By David Decoteau
How it happened:
The improvements happening at the Danville Middle School have been envisioned, discussed, and now are reality because of the efforts of many people, under the primary direction and orchestration of Tom Hiravi. Tom brought me, (and Earthscapes) into the picture years ago, mostly on a volunteer consultant basis to talk about how to best craft places for kids and community in a challenging site of flat, sunny, industrial byproducts buried beneath 4” of topsoil.
We talked about the community vegetable garden, the shade tree plantings, and I offered my thoughts and experiences in regard to engaging places for kids, based on my 40 years in the landscape business, combined with classes on the subject I had taken at Temple University, Rutgers and ongoing education at Penn State as a landscape designer for my business.
Below we will walk you through one part of those discussions: the section of the project between the new pavilion and playground.
There is more to this landscape than might immediately be obvious to the casual observer. Hope you enjoy exploring this space and our ideas…
The Concept and Goal:
To bring beautification to this otherwise unsightly, hot, stark, and frankly unbearable wasteland around the new pavilion and playground…WHILE entertaining kids and quietly teaching them about their world, community, and challenges/opportunities they may face in their futures.
The original site. Why would anyone use this space?
The Theme: FINDING YOUR WAY
Thinking about middle school as a 60 year old man is traumatic. So many conflicting thoughts and experiences during that developmental part of your life. I remember doing things at that age and thinking to myself almost immediately afterwards, “why did I do that?” It wasn’t until years later that I learned about hormones, frontal lobe brain development in boys, and that we were ALL DOING THINGS WE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND at that time. It’s part of growing up.
So, since it’s a confusing and challenging part of life, what better message to send than one about “finding your way?” But how to do that with landscaping? Well, folks have been doing it for centuries via Asian or Japanese gardens, and so instead of reinventing the wheel; we simply decided to follow their lead.
Inspiration: Japanese Gardens
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Inspiration: Japanese Gardens 〰️
If you notice, all of these beautiful Japanese gardens have some things in common. Can you see what they are? If not, we will explain some of the concepts of these gardens as you get deeper into this piece.
The Plan:
What you see below is the working concept plan initially submitted to the school for consideration and review. It gives the basic ideas as they might be installed. As with most projects, this design lays out the large objectives, but there is still some room in the plan for improvisation and seizing upon opportunities that would become evident and obvious as the project progressed. It was nice working with Tom, who shared the larger vision of the project, and who was a great Conductor for this symphony of ideas.
The concept plan. Pretty close to “as built”, but I’d like to think the “as built” is better and has more nuance.
Features and Opportunities:
Direction, Philosophy, and the Duality of life:
This is the “heady” part of the plan. The stuff you might not notice, if I didn’t spell it out for you here.
This knowledge you can share with your friends at parties, and they will think you are smart. Many of these subtle messages are based in Eastern concepts of gardening that have been around for centuries. Some might call that, “Japanese gardening”. I have always been a fan because the Japanese theory on gardening is that the landscape should be immersive, interactive, and suggest to the visitor some lessons of life.
Here are some of those concepts in this garden:
The long view -
When you drive up to this garden, there is one unobstructed view from the road, parking areas, thru the pavilion, and all the way to the playground. The kids that come here will focus on that playground as their objective. They want to get to all that brightly colored, fun equipment and spend active time with their friends. Kids know what they want. And from the start of this garden, it looks like a straight, unobstructed, dash to that goal.
However, we adults all know that no goals come that easily; and this garden aims to illustrate that point. because in the middle of that “straight shot” to the playground, lies a hill to climb. And on top of that challenge, the hill obscure from view a swinging bridge challenge that might be scary because you are literally on “unstable ground” when you cross. You have to dare to address this challenge…or chart another course.
And another course does exist. It’s a bit longer than the “straight shot”, but anyone unwilling or unable to meet the hills and swinging bridge challenge can choose to back-track a little, change course, and travel around the circle sidewalk that encloses the hilled garden. And by choosing that alternate course, that person will have a completely different experience than had they chosen the “straight shot”. They will see more. They will see things from a different perspective. And if they keep their eye on their goal (the playground), they can achieve the same end result as those who chose a different and maybe more direct course. And they may get to their goal with knowledge and experience that meets or exceeds their counterparts, because they had patients, persistence, determination, and discipline.
Bridge stones -
The original plan included “large stones” in the landscape to create the hill, but when the opportunity presented itself to purchase authentic, repurposed, Danville Susquehanna River bridge stones…well, the opportunity to squeeze more learning into this landscape was just too much to pass by.
If you are unaware, the existing bridge from Danville to Riverside is not the original. Instead, it is one of many bridges that have stood on or near that location over the centuries. Below are some photos of some of those past bridges, and those photos include images that show the stones we used in this landscape that now sit as part of our regional heritage at the Danville Middle School landscape.
