new green measures in London include a biodiverse training complex at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon, a green-walled skyscraper in the City of London and a densely planted mini forest in Chelsea.
Skyscrapers, historic estates and suburban parks across the capital are counting up scores for greenery under new planning metrics set out in Mayor Sadiq Khan’s London Plan, which are intended to enhance developments’ contribution to the environment.
The Urban Greening Factor (UGF) formula, inspired by the Swedish city of Malmö’s “green points” system, scores each part of a development’s plan – including street-level areas, balconies and roofs – from 0 to 1, with trees, planters and green roofs earning high scores, while paving slabs and barren rooftops receive no score. Central government has also set out plans in the Environment Act 2021 to make developments deliver an uplift to biodiversity, which will require a 10{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} “biodiversity net gain”.
Q&A
Green space factor – how does it work?
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The green space factor (GSF) – sometimes called an urban greening factor or green area factor – is a way of calculating green space requirements for new developments.
GSF measures typically give each square metre of tarmacked car park a score of zero and every square metre left as open meadow a value of one. Other spaces can earn higher or lower scores. In Malmö, a pond or stormwater system filled with water for more than half the year also scores one, a permeable gravel area with some plants has a value of 0.4, and paved areas designed to channel stormwater into sustainable drainage systems score 0.2.
These numbers are added up and divided by the total area of the development to give a score. Cities may demand that each development reaches a minimum target, typically 0.3.
“The Urban Greening Factor is a complete step-change in how much green stuff we’re putting on buildings,” said Craig Robertson, head of sustainability at AHMM architects. Even city centre sites will be tasked with achieving a UGF score of 0.4, equivalent to turning 40{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} of their footprints over to nature. Biodiversity net gain will mark another big shift, Robertson added, pushing developers to consider vegetation and ecological benefits to their surroundings. “It’s really difficult – in a positive way. It’s a really positive challenge to have.”
A ‘green wall’ planted on the side of London’s Edgware Road Bakerloo Line Underground station. Photograph: Simon Turner/Alamy
Biodiversity net gain, which will be required in planning law from 2023, uses a complex algorithm to account for nature losses and gains – although critics have called for urgent revisions to the current formula.
Although some London boroughs are yet to formally adopt UGF measures, the Greater London Authority (GLA) began requiring it in March, meaning all large developments across the capital must now calculate their score. Draft guidance to help boroughs and developers deliver UGF effectively has been put out for public consultation and will formally be adopted next year.
Residential developments are typically set a target of 0.4 and commercial developments 0.3, giving landscape architects and designers “authority and opportunity” to reach these scores in creative ways, said Peter Massini, an ecologist who helped write the UGF policy at the GLA.
London was already spattered with green roofs, with 700 in central London alone, but the UGF makes them all but essential in dense urban plots with little street-level space. Green walls offer another way of lifting UGF on crowded sites, but Robertson said many designers are doubtful of their benefits amid a rash of high-profile die-offs. The “cascading” green terraces of The Ray, his practice’s redevelopment of the Guardian’s former headquarters in Farringdon, are one indicator of where the city could be heading under UGF, said Robertson, alongside biosolar roofs, which combine plants growing around photovoltaic panels. The City of London approved a 33-storey “green tower” at 70 Gracechurch Street in February, which exceeded a UGF target of 0.3 with a collection of living roofs, planted terraces and a green wall.
Cadogan, the main landlord in Chelsea and Knightsbridge, is targeting a 25{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} increase in its UGF across its 36-hectare (90-acre) Chelsea estate, including designing a densely planted Miyawaki forest. The UGF incentivises developers to not settle for bland green space, said City Hall. Wild grassland or dense tree planting score more than double typical lawns, meaning lawns can be upgraded to help reach targets in historic areas where buildings are protected.
Plans for an extension to the All England Tennis Club will create habitats for hedgehogs and Daubenton’s bats, according to the club. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters
Plans for an extension to the home of the Wimbledon Championships has reached the near-perfect UGF of 0.97, almost totally green space. The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) bought a former private golf club in 2018 neighbouring the tournament’s courts, on site that been a parkland estate designed by Capability Brown. By 2030, it will provide 39 tennis courts, designed to sit within a “mosaic of habitats”, with much open to the public, said Andrew Wayro, senior landscape design manager at AELTC. While its UGF was already far above the 0.4 requirement at the outset of the project, it aims to push it higher while achieving a 10{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} biodiversity increase by switching rolling fairways for “priority habitats for the area, like reedbeds and acid grassland” and specialist habitats for hedgehogs and Daubenton’s bats, said Wayro. But the Wimbledon plan has met with objections by some residents, who argue that the development will “cause substantial harm” to the park.
