- New science-oriented school for kindergarten to 6th grade
students in Exposition Park south of downtown. The classrooms are
clustered by architect Morphosis around a beautiful old brick and steel arched armory now designed to
contain a grove of our Phyllostachys bambusoides (Japanese timber bamboo).
- The armory was initially built in 1914 and housed the Seventh
California which later became the 160th Infantry regiment of the California
National Guard. This building once served as a staging area for troops sent to
WWI, Korean war and WWII. Also, some Olympic competitions were held within the
armory in 1932. In 1961 parts of the building were converted to the Air
and Space gallery. In the late 1980's the armory was used as office space for
Science center staff.
- We
grew the plants for this job on contract, but as with most contract jobs, there was not
enough time available to produce plants large enough to be impressive when
installed. The soil planting mix was 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 sand and 1/3 perlite. A groundcover of Pleioblastus was added between the
Japanese timber at the last minute. It will probably slowly die out as it
is shaded by the large plants. When the plants were first put in they did
not look very good. The owner asked me to take a look and I found the soil
to be too dry, so I recommended increasing the amount of irrigation. When
I came back again in early 2005 I found they were watering the plants for seven
hours every day! I felt that was a bit much, but the plants were looking
much better. I recommended they experiment with trying different
fertilizers (and no fertilizer) in different sections to try to find the right
combo for this very unusual growing situation.
2001
2002
2003
2004
delivery of plants
2005