Every year since 2001, students in Creating the Urban Eden: Woody Plant Selection, Design, and Landscape Establishment (HORT/LA 4910/4920) have taken on real world projects, designing and installing gardens on campus each spring.
This year’s projects include a strip along Garden Avenue west of Teagle and Comstock Halls, areas behind Warren Hall, and a planting at the entrance to Plant Science Building just west of the new Liberty Hyde Bailey Conservatory.
For that project, the low-growing plants were specifically selected so as not to shade the Conservatory or to attract pests that might move from the planting inside, says Nina Bassuk, Horticulture Section professor who teaches the course along Landscape Architecture professor Peter Trowbridge.
The plants include a mix of evergreen and deciduous woody plant species with a variety of foliage colors that provide year-round interest and discourage browsing by deer. “We’ve used a lot of new cultivars so that we can introduce them to future classes as part of our teaching program,” says Bassuk, who is also the director of the Urban Horticulture Institute.
The students also tried a new planting technique using smaller plugs that are easier to handle and plant but will quickly fill the space.