Vanessa Ross, founder of Arc Landscape Design and Planning, said it remains up to developers, designers and ecologists whether the new metrics will truly make a difference to lives and ecosystems in London, or simply push architects into “designing by numbers”. For example, private gardens can score highly for green space but offer little benefit to people unless accessible, Ross added.
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features
We all realise that mother nature and spirituality are closely related, and in reality many religious traditions have always recognised that truly shielding nature is only achievable if we recognise the metaphysical and religious dimension of the entire world.
Without a doubt, sites of worship may well usually be observed in panoramic positions exactly where the devoted are encouraged to interact with nature, as is the circumstance of Poly Shallow Sea in Sanya, on Yazhou Bay on the South China Sea. The Yanzhou Bay neighborhood is surrounded by panoramic spots such as Fairyland and South Mountain, and constructed on a wonderful web page by the sea with wonderful sunset sights. The spot has motivated the development of a regional cultural brand, “Legendary Yazhou, Intimate Paradise”. This is the background behind Dysis Chapel of Poly Shallow Sea, an integral portion of a wider-ranging approach for improvement of the spot, combining nearby cultural aspects with the superb sources of the place’s pure landscape.
Appointed by Poly (Hainan) Tourism Enhancement, the Chinese studio Shanghai United Design Group or UDG made a development in a single of these inspiring areas, consisting of a triangular volume reaching up to the sky and a rotating circle on the ground, symbol of eternal daily life and of God. All while staying away from all formal references to the symbolism of Christianity, these types of as the cross, in order to supply a location of worship for everyone, intended to be the “chapel of a like-themed cultural city employed to host weddings, and a popular desired destination for lovers.”
In accordance to the architects, the basic but convincing triangular composition of the challenge “pierces the sky with potent spirituality, like an eternal monument in between the sea and sky. Sunset light-weight shines as a result of the central hole of the construction, materialising the perception of time. The rotating unit orients in the direction of the situation of the setting sunshine all calendar year round, vividly implying that the minute is eternity.”
The circle is divided into two swimming pools of distinctive heights, with a type of curtain of h2o among them. Curved ramps on possibly aspect of the swimming pools open up up a look at of the sky and the sea by way of the gaps in the h2o courtyard partitions, the place the gurgling of the drinking water symbolises the dialogue in between time, place and men and women. Shade gets to be a important element of the chapel, and light-weight enters via slender gaps, revealing the extensive, mysterious world of tides, sea breezes, solar, moon and stars.
1st of all, UDG built the chapel to body the sunset on Valentine’s Day, February 14, which was to be the only working day of the calendar year in which the opening in the chapel was aligned with the placing sun. But why limit these an encounter to a single day? The architects added a rotating system to the remaining strategy to permit the chapel to be turned to align it with the solar.
The remaining outcome is a sacred making that picks up on the critical symbols of the cultural background of the human race to place customers in harmony with the normal spectacle of the solar environment in excess of the sea and recreate our lost harmony with mother nature.
Christiane Bürklein
Project: Shanghai United Structure Group Co., Ltd (www.udg.com.cn) 
Landscape Style: GVL Global Group 
Interior Design and style: Appreciate Design and style 
Site: Yazhou Bay, Yacheng District, Sanya, Hainan 
Yr: 2020 
Pictures: Shen Zhonghai 

Considered one of the Pacific Northwest’s most influential landscape architects, Tom Berger was born in northern California on March 7, 1945. He moved with his parents and six siblings to Port Orchard in Kitsap County after his father purchased a garden store in Bremerton. Berger took to the Northwest environment with a passion, acquiring a deep familiarity with its native and adaptive plants and their distinctive color palette. After earning a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture in 1968 from Washington State University, Berger worked at several area landscape-architecture firms before founding the Berger Partnership in 1971. For the next four decades, his client list was a veritable who’s who of both corporate and private individuals. Some of his most notable projects included Two Union Square in downtown Seattle, REI’s Seattle flagship store, the Space Needle Pavilion at Seattle Center, Seattle’s University Village, and IslandWood on Bainbridge Island. He also designed the landscape surrounding Bill Gates’s waterfront mansion in Medina and the 40-acre Whidbey Island retreat of Paul Schell. Berger died on September 11, 2014, from Parkinson’s disease.
