Throughout the course of a semester, students engaged with community groups to provide stakeholders with design concepts, implementation strategies, and management plans useful to the community. This section summarizes the community projects we have worked on, and, for each project, student blogs sharing what they learned throughout the process.
Baldwin County High School, located in Milledgeville, GA, fosters the education of 1,311 students. The school offers a variety of programs both inside and outside the classroom to "enhance the educational experience and create well-rounded students."
Baldwin Grows Garden anchors Baldwin County High School with its landscape, providing service to the community through agricultural function as well as aesthetic improvement. The project seeks to create outdoor environments suited for learning between various departments and disciplines while following the principles of universal design. Sustainable programming such as planting beds, compost systems, and orchard space allow for use of permaculture. The design fosters connection between people and the land: promoting food appreciation, environmental stewardship, and empowerment.
Westbrook Park sits in the middle of downtown Cordele, right across Eleventh Avenue and the Albany State University Satellite Campus. It was established in 2003 after the land was donated to the city under the premise it must remain a park.
The re-imagining of Westbrook Park aims to create a space ideal for multi-use and small outdoor activity. Injecting color into downtown Cordele with vibrant planting and varying hardscape materials creates visual interest in such an important location. The goal is to generate a space that compliments the needs and desires of surrounding businesses and the citizens of Cordele.
Magnolia Manor is a senior living home. Located in Buena Vista, GA which is about halfway between Butler, GA and Americus, GA, or about 3 hours SW of Athens, GA.
The mission of this project is to design and create a sensory garden for Magnolia Manor that enhances the well-being of its residents by providing an accessible, inclusive, and therapeutic outdoor space. This garden will be thoughtfully designed to cater to both passive and active users, promoting relaxation, sensory engagement, and physical activity. Through the integration of accessible pathways, comfortable seating, aromatic plants, visual stimuli, and interactive elements, the garden will offer a calming, immersive experience that supports the mental, emotional, and physical health of residents. By fostering a connection with nature, encouraging social interaction, and providing opportunities for gentle exercise and therapy, this project aims to be a restorative space that contributes to the overall quality of life for the residence.
Broadacres was the second public housing community developed in Athens, GA, and it houses a majority black, low income population. Sheats Social Services provides a reading program in the Broadacres community center which aims to address critical literacy gaps, especially among black, elementary age children.
The Broadacres Community Center provides social and educational resources to its community, and we aim to help enhance its outdoor spaces through landscape and furniture design. Through maintainable design and community engagement, we are striving to create interactive and educational spaces for everyone.
The Pinewoods Library and Learning Center provides bilingual services and programs to the mobile home community of Pinewood Estates. This community embodies a strong Latin American culture, housing around 360 families, of which about 95% are Hispanic. Residents of this community have expressed a lack of engaging outdoor spaces that encourage education and exercise.
The goal of this project is to provide opportunities that encourage outdoor opportunities for exercise, spaces that foster reading and learning, educational opportunities, and provide the community with colorful and maintainable plantings.
Advantage Behavioral Health Systems provides person-centered treatment and recovery support to individuals and families experiencing behavioral health challenges, intellectual/developmental disabilities, and addictive diseases. To better serve the individuals on the site, the current outdoor areas of the facility needed improvement to promote healing, relaxation, and rejuvenation. The proposed design reinforces Advantage Behavioral Health Systems' ideals and values in providing support and fostering a healing and healthy environment.
Our edible garden effort, in partnership with Georgia Family Connection, is committed to achieving a vision in which every family, regardless of background, may thrive. We believe edible landscapes have the potential to improve food security, social engagement, and mental health. This initiative is in line with Georgia Family Connection's mission to ensure resilient communities, providing a beacon of hope and self-sufficiency via the creation of an exemplary
food garden and a comprehensive introductory gardening guidebook.
Sacred Roots Farm offers a purposefully designed residence on a sustainable working farm to support sexually exploited and trafficked women and their children in finding trust, healing, and hope as envisioned by God. Participants gain self reliance and independence through paid labor on the farm, learning essential skills such as budgeting, daily chores, and social understanding.
Our goal is to provide outdoor places of healing for women and children who have escaped sex trafficking. This project delegates pasture land to improve self-sufficiency, creates a layered garden to teach participants about tranquility and growth, provides a chapel garden for spiritual connection, and crates nature trails to encourage independence.