Bonus Points! - there was a covered bridge at that location before these bridges. If you want to read about how that bridge was destroyed by ice…you can use THIS LINK
Look more closely
If you take the time to really look at these large, rectangular stones, you will see numbers and square holes carved into the stones themselves. The numbers were to help with construction, and denoted the location the stone was to occupy in the bridge abutment. The square holes are the “balancing point” of the stones as calculated by the stones Masons. Remember, these bridges were not being built with the huge cranes and hydraulic equipment we have today. Instead, calculation for each stone were made in regard to where the metal tong-like tool would grab the stone, so it could be hoisted into place. Depending on how the stone needed to sit in the bridge base, the balancing points were created to help the stone hang and land in its spot in the right orientation.
Pretty cool how Masons of the time were skilled enough to make those calculations!
Yin Yang Compass -
If you look at the original plan, you can see that the round shape you see from above gives us some opportunities for artistic interpretation…so we took advantage!
Yin Yang sign
From a Birds Eye view, you can notice that the mulched areas of the circle create a “yin-yang” sign. This symbol is consistent with out asian landscape design inspiration for this job, and also represents one of the oldest and most basic, true and meaningful lessons in life a young person can learn…the duality of life and man.
Extra Credit - the trees are planted in the landscape where the “dots” in the yin-yang would be, and they roughly are oriented North and South with the compass.
Duality is the idea that there is always an equal and opposite in life.
Without night, there can be no day.
Without good, there can be no evil.
Without truth, there can be no lie.
Without high, there can be no low.
These are the basic rules of life, and the earlier a person can learn this timeless lesson, the better life they will have. So why not teach it to them on the Middle School playground area, so they can reflect on it until they are ripe old people?
The Compass
This is a little more straight forward, but no less valuable and meaningful. If you don’t know what direction you are going, you can’t ever achieve those goals. Always keep your orientation. Be that orientation in the physical world or in your morals and ethics. Always stay true to yourself and honest and accurate in your way finding. That doesn’t mean you can’t deviate a little from the straight line course to investigate something along the way, but once investigated…either set a new course…or get back on track.
Rain Garden -
A rain garden it a place designed to give run off water a place to get into the ground water table…instead of running down the street, into a culvert, then into a pipe, and then into a stream or river.
But giving water a place to slow down it’s velocity, and take its time percolating into the soil, you can increase groundwater amounts, slow erosion, and keep the water on site for use by the local flora and fauna. Everyone wins.
If you look at some of these photos, this area had a problem with water.
We used stone and excavation and some pipes to give the water somewhere out of the way to go, slow it’s speed, and allow it time to get into the ground…where it belongs.
…and finally, The Zen Garden teaches the Master an unexpected last lesson:
Here we are, being all clever and thinking we can teach the kids some lessons about life as wise adults using thousands of years old eastern landscaping techniques and philosophies… but then life comes along and humbles us.
In the middle of this project, we “lost a pour”. If you know anything about construction or concrete: that is a phrase you never want to hear. What it means is that the concrete hardened before you could do everything to it that you wanted to do. In this case, the finishing. It’s the nightmare scenario for installing concrete…and we were living it. It can mean completely redoing those sections from scratch. If/When it happens, you want to cry. It feels like all is lost. You get upset. You lose your focus and your way…
But then, we took a breath. Stood back and thought to ourselves, “Is there a lesson here? Is there something to be learned? Can this unfortunate thing that happened actually be a blessing in disguise? Can we pivot? Can this thing that presently feels so bad…actually be something good that makes us GROW?
And from that one bad pour, the idea of the WALK OF LIFE was born.
So now, as you walk on the concrete, you can see that it’s all a little different…and there is a reason for that difference: it represents us as we walk through life:
The concrete at the beginning of the job is rough. It gets the job done, and functions as concrete functions…but it’s just potential…it’s not finished yet. This is how we represent children as they are coming into the middle school - tons of potential, strength and opportunity…but still real rough around the edges.
As you get to the circle part of the landscape, you will see that concrete walkway is finished, polished and complete. It has color and texture and interest. It knows what it is, and it thinks it knows how to get where it wants to go. This concrete are your adult years.
As you approach the playground (your final destination), the concrete is still functional…but it’s pretty worn looking. Beat up a little. A tad uneven. It shows on its face that it’s been through something. You will look the same in this portion of your life, and you should be proud of every crack, flaw and stain…because you earned them. The flaws are the character. It’s what makes you unique and special. Polished and flashy is nice, but a worn out old tee-shirt is still your favorite article of clothing. Wear it proudly at this point in you “walk of life”.
We hope you have enjoyed learning about the Danville Middle School Pavilion and Playground landscaping project. We put a lot of thought into it. We hope this article will help you see and appreciate all that thought, and perhaps now when you visit, and sit on one of the benches you can ponder some of the existential questions this landscape asks. There is generational benchmarks and wisdom built into that project. We hope it helps bring out the best and most inquisitive in all who take the time to consider it’s timeless questions and suggestions for living a full and directed life.