As the population boom along Colorado’s front-range continues, many housing developments have been popping up throughout the area in an attempt to satisfy the need to house the burgeoning growth. While many of these new developments tout their environmental and community principles to attract buyers, one PUD (planned unit development) project we have had the opportunity to work on takes those ideas seriously and is truly committed to building a green and inclusive community.
This project, called Main Street Erie, is still in the approval process. When it is ultimately built, Main Street Erie will provide new housing options for the growing town of Erie (located in Weld County), while simultaneously following many of the environmental and community ideals that the citizens of Colorado hold dear to their hearts.
The design of Main Street Erie is informed by New Urbanist
concepts and inspired by the idealized small town of America’s yesteryear.
White picket fences blend with detached walks, traditional architecture with
inviting porches, and cozy alley homes to bring back the charm of an idealized
residential development your grandparents may have grown up in as children.
To be efficient with land area, homes are placed closer together with smaller yards. Because most of the lots do not provide a large amount of outdoor space, and also because many of the lots have extra accessory dwelling units (ADU’s), it was determined that a community garden space would be a good addition to the project. A large portion of the property was set aside for a garden area with nearly 30 garden plots. In the community garden spaces, residents can work together getting their hands dirty nurturing their green thumbs, while interacting with their neighbors.
The inclusion of ADUs in this development will help address
the need for multiple housing types. ADU’s can help provide variable housing
sizes, which in turn may lead to a more diverse cross-section of community
members.
Near the community garden plots will sit a clubhouse with outdoor gathering spaces, including a whimsically oversized chess board to entertain young and old alike.
Just north-east of the clubhouse a large communal lawn space is planned that will make a perfect community gathering spot for residents and their families to relax and have fun with their neighbors.
This project is an efficient use of the land due to the manner in which housing types are sited together. Homes are situated and designed for maximum solar gain. This will help maximize the efficiency of solar panels. But at the same time, care has been taken to incorporate vines and other plantings along the south sides of buildings to shade the structures from southern exposure, to help minimize heat gain as much as possible.
Main Street Erie has been a great project to be involved
with. With no foreseeable slow-down in development along the Front Range of
Colorado, it is good to see neighborhoods and communities like Main Street Erie
being planned with sustainable and community building aspects being included
from beginning.
This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects. For more information about our business and our services, click here.
It’s summer, which means in Colorado and other surrounding states in the Central Plains/Inter-mountain West region of the country, it is Hail Season!
Earlier in the Summer, the Denver area had several sessions of hail that ripped through gardens and landscapes late one June night. Avid gardens who’d been awakened by the cacophony of thunder, torrential rain and hail that night, sleepily rushed out in the morning to find shredded plants and debris scattered everywhere. I myself had many plants I’d been babying from seed and roots all Spring which were severely torn up by the barrage of hail stones.
This horticultural carnage got me wondering what plants are best at surviving the annual severe weather in our region? As I walked around the yard sadly inspecting the damage, it was easy to see that the native and climate adapted plants fared best from the aerial ice-bullet onslaught. So I thought it might be a good idea to create a list of “hail-proof” (or at least “hail-resistant”) plants. The following list of plants is just a cursory look at some possible plant choices that should be better able to handle hail storms:
Ornamental Grasses:
-Many, many varieties. Some of the hardiest, and easiest to grow in our region are Feather Reed (Calamagrostis spp.), Switch grass (Panicum virgatum), Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), and Giant Sacaton (Sporobolus wrightii)
This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects. For more information about our business and our services, click here.
As the Baby-boomers continue to age, and with Generation X not far behind, the need for assisted living and memory care facilities has been on the rise. Outdoor Design Group has had the opportunity to work on several Assisted Living and Memory Care residential facility projects over the years. One AL/MC project we participated on recently, Landmark Assisted Living, is located in the town of Lafayette, Colorado.