Nurturing an Early Love of Plants
Thomas Lee Berger was born in Crescent City, California, on March 7, 1945, to Carl and Edith Halladey Berger. With his parents and six siblings — Dick, Mary Lou, Rick, Bob, Neil, and George — Berger spent his early years in Brookings, Oregon, just north of the California border, where his father was a logger. In the late 1950s, Carl Berger moved the family to Port Orchard, leveraging his extensive outdoor experience to buy and manage a garden store in nearby Bremerton that he called Berger’s Garden Center.
Tom Berger loved plants from an early age. As a teenager, he increased his knowledge of Northwest plants by working in the family garden center after school and on weekends. While a student at South Kitsap High School, he held several leadership posts, including student council representative. It was in high school that he met his future wife, Mary Middleton (b. 1945). They married on October 16, 1965; both were 20 years old.
After high school, Berger enrolled at Olympic Junior College in Bremerton as a fine-arts major. One day his brother Bob, a student at Washington State University in Pullman, came home and announced he was changing his major to landscape architecture. Tom was intrigued and decided to switch schools and majors himself, going on to earn a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture in 1968 from WSU. His continuing interest in art coupled with a degree in landscape architecture was immensely helpful throughout his career, allowing him to better understand and merge natural and manmade environments, as a reporter explained in 1993:
“Berger’s architectural training enables him to assess a building’s mood and design gardens that capture — or complement — that mood so seamlessly that the landscape feels like an extension of the structure. In fact, Berger rarely separates the two, treating a building and its surroundings as a single design project” (Albert).
After graduation, Berger moved to Seattle, where he worked with area landscape-architecture firms, including Chaffee-Zumwalt and Associates. His early design projects at Chaffee-Zumwalt included a senior citizen home in Bremerton called the Tamarack as well as several private residences. In 1971, he set off on his own, establishing Tom Berger and Associates, later renamed the Berger Partnership.
Common Sense Meets Design
As a landscape architect, Berger was driven by his intense love of the Northwest’s distinctive natural environment and a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the area’s diverse plants. Not only were his design solutions creative, they were also functional and efficient, linked by a single commonality: to unite the natural and urban worlds. Looking back on his career years later a colleague said: “Tom’s approach looked to architectural elements that could be incorporated into the landscape … He brought the inside out and the outside in, so that the two worked in harmony” (“Building Legacies”). About half of his design work was in the residential arena. His home projects ranged from a simple water feature in a front entryway to a landscaping tour de force executed for the Medina home of Bill and Melinda Gates. The firm also designed for golf courses, wineries, parks, river walks, skyscrapers, retail settings, and office buildings.
Early in his career, Berger was asked to provide landscape design for the Good Shepherd Center in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood. The structure was built in 1907 as the Home of the Good Shepherd to house Catholic girls. After the home closed in 1973, a group of Wallingford citizens organized and convinced the city that the historic building and grounds should be preserved, not sold for development. Their lobbying worked: The property was acquired in 1976 by Historic Seattle to use as a multi-purpose community center. In 1979, Berger received a $279,000 contract to create the property’s master plan. Its implementation carried with it a lot of firsts. A reporter noted at the time:
“[It] will be the first formal preservation park in Seattle planned in sympathy with a historic structure. It will be the first Seattle park to have an urban agriculture center with demonstration gardens for fruit trees, berries and vegetables as well as a caretaker’s cottage with a demonstration solar greenhouse and a kitchen for demonstration drying and canning of produce. It will be the first to have a croquet lawn and an old-fashioned perennial flower garden designed particularly for the elderly” (Huston).
Central to Berger’s plan for the 11-and-a-half-acre site was keeping the focus on the property’s historic ambience. He retained or recreated design elements including a stone arch with wrought-iron gates and stone steps leading into the park; an old orchard with horse chestnuts, locusts, and fruit trees; a grape arbor; and a summer house.
From Skyscrapers to Bonsai
In the mid-1980s, Berger was asked to provide landscape design for Two Union Square, a 56-story skyscraper that opened in 1989 at 601 Union Street in downtown Seattle. The building’s innovative design, led by the Seattle office of the architectural firm NBBJ, was heralded as a stunning example of Northwest regionalism, taking its cues from the region’s aeronautics and marine history. The metal-and-glass building featured a guard’s desk that resembled an airplane wing, for example, and outdoor flag pedestals mirrored the design of the posts used to secure boats at marinas around Puget Sound.
