Soroptimist Park Scenarios

We did it! Collaborative service-learning in the midst of a pandemic! During the Fall 2020 semester my HORT 432 studio students and I collaborated with Dr. Geoffrey Poole, T.A. Libby Morh and his ENSC 448 Stream Restoration Ecology course. We worked with the Downtown Bozeman Partnership investigating alternative futures for Soroptimist Park, the Rouse St. Public Parking Log, and Bozeman Creek. The project was initiated through the CATS program at Western Transportation Institute. Student teams across courses put in significant energy to collaborate and learn from one another and I am so proud of their work. Students also had the incredible opportunity to learn through feedback from three practicing professionals who had worked on past conceptual design ideas for the parking lot and creek. VoiceThread proved to be a useful tool for pulling together input on visual/spatial content and oral presentations, and I highly recommend it.

Interested in the details? Check out the finished report on the CATS website under our Fall 2020 course.

A huge thank you to our amazing project partners (Chris Naumann, Emily Cope, Susan Gallagher) and professional mentors (Troy Scherer - Design 5 Landscape Architecture, Rob Pertzborn - Intrinsik Architecture, Jim Lovell - Confluence Inc.)!!

BCC Landscape Framework Plan and Development

My student and I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with the BCC community on ideas for a landscape master plan. The resulting framework plan completed December 2019 defines 6 unique and connected zones that protect and celebrate the campus’ natural and cultural assets. Each student developed schematics for one zone to further explore and illustrate site potentials. This work was influential in the USDA-Tribal Program at BCC (Drew Landry) receiving a grant for agroforestry and planting implementation in Summer 2020. In Fall 2020, Whitney Bretz, my undergraduate research assistant continued design development research related to the campus farm and agroforestry concept as well as a cultural garden on central campus that would offer a small gathering space and hands-on education for significant native and cultural plants. Implementation work was delayed during 2020 due to Covid-19 challenges and risks for Native American students at BCC, but I am excited to see where the project leads in 2021 and beyond. I am continually inspired by my partner, Drew Landry, and his drive for food security for Native American communities and love for the land.

Knowledge Transfer Blitz

Service-learning and cross-course or cross-college collaborations on applied projects is resource and logistically intensive. So, what are smaller strategies with high impacts for active and experiential learning?! My students absolutely loved this one class period (2 hours) meet-up during site analysis between our HORT 440 Urban Landscape Design Studio and the HONR 494 Design Thinking honors course taught by professors in the College of Engineering. Both courses were exploring future improvements for the College Street corridor and streetscape through different lenses. I was amazed at how much the students learned from one another in such a short period. I noticed how the event energized students as we dove into schematic design iteration.

What are other small footprint, high impact ideas for collaborative learning? Shared project reviews? Midterm feedback swap? And, how to the benefits of these experiences differ from semester-long service-learning projects?

Thank you to Mandy Rutherford and Lucas Graf for helping to make this happen.

Johnny Dohner and Sam McDonald

Site Visit to Blackfeet Community College

This semester my Advanced Landscape Design studio is working with Blackfeet Community College and the USDA-Tribal Extension Program in Browning, Montana to explore sustainable, healing landscape plans for the campus properties. We had an incredible site visit - a big thank you to Drew Landry and all the participants at our design workshop. We are so grateful for your time and willingness to share stories about your sky, land, water, and people. I am so excited for our MSU and Blackfeet students to get to work in the studio this week!

Park(ing) Day 2019

Wow! I am sure glad we decided to switch the day we installed our parklet along College Street…we went from 40 degrees and raining all day to 65 degrees and sunshine. This year students designed a ski-tea house with a tree of inquiry, where site users wrote down ideas on a tree leaf for how they would make College Street more people-friendly. The results of this participatory-design exercise will be shared with the City of Bozeman traffic engineers and local sustainable transportation planners working on this street corridor. I’m so proud of my students creativity and execution, and glad to see the project created zero waste since one of my students is re-using the ski-tea house in his backyard.

Pollinators and Poplar Progress

MSU Pollinator Symposium 2019

Spring semester Professor Jennifer Britton and I advised four independent study students working with MSU Pollinator Health Center and Grounds & Facilities to design a pollinator-focused garden in the heart of campus. Their work is part of a larger initiative to be certified a Bee Campus USA, the only one in the middle-Rockies ecoregion. Through their efforts and energy, I’ve learned new things about pollinators and am inspired to continue scholarship that integrates disciplines across our broad Plant Sciences & Plant Pathology department. Thanks J, J, R, & S!

Site axon by Johnny Dohner

My research on greening a former gas station site in Poplar, MT has also continued. I look forward to collaborating with Fort Peck on planting design and hardscape details next!

Service-Learning for Silos

Matt Deane site plan line work

This fall my HORT 432 studio worked with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and a Citizens Action Group on master planning for Silos Recreation Area (Silos), a 250 acre campground on Canyon Ferry Lake reservoir in Townsend, Montana. The site is 45 minutes south of Helena and a statewide destination for water recreation enthusiasts, offering a marina, numerous boat launches, and amazing waterfront views to the Big Belt Mountains. Building off a recently completed Framework Plan by Robert Peccia & Associates, the students were tasked with envisioning master plan ideas.

The student’s schematic master plan called for six distinct districts based on land use, programming, management scenarios, and water and land recreation nodes. For the final review, students further developed site design ideas for each district. The students presented their final work to design professionals, County Commissioners, and other community leaders – an audience with whom not many undergraduates have had the opportunity to interface! I was so proud of their professionalism.

