Visiting the community garden was a really wonderful opportunity to feel connected to the earth which I often feel divorced from in Manhattan. I grew up gardening every spring as my mom is an avid and educated horticulturist & landscape architect.
To improve the OSS gardens I would apply some of the studies in educational and community aesthetics (ie. Reggio Emelia’s philosophies on the use of color). I noticed that, although the garden reveals a greater picture when viewed above, it had many jarring angles that made directly engaging with the garden a little difficult. As much as the gardens are meant to serve as emblems of social harmony, they should also promote aesthetic harmony that invites the public to engage and learn – and I felt as though the organization of the garden was almost intimidatingly confusing.
These possible modifications are less helpful for pre-existing projects and more geared towards improving future implementations of the gardens. The project currently displays artistic strategy, social strategy and botanical strategy, it just needs some focus on experience design. For example, the garden we visited has a sophisticated vision – creating a garden which reflects diversity and shared immigration experiences – and the vision can be viewed from far above (where the clasped-hands border can be seen) and on a small scale (when looking at the individual plants and their origins), but for people ambling by it doesn’t create the most inviting or curiosity provoking environment. This could be mitigated by creating a path to the garden or a more welcoming entry point for guest to enjoy the space. I also think in the future, with the appropriate funds, signs that describe the project & community (maybe with an aerial view of the clasped hands) would really allow the garden to reach a wider audience. The garden is innately a focal point, adding things like benches and smaller, fuller trees would cement the project as a hub for social development. It would become a space where the different ethnic groups of the community could not only garden, but talk and play together.
I was really inspired by the prompt to redesign this garden and I created a graphic to better explain my concept.