To create the most pertinent design, our team researched the impacts of landscape design elements on those who suffer with PTSD. We found that enclosed spaces, select aromatics, and cool colors were key elements of crafting a healing space.
Three Oaks Park provides a space for recreation and community gathering for residents of the Merry Park neighborhood.
The park has recently undergone a series of infrastructure improvements to address flooding issues, which has created an opportunity for landscape design to enhance the natural beauty of Three Oaks Park.
Our aim throughout this process was to a facilitate an ongoing collaboration effort with residents to understand the possibilities and initiatives of Three Oaks Park. A combination of feedback methods encouraged collaboration, resulting in a design for a more functional and welcoming Three Oaks Park.
The aim of this project was to develop a landscape design for Brightpaths, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing child abuse through supporting families. Our goal is to promote parent-child connection through landscape design. We aimed to design a low-maintenance landscape plan that leverages healing landscape and interactive playscape design to feel safe, fun, and beautiful for both children and caregivers.
Merit Award, Student Work, 2023
Southeast Regional American Society of Landscape Architects
Bowman, South Carolina is a rural town about an hour northwest of Charleston. The initial 2020 census data finds that the population sits just below 800, a 19% decline from the 2010 population and a 34% decline from the population in 2000. The numbers tell the story of a small town in the south that is losing residents and families to larger cities with more amenities. In fact, Bowman is the only city in Orangeburg County that does not have a safe and functional city park.
In Fall 2021, their project proposal was selected to be a part of Katherine Melcher's Community Design Studio. Our team was quickly briefed on the project and sent off to the races to begin working alongside the community to envision the best design possible for Bowman's community park.
To read about the design process, visit the project blog here.
The Bibb County UGA Extension serves the Macon-Bibb community by providing science-based education and programming in agriculture and the environment, family, well-being, and 4H youth. In its new home at the historic Robert S. Train Center, the Extension is looking to develop a landscape plan that will complement this mission. Students in the LAND 7050S studio were brought in to engage the Extension staff, volunteers, and community members in the design process for the site.
To read about the design process, visit the project blog here.
Kate's Club is a non-profit in Atlanta, GA that aims to empower children who have experienced the loss of a parent or sibling through advocacy, recreational group support programs, engagement, and education. The club believes in the power of a healing community to overcome that grief.
The collaborative effort between Kate’s Club and the LAND 7050 studio sought to achieve a healing landscape design for the club through community participation. The student design team consisted of three graduate students: Emily Whisenant, Joshua Goeden and Pranisha Karmacharya. These students, in cooordination with Kate's Club worked towards a vision of providing interactive outdoor space so that the club’s members can be outside as much as possible when they are at the club house, and also to encourage children to touch, smell and experience the natural world that empowers their curiosity.
To read about the design process, visit the project blog here.
The historic Brooklyn Cemetery was established in Athens, GA to serve the city's growing African American community. In recent years, it had been abandoned until the Friends of the Brooklyn Cemetery began seeking resources to restore the overgrown burial grounds and rebuild ties in the community it once served.
Professor Melcher's studio of MLA students first engaged with the Friends of the Brooklyn Cemetery in 2012 to produce a master management plan that they have been working off of for the last eight years. In Fall 2020, a new collaborative effort between the Brooklyn Cemetery and the Engagement Studio/Community Landscape Lab was established to collect community input on detailed design elements. The student design team consisted of four graduate students: Shihui Deng, David Evans, Aron Hall, and Adedamola Okunmadewa. Throughout the course of the semester, these students led a series of engagement activities that directed the design of Brooklyn Cemetery in a way that will connect the surrounding community with its history.
To read about the design process, visit the project blog here.
Kate's Club is a non-profit in Atlanta, GA that aims to empower children who have experienced the loss of a parent or sibling through advocacy, recreational group support programs, engagement, and education. The club believes in the power of a healing community to overcome that grief.
The collaborative effort between Kate’s Club and the Engagement Studio/Community Landscape Lab sought to achieve a healing landscape design for the club through community participation. The student design team consisted of three graduate students: Emily Whisenant, Joshua Goeden, and Pranisha Karmacharya. These students, in cooordination with Kate's Club worked towards a vision of providing interactive outdoor space so that the club’s members can be outside as much as possible when they are at the club house, and also to encourage children to touch, smell and experience the natural world that empowers their curiosity.
To read about the design process, visit the project blog here.