Terrain-NYC turns a bedrock cliff in the Bronx into a garden for all seasons. By Zach Mortice Faced with the need for a meditative and richly planted landscape for an affordable and supportive housing project in the Bronx on top of exposed bedrock, Brian Green, a landscape architect at Terrain-NYC, looked to the other geologic formations in Manhattan, particularly in Central Park, and in the Bronx. What he noticed most were the ferns that grew in these places. Typically considered too delicate to take root in rock, they were surprisingly persistent. “They’ll find their way, somehow, into these little crevices,” […]

The Center for Cultural Landscapes takes the first steps toward revamping the landscape history curriculum. By Timothy A. Schuler On the evening of June 11, 2020, amid mass protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Marc Miller, ASLA, tweeted: “It’s time y’all. Revive American landscape history and reboot it to reflect the long history of systemic racism that helps to make it.”

Snow Hill Plantation’s uncommon transformation into a Black-owned cooperative. By Taneasha White-Gibson At the Catawba Trail Farm, founded by sisters Delphine Godley Sellars and Lucille Godley Patterson, land once occupied by the 30,000-acre Snow Hill Plantation outside Durham, North Carolina, is being reclaimed as a community garden. For $100 per year, residents can rent one of the 40-plus garden beds, learn to grow their own produce, and take it back home to feed their families. The sisters hold classes and share skills on canning and growing, host gleaning events, and collaborate with partners to give fresh produce and recipes away, […]

A memorial garden for a 12-year-old victim of police violence becomes a springboard for serving generations of children. By Anjulie Rao / Photography by Sahar Coston-Hardy, Affiliate ASLA I arrived at the Marion C. Seltzer Elementary School playground around 11:00 a.m., just before the day’s heat peaked. It was a Friday, and students were making the short commute between the elementary school and the Cudell Recreation Center, located just a stone’s throw northwest. A group of toddlers had gathered with their teachers—likely a preschool daycare—along a bench that bordered a butterfly garden.

Design for Freedom works to end modern slavery in the materials supply chain. By Kamila Grigo The 2022 Serpentine Pavilion, titled Black Chapel and designed by the multihyphenate artist Theaster Gates, was conceived as a space offering contemplation, community, and joy to the public. Installed next to the Serpentine South Gallery in London’s Kensington Gardens, the austere pavilion felt at once imposing, as it reached just beyond the treetops, and humbly compact and perfectly embedded within its context.