Landscape designers spread seeds of charity
By Carol Stocker, Globe Staff
November 10, 2005
Community-based organizations and nonprofits often have to worry about where their next light bulbs and paper clips are coming from, so there's not apt to be much in the budget for landscape design.
That's where the Community Outreach Group for Landscape Design in Waltham comes in. COGdesign pairs volunteer designers with deserving groups who pay an application fee, reimburse designers' expenses, and provide sweat equity and fund-raising for installation costs. The designers, many of whom are students or recent graduates from landscape programs, get high-visibility projects for their portfolios along with community-based field experience and the satisfaction of helping underserved populations.
Everyone wins.
"COGdesign is a way of connecting the somewhat rarefied world of landscape design with communities that are somewhat disenfranchised and that really need that enrichment," said Nicolene Hengen, development director for Triangle Inc., a COGdesign client that provides employment for almost 1,000 people with disabilities each year.
When Hengen approached COGdesign director Lucia Droby last fall, she explained that Triangle's board and CEO Michael Rodrigues wanted more welcoming surroundings for the participants at its headquarters in Malden, an enormous industrial building whose only landscaping was a large parking lot next to the Orange Line.
After the application process, Droby matched Triangle with Frank Re of Brookline, a former vice president of a manufacturing corporation who is starting a new career as a designer and who recently graduated from the Landscape Institute of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University in Jamaica Plain.
While Hengen started fund-raising, Re spent hundreds of hours designing areas where clients could meet and eat outdoors or do gentle exercises in a sensory-stimulating environment, including a 100-foot wheelchair-accessible perennial bed full of color and scent.
Two weeks ago, Hengen used $500 of the $2,500 raised so far to buy two trees and 22 shrubs on sale, and the two new friends started planting. ''I really had a great time," said Re. ''I came with my pick ax and the Triangle participants came outside to help."
During the course of the day, 10 participants with disabilities ranging from Down syndrome to autism joined in. ''We're hoping to offer Triangle participants vocational training in doing the maintenance," said Re.
This is his first major design project, and having it in his portfolio has already yielded professional benefits, Re added. ''Two weeks ago I interviewed with an architect, and he was so impressed with my work with Triangle that he gave me a job on the spot."
COGdesign was founded in 1995 by Droby and the late Rosalie Johnson when they were students at the Radcliffe Seminars in Landscape Design (now the Landscape Institute). With a revolving roster of new designers, COGdesign gets its continuity from a core of devoted volunteers and from advisory board members such as Arnold Arboretum director Robert Cook, Boston Parks Department superintendent Roy Blomquist, and Karen Howard, principal of Howard Garden Designs in Newton.
"A lot of the people are faithful participants. They think the mission of the organization is worthwhile," said Howard, who also serves on a COGdesign committee that reviews the volunteers' designs-in-progress monthly. ''Students are trained in design. But the installation, the cost, the order in which things get done -- those kinds of practical things -- I can help with that understanding."
"We're backed up by quite a substantial cadre of experienced designers who help us through our project. It's quite a good program. It introduces the students to something other than paper design, to what the real world is like, and it provides services to worthy causes," said Monica Fairbairn of Gardening by Design in Watertown, a former director of the Museum of Afro-American History on Beacon Hill.
Many of the projects present opportunities to work with remarkable sites. With fellow institute student Margery Stegman, a graphic designer, and institute graduate Judy Kokesh, Fairbairn produced a plan this year for The Blessing of the Bay Boathouse and its surrounding landscape, a beautiful but overlooked state-owned green space on the Mystic River in Somerville.
"The river is not very usable now because of steep slopes and rocks, but we have proposed wooden jetties with railings where you can sit or fish. The current dock is inconvenient for canoes and sculls, so we want to replace that. We've had a number of workshops around this, and what we've come up with reflects what the community would like. I think it would be a fabulous thing. What we'd like now is to get the attention of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation so they can think about how they can fund this."
A new outdoor learning center for the Children's Museum in Easton is another current COGdesign project. ''My family had a camp when I was a child where I could go wandering in the woods day and night," recalled museum board chair Sharon Collins. ''Kids today spend their daytime indoors or in structured activities. Parents are uncomfortable with the idea of them playing at the edge of woods. We want to create a safe area for outdoor play and add outdoor museum programs."
A garden designed to promote interaction between residents of a new senior center and the neighborhood is a recent COGdesign effort. It is named for Fran Hintsa, a supporter of the Community Living Network, which advocates for affordable elderly housing around Newton. When the group was looking for potential housing sites, Hintsa identified a former nursing home for sale next door to her home in Newton Center. The group bought the Victorian building, and after Hintsa's sudden death two years ago, the network's board voted to create a garden in her memory in the front yard of the new senior residence, which opened Nov. 1.
Neighbors and nearby businesses contributed time and money to the garden project, which is chaired by Virginia Robinson.
"Two young women [Sarah Kish and Janice Reilly] from COGdesign spent a lot of time with us collecting all our ideas and came back with a wonderful design, which is being implemented this week with plants we dug up from Fran's garden with her son's permission just before her house was sold," Robinson said.
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company
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