SF Garden Show 2011

Awards of Gold Medal Garden Creator and the California Landscape Contractors Association CLCA award culminated in a long adventure of creating a display garden for the 2011 SF Flower and Garden Show in San Mateo, CA.  Kim Leichner was one of a team of four landscape designers including Tina Jauregui, Leslie Peluso and Corey Chetcuti.  They set out to gain exposure for the Landscape Architecture program at West Valley College in Saratoga, CA.  Beginning in Oct 2010 and ending with the build and the show in March 2011, it was an experience that exceeded their expectations. 

The completed project!   We had a lot of help from many volunteers and the professional assistance from West Bay Landscapes with Tony and crew.  Our campus student club won Club of the Year and an on campus review plus congratulations from the campus President Dr. Lori Gaskin.

Ceanothus and dudleya partitions

 Drought tolerant California natives of Ceanothus, Arctostaphylos, and Huechera are just a few of the plant materials along with a couple non natives of Phormium and Arbutus 'Marina'.  A bioswale designed to remove silt and pollutants from storm water run off, consisted of native grasses by Delta Bluegrass and flowed horizontally across the space under the deck.  A small platform bridge makes it simple to cross the bioswale from the shower area and the back of the deck.  The bioswale works as a small valley to move storm water run off in a controlled manner while cleaning the water by filtration with the plant material.  The metal roof, courtesy of Wildcat Metals, is designed to maximize yield for rainwater catchment to make this water wise garden completely self sustaining.  A covered deck serves many functions including sleeping outside and an outdoor shower partially screened by vertical living partitions of native succulent Dudleya from Succulent Gardens offers cooling.  
Steel raised bed and bioswale

The raised planting bed hugging the deck is made from recycled steel concrete flooring forms from SIMS Metal Management of San Jose. The natural rust patina adds to the ambience. Most of the wood is reclaimed lumber from a number of sources including the demo of my own deck and Borg Fencing in Pleasanton.  After some TLC all the redwood looked as good as new.  The rear wall and side staggered wall are faced with house siding.  Using the reverse side, the damaged siding had a new life in our project.  Since our display garden was next to the public restrooms, we designed windows into the wall for participants to see in the garden and  folks in the garden to look out.  The lighting is all low voltage LEDs courtesy of Andrew Bolt of SPJ Lighting. TheLED pathlighthardscape materials are locally obtained rock products courtesy of LYNGSO.  The overall design is only 20' x 20' but seems much larger even when you are in the garden due to the use of space.  The deck is positioned on an angle and the shower partitions allowing sight lines over them helps open the space.  The horizontal lines in the walls also alludes to a larger space.   The roof line borrowed from Frank Lloyd Wright and Asian elements shows homeowners they can have a beautiful pergola without a fancy and expensive router.

bridge over bioswaleRoof line   Outdoor ShowerStaggerd wall with peeking windows

The deck with large bench

 We had the support of the following businesses and the people with them:

West Bay Landscape Co., LYNGSO, BORG Fence, Village Nurseries, Fuji Garden Center, Delta Bluegrass Co., SPJ Lighting Inc - Andrew Bolt, Wildcat Metals, SummerWinds Nurseries, Almaden Valley Nursery, North Coast Native Nursery, Zach Todd Photography, SIMS Metal Management, Bay Natives, Reusable Lumber and the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show.

Although this was NOT a course project we did solicit the guidance of West Valley College Faculty of the Landscape Architecture Department, Glenn Rock, ASLA.