Similarly, Berger’s courtyard design for Two Union Square featured distinctly Northwest elements, including a waterfall that splashed down over huge granite boulders hauled in from the north Cascades. A small conifer forest was nestled on the property’s southeast edge. Berger’s attention to detail left little to chance. As one example, the locust trees he used in the courtyard at Two Union Square provided shade in the summer yet their small leaves would not discolor the pavement when they dropped in the fall.
“Two Union’s biggest contribution to Seattle — if the public discovers and uses it — will be the three-level plaza with fountains, waterfall and vegetation from around the region. … “‘We have tried to create spaces that people will look forward to,’ says Tom Berger, who hopes the plaza will be a destination, rather than just a passage through. … “The landscape architect promises color and fragrance all year from plantings such as witch hazel and nude jasmine … paperbark maple, larch and sweet bay magnolia … Chinese fringe tree and harlequin glory bower … five varieties of flowering cherries, rhododendrons and the Chilean fire tree” (King).
Another high-visibility project, undertaken in the late 1980s, was the Pacific Rim Bonsai Collection, later called the Pacific Bonsai Museum — one of only two museums in the nation dedicated solely to bonsai. Nearly three decades after its creation, the outdoor museum in Federal Way maintained some 150 plants, about 60 of them displayed at any one time, on an acre of forestland adjacent to the former headquarters of the Weyerhaeuser Company, and was touted as a regional tourist destination: “this little artistic gem deserves recognition as an ideal outing for Puget Sound residents or those travelling up the I-5 corridor” (“Pacific Bonsai Museum”). Consulting architect Thomas Kubota noted that, when starting the project’s design:
“Our first task was to establish a relationship between the wild forest setting, with its enormous conifers, and the tiny manicured bonsai. Second, because the display is self-guiding, we needed to make the physical layout and the traffic flow within the facility obvious. We also wanted to preserve a tranquil, reflective atmosphere for the better enjoyment of the bonsai … [and] to provide a neutral background for the bonsai, much like the walls of an art gallery” (Whitner).
Bonsai are meant to be enjoyed as separate works of art, so they are usually displayed individually or in pairs. But this display area had to exhibit more than 50 bonsai in a way that allowed visitors to focus on each one.
“The courtyard naturally funnels visitors into the bonsai display area immediately adjacent, where Berger designed a series of display arms to separate and to visually isolate the bonsai tables from one another. To visitors strolling the crushed-rock path between the display arms and tables, the bonsai resemble living jewels whose settings are enhanced by the cool, clear light filtering through the surrounding Douglas firs” (Whitner).
More than two decades later, the collection still delights the 40,000 visitors who tour annually. “The pathway through the outdoor museum is raked several times a day, adding to the Zen atmosphere that is heightened by the layout of freestanding outdoor walls and ever-changing artwork. The privacy and quietness of this self-guided museum allows you to really immerse yourself in the world of nature and feel surrounded by the beauty of the Pacific Northwest” (“Pacific Bonsai Museum”).
Berger was also hired to landscape and design the grounds for one of America’s most famous family residences — that of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his then-wife Melinda French Gates. Seven years in the making, the waterfront mansion in Medina cost some $63 million. Berger would not disclose the cost of the landscaping beyond noting that it would be more than $500,000. “In keeping with the home’s environmental sensitivity (much of the structure will be buried underground), the four-acre site will be designed to look like a naturally wooded hillside, with native plantings and water features that utilize existing springs and draining water on the property” (Albert).
Berger was particularly adept at matching plants to the location so they looked as if they belonged there. Tamara Buchanan, who managed The Sweetbriar horticultural nursery in Kirkland for more than 25 years, called Berger” a ‘plants’ person: someone who understands plants, is sensitive to plants, who cares about putting plants in the right places, and who is interested in using interesting and unusual combinations” (Albert).
Notable Projects and Growing Accolades
REI, the locally based outdoor cooperative that had grown into a nationwide retailer, had special significance to many Seattle residents, and the 1996 relocation of its Seattle flagship store from Capitol Hill to a new $28 million building at South Lake Union was much anticipated. As part of the landscape design, the Berger Partnership reinforced the retail giant’s outdoor and recreation interests by funneling one of the store’s entryways through a forest-like setting, complete with a bike trail and a waterfall, creating the feeling of dense woodland just steps from the sidewalk.