Overall, our work provided concepts and visuals for ongoing discussions among stakeholders regarding site potentials as they progress toward applying for further funding, and ultimately, an approved site plan and construction. I feel lucky to be part of these service-learning projects – the applied context energizes students and I am continually energized by engaged citizens and their compassion for improving Montana landscapes.

Matt Deane rendering site plan

Park(ing) Day 2018

My landscape design students in HORT 432 Advanced Landscape Design designed, constructed, and installed one pop-up park on College Street as part of an international event, Park(ing) Day (parkinday.org) on Friday, September 21. We could not have asked for a more beautiful fall day. Their project was the only one installed in Montana!

For one day, the tiny park successfully challenged people’s every-day perceptions of public space. The objectives for this class project were to develop a shared site design, work within budget and time constraints, assess material sourcing and disposal strategies, learn construction techniques, develop communication and media relation strategies, and analyze user engagement with the space.

We collaborated with the Division of Agricultural Education, which amped up the student learning, design options, and construction quality. A huge thank you to Dr. Dustin Perry and his graduate student, Jondie Rianda, who helped make this project a reality! Also, thank you to David Baumbauer, John Van Delinder - City of Bozeman’s Street, Sign, and Signal Superintendent, Greenspace, Gallatin Valley Sod Farm, and all who stopped by.

KaBAM!

Thanks to all the amazing volunteers and project partners, we finished building the new playground at the Bozeman Sports Park in KaBOOM! project history record time! I forgot how satisfying (reminiscent of my Tree Trust days) it is to move nearly 150 CY of mulch with a team of helping hands.

MSU professor who teaches next-generation landscape designers wins award

Montana State University news article link: Western Region APLU Award for Excellence in College and University Teaching in the Food and Agricultural Sciences. Thanks to my colleague, Dr. Tracy Dougher, "I" was able to receive the award in Guam. 

Engaging the Next Generation

Article Link: Landscape Architecture Foundation’s past Olmsted Scholars Interview series. 

Green Infrastructure Galore

Yesterday was an exciting day! It started off with the 2018 Montana Stormwater Conference....Diana Hammer (EPA Region 8), Ashleigh Weeks (Fort Peck Tribes), and I presented on utilizing green infrastructure to transform blighted properties and create community amenity in Poplar, Montana. As part of the talk, I shared the revised site design for the new Poplar Plaza, which wouldn't have been possible without Andrew Davis and Hailey Neutgens (a shout out to these MSU landscape design graduates who volunteered their time and vision!). In addition, I presented with Amy Murdick, a landscape architect and engineer with Tetra Tech, on the aesthetics of plant-heavy green infrastructure strategies. We discussed the value of aesthetics and maintenance, appearance, and community integration tips to for long-term success of green infrastructure performance. Finally, I traveled to Butte with HORT 440 students for their project review on BA&P Hill trail futures. Their team posters are on display at the Butte-Silverbow City-County Courthouse. A day filled with conversations on stormwater, plants, Superfund regeneration, and people experiencing landscape is a lucky day.

Parks in Poplar

This fall, my HORT 432 Advanced Landscape Design studio is working with the Fort Peck Tribe’s Office of Environmental Protection and the U.S. EPA on site designs for two public parks in Poplar, Montana. The partners’ goals are to utilize landscape design for redeveloping vacant, under-performing properties and to demonstrate how to mimic natural systems to treat stormwater while being drought resilient.

Mid-October we traveled to Poplar (whew – my longest trip with undergrads!) to meet with project partners and facilitate a community design workshop. We toured the town, listened to presentations from Tribe’s Office of Environmental Protection, learned about Souix American Indian cultural uses of plants from an elder, Louis Red Elk, walked along the Poplar River, and visited the project sites. On the sites students measured elements like slopes, dimensions, vegetation species and structure, utility locations, and site lines.

Students facilitated a design workshop for nearly 40 participants. The students organized and created the material and activities that were presented, and I was so proud of their professionalism and communication skills. The Tribes prepared an Indian taco feast following the workshop, which felt especially celebratory after the students’ hard work.

That night students summarized findings from the community workshop and developed initial drawings to discuss park design goals at a morning meeting before heading back to Bozeman. We toured the Fort Peck Interpretive Center and the dam powerhouse before the beautiful drive home through Glasgow, Upper Missouri River Breaks, and Harlowtown.

Students have been hard at work in the studio developing site design ideas that meet stakeholder needs and landscape performance targets. If you’re interested in seeing their final design proposals, please join us for the final review on Monday, December 4, noon-3:00 PM in Animal Bioscience Building 145.

Trident Peregrine Trail Opening

This weekend we celebrated several years of hard work with the official ribbon cutting ceremony for Phase 1 of the Trident Peregrine Trail at Missouri Headwaters State Park. What an amazing resource to experience bird diversity and habitat! I feel honored to have worked on this project with amazing collaborators at Sacajawea Audubon Society, MT Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, and CRH-US. My students and I helped with the trail master plan, interpretive signage design, and landscape and bird drawings - a fabulous learning opportunity for budding landscape designers.

Presenting + Representing Landscape Performance

Congrats to senior landscape design students, who successfully presented their final team work on Landscape Design Scenarios for Water Conservation in the Middle Rockies! Their work was the most data-driven to date, and really drove home the quantity and quality of benefits that result from different design choices.

Since then, Erin Barker received a grant to continue research and refinements for a design booklet for the City of Bozeman on alternatives for residential planting design that saves on outdoor watering. Did you know that around 1/3 of all potable water the City treats is used for outdoor water use?! Single-family properties are responsible for the majority of this outdoor water use. Finally, the course has also spurred a research project on learning and teaching landscape performance with two other Universities.