Tag Archives: By J. Brey

Home Grown

Refugia  converts homeowners into native plant advocates, one lawn at a time.

By Jared Brey

A well-grown natural habitat lawn
Refugia specializes in transforming lawns into pollinator-friendly habitats. Photo by Kayla Fell for Refugia.

Jeff Lorenz stood under the mid-June sun at FDR Park, monitoring the final touches on his company’s exhibit for the Philadelphia Flower Show. The exhibit space, ordinarily an asphalt parking lot, had been covered in mulch and lined with displays, all in the final moments of construction. Continue reading Home Grown

The Long Game

Landscape architects are working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and building new networks through the Engineering With Nature program. The implications could be transformative for both.

By Jared Brey

Photo of people standing on the shore, pointing toward the bay.
Monica Chasten (foreground) and Sean Burkholder (center, holding a coffee) survey the opportunities with the team near Matts Landing in New Jersey. Photo by Jared Brey.

A needle that falls in the southern reaches of the New Jersey Pinelands might find itself washed into the Maurice River and carried by its current to Delaware Bay. The Maurice flows south in tight coils, and before it reaches the estuary, it’s forced into one final wide bend around a long dike at Matts Landing, near the old bayside oyster towns of Bivalve and Shell Pile. Continue reading The Long Game

Roll, Tide

Gulf State Park in Alabama is one of the largest public projects to be funded through the Deepwater Horizon settlement. Many more are coming.

By Jared Brey

The Lodge at Gulf State Park was rebuilt as a sustainable tourism destination after a previous lodge, a popular vacation spot, was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Photo by Volkert, Inc., and Forrest Funk Drone Photography.

The Lodge at Gulf State Park is built directly into the dunes, so when you walk from the parking lot into the spacious lobby, you’re looking straight through the glass back wall of the hotel, across a stretch of white-sand beach, and out into the seemingly endless Gulf of Mexico. Continue reading Roll, Tide

Swings and Swales

Pashek + MTR works with two public agencies to design a heavy-hitting stormwater park in Pittsburgh.

By Jared Brey

The park features a stone cascade that directs rushing water to a rain garden in the central basin. Photo by Pashek + MTR.

One bright-blue Friday afternoon in October, I was paused at a stoplight in Squirrel Hill, a residential neighborhood about five miles from downtown Pittsburgh, when I saw a young woman with a red backpack try to summit a steep slope on her bicycle. Continue reading Swings and Swales

Pained Plaza

As the pandemic slows projects, Philadelphia has a chance to rethink a difficult public space.

By Jared Brey

The plaza forms the podium of the Municipal Services Building and hosts public art such as Jacques Lipchitz’s Government of the People, installed in 1976. Photo by Sahar Coston-Hardy, Affiliate ASLA.

Most of Philadelphia was still asleep when city workers pulled the nine-foot-high statue of Frank Rizzo off the concrete steps of the Municipal Services Building across from City Hall, loaded it into a truck, and carted it off to an undisclosed storage locker. Continue reading Pained Plaza