Berger’s design was a hit with both customers and the media. Seattle Times architecture critic Mark Hinshaw said “landscape architect Tom Berger arranged earth, water and rocks to resemble a stream cascading down a mountainside. The sound of water is everywhere, simultaneously soothing and energetic. Eventually, the plants will mature and create a cool cloister of supreme sophistication,” and added, discussing the store as a whole, that “the blending of forms, materials, space and landscape is so superb it makes one long for buildings this exquisite in the heart of downtown” (Hinshaw).
As the accolades for the Berger Partnership’s landscape projects continued to grow, so too did the firm’s client list. In the 1990s, the partnership was called in to lead a series of community meetings to help re-envision Capitol Hill’s historic Cal Anderson Park. Developed in time for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and originally called Lincoln Park, the green space had been designed by the famous landscape-architecture firm of the Olmstead Brothers and featured elegant pathways, open views, a wading pool, and pedestrian gateways. There were also a 21-million-gallon water reservoir and the city’s first hydraulic pumping station, both dating from 1901.
Despite its historic pedigree, over the years the park’s popularity had waned and it had fallen into disrepair. By the 1990s, the community was fed up. Local advocates wanted a green space that would be a community asset, not a crime scene. Five community meetings were held, facilitated by the Berger Partnership. In her first-person account of the visioning process, community organizer Kay Rood noted that the firm’s participation, led by partner Jeff Girvin, “brought much-appreciated and valuable continuity for us … Our collaboration produced a Park Site Master Plan, which took into account both the site’s historic legacy and contemporary needs and uses” (“Creating Cal Anderson Park …”). In November 1998, the park was designated a historic landmark and the ProParks Levy, which passed in 2000, providing initial funding. The landscape redesign honored the original Olmsted vision, with meandering walking paths lined with wrought-iron lamps, a parapet wall surrounding the reservoir’s perimeter, and a fountain. The park reopened in 2003 and was renamed in 2005 to honor state legislator Calvin Bruce Anderson (1948-1995).
Other notable Berger Partnership projects in the 1990s included the new Adobe Systems headquarters in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood and the Whidbey Island home of Paul Schell, Seattle’s mayor from 1998 to 2001, and his wife Pam. The landscape design for Adobe’s regional headquarters on Lake Union, completed in 1998, was the firm’s first foray into designing for the high-tech industry. As with many projects located in dense neighborhoods, finding the right balance was key. “It wasn’t easy to tuck over 300,000 square feet of corporate office space along with generous open areas into the heart of Fremont and keep the neighbors happy … A year after completion, it’s hard to remember when the new Adobe campus in Fremont wasn’t there, or even to find the edge of the campus” (Enlow, “The Software Life …”).
When Pam and Paul Schell needed help selecting plants and landscaping a 40-acre property on Whidbey Island they turned to their friend Tom Berger. For the Schell residence, Berger concentrated on plants that added fragrance and visual interest during the rainy winter months, such as harlequin glory bower, Chinese witch hazel, snowbell trees, and paperbark maples. He also designed a secret garden on the property complete with raised rose beds, herbs, and a cutting garden.
Pushing the Envelope at IslandWood
IslandWood on Bainbridge Island was a project custom-tailored for Tom Berger. The 255-acre environmental learning center, a 35-minute ferry ride across Puget Sound from Seattle, was made possible by the vision and determination of Debbi Brainerd and her husband, Aldus software company founder Paul Brainerd (b. 1947). In 1997, when the Brainerds heard that the former Port Blakely Tree Farm was going to be subdivided and sold for development, they bought 255 acres of the property and then got to thinking about the best ways to preserve and transform the land.
“Out-of-the-box thinking and a deep love of the environment have created one of the most lush classrooms the Pacific Northwest has known. Outdoors, IslandWood students meander through bog, cattail marsh and ravine, engaging in scientific inquiry. Indoors, their feet pad on cork flooring, a sound-absorbent renewable resource” (Chou).
According to the learning center’s website, as of 2021 more than 13,000 visitors come to IslandWood each year for school programs, classes, weddings, meetings, and retreats. At the time, though, developing the property was a tough sell to neighbors who had chosen the island setting precisely for its peace and quiet.
“Opposition to the project was finally put to rest through assurances about noise and traffic disruption, as well as the knowledge that the site was sure to be developed anyway. IslandWood would be an environmental asset, a resource for local schools, and a good neighbor” (Enlow, “Learning from …”).
Berger teamed with Mithun Architects; the two had been partners a decade earlier on the REI flagship store. As IslandWood kicked off, designers from both firms camped on site as a way to get up-close-and-personal with the land. Construction took about five years; the result was an innovative environmental learning center focused on science, conservation, and the outdoors world. The design teams’ attention to detail, passion for the Northwest aesthetic, and determination to incorporate sustainable design earned the project a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification, a rating developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. It was the first LEED Gold certification awarded in Washington.
“A Darn Good Guy”
Tom Berger died on September 11, 2014, at the age of 69 from Parkinson’s disease. He left behind his wife of 49 years, four children, and eight grandchildren. A popular speaker and advisor on landscape design and environmental issues, he was also a university lecturer and board member of the Washington Arboretum Foundation and WSU Spokane Interdisciplinary Design Institute. During his career, he was honored with awards from both the national and local chapters of the Society of Landscape Architects, the Audubon Society, and the Seattle Design Commission. A lifelong Washington State University Cougs fan, he also enjoyed soccer, volleyball, and antique cars.
A year after his death, an exhibit on his work opened at WSU’s School of Design and Construction. Called “Building Legacies, Designing the Future,” it explored Berger’s distinctive approach to design. As his colleague Kelly Rench told an interviewer: “Tom led the way for ecologically responsive landscape design … He addressed global warming, water conservation and air quality, while adding open, green space. As our cities become more dense and populous, that space becomes more important” (“Building Legacies”).
Following his death, Berger’s colleagues posted a tribute to their boss on the company website:
“Although he would prefer to be remembered as ‘a darn good guy,’ we will always remember him as a friend, mentor, leader, and an inspiration” (“Thomas L. Berger …”).
Sources:
Jan Kowalczewski Whitner, “Living Jewels — Bonsai Collection Honors Centennial,” The Seattle Times, October 8, 1989, Pacific magazine, p. 24; Fred Albert, “Plants and People,” Ibid., February 7, 1993, Pacific magazine, p. 16; Mark Hinshaw, “From Awesome to Awful — Three New Seattle Stores,” Ibid., September 15, 1996, p. F-1; Valerie Easton, “The Mayor’s Getaway,” The Seattle Times, October 24, 1999, (www.seattletimes.com); “Building Legacies: Inaugural Open House Looks at Landscape Architecture Pioneer Tom Berger,” Washington State University College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences (https://news.cahnrs.wsu.edu/article/building-legacies-inaugural-open-house-looks-at-landscape-architecture-pioneer-tom-berger/); Barbara Huston, “Park Plan Unveiled for Good Shepherd,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 25, 1979, p. D-1; Marsha King, “Building a Future,” Ibid., July 16, 1989, p. K-1; Clair Enlow, “The Software Life in Fremont,” Daily Journal of Commerce, August 4, 1999 (https://www.djc.com/news/re/10056545.html?action=get&id=10056545&printmode=true); Clair Enlow, “Learning from an Island,” Landscape Architecture Magazine, Vol. 93, No. 10, October 2003, pp. 84-93, copy available at Envirotech Soil Solutions, Inc. website accessed November 17, 2021 (https://www.axisplayball.com/learning-from-an-island-oct-2003-asla-magazine); “Bainbridge Island Campus,” IslandWood website accessed November 17, 2021 (https://islandwood.org/about-us-an-environmental-science-nonprofit/bainbridge-island-campus/); “About Us,” Pacific Bonsai Museum website accessed November 15, 2021 (https://pacificbonsaimuseum.org/about/); “Pacific Bonsai Museum — The Most Diverse Collection in America,” September 22, 2017, Explore Washington State website accessed November 18, 2021 (https://explorewashingtonstate.com/pacific-bonsai-museum-2/); Aimee Chou, “Brainerds Marry Love of Land and Technology,” Puget Sound Business Journal, November 17, 2005 (https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2005/11/21/focus10.html); Taha Ebrahimi, “Cal Anderson Park: The Park Behind CHAZ/CHOP,” July 1, 2020, Historic Seattle Preservation in Progress blog accessed November 18, 2021 (https://historicseattle.org/cal-anderson-park-the-park-behind-chaz-chop/); “Thomas L. Berger, FASLA, Honorary AIA, 1945-2014,” Berger Partnership website accessed November 18, 2021 (https://bergerpartnership.com/activity/thomas-l-berger-fasla-honorary-aia-1945-2014/); HistoryLink.org Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, “Creating Cal Anderson Park by Kay Rood,” “Home of the Good Shepherd” (by Toby Harris), and “IslandWood, an environmental learning center on Bainbridge Island, opens on September 22, 2002” (by Rita Cipalla), http://www.historylink.org (accessed December 22, 2021).
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