With wonderful clients and a great design team, Landmark Assisted Living and Memory Care was a positive experience for our staff, and something we look back on with pride. This locally owned and operated facility was thoughtfully designed with a unifying landscaped courtyard at the core of the small complex of three buildings.
Landmark Assisted Living and Memory Care overall landscape plan.
The genesis of the idea for this green heart of the site plan came during several different charrette meetings held at our office with the owners, architects, planners, civil engineers and us, the landscape architects. Becoming involved in the project from an early stage helped us insure that the importance of outdoor spaces would be an integral component of this Italianate site design. Inspired by a Tuscan hill town village, an entrance tower concept became one of the key features of the plan.
Three site concepts that were investigated early on in the design process.
Faced with an odd shaped lot, the design team determined that there would be a long entrance drive into the center of the lot, with a circular drive/parking area reached just before the buildings and courtyard. One advantage of the long entrance drive, is the ability to have the courtyard area conveniently located near the circle drive and parking, yet far enough from the busy and noisy traffic of a main thoroughfare.
One concept rendering that came about in the middle of the process.
The circular drive provides a perfect sequence for a vehicle drop-off, but we realized that the center of this drive could also become a nice landscape focal point for people as they entered the site.
After navigating the circle drive, visitors then encounter the entrance gate and tower. Reinforcing the Tuscan theme, the tower provides a delightful “landmark” for the site, and makes a great entrance into the gated landscape.
One of the last concept sketches the team devised as we approached the final site design.
The layout of the buildings is predominately to the north and east sides of the property. This scenario provides a mostly southern and western exposure of the courtyard, which leads to an outdoor space that is rarely shaded in the cold months, fostering an exterior space that is sunny and easy for the snow to quickly melt. A formal water feature anchors the center of the courtyard design.
Due to the open and bright exposure in the courtyard, we proposed a series of raised garden beds where residents of the facility could indulge their green thumbs and get their hands in the dirt. If the sunny space gets too warm, there is a shade structure and several trees to provide protective seating spots to enjoy the outside air. And if residents or staff are in need of a simple stroll to clear their mind or get their blood flowing, there is a small network of interconnected walkways inside this gated courtyard that allows for that.
Digital 3-D rendering of the Landmark site.
The Landmark Assisted Living and Memory Care facility has turned out to be a great project that brings the pleasures of a gated courtyard and Tuscan style architecture together to create a wonderfully inviting and therapeutic outdoor experience for residents, visitors and staff members of the facility.
This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects. For more information about our business and our services, click here.
Some of our favorite projects here at Outdoor Design Group are the landscape renovations. These kind of projects can be quite challenging to work on, but they often turn out to be the most rewarding once the project is completed, the site takes on a fresh new look and the plants have begun to fill in and show off.
A recent project for a non-profit organization near our office was completed a couple years ago, and the landscape plants have been looking great ever since. The landscape areas around the entrance to this organization’s building face mostly south and west with ample amounts of sunshine. With this in mind, we knew we could design a xeric planting plan that would look great throughout a long hot summer, replacing the old plants on site that were more water needy.
And because of the south facing entrance, we had the opportunity to utilize plants that are typically a little too frost tender for the Denver area. But that southern entrance to this building gave us warmer micro-climates we could play with to plant more unique varieties of plants for our area, such as Desert Willow and a selection of cacti.
Luckily our client on this project was a wonderful partner in the endeavor and was very open to the idea of a new landscape of low water and native plants for their freshly renovated office building. The before and after photos shown below offer a glimpse of the transformation:
Painted Lady Butterflies enjoying the xeriscape plants at this Olde Town Arvada landscape makeover.
This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects. For more information about our business and our services, click here.
As more cities and towns are trying to figure out how to deal with traffic problems and to reduce air pollution, many of these places are looking to increase biking as a possible answer those issues. Typically this entails adding or enhancing bike lanes of various types. However, it seems there is one critical bicycling infrastructure item that often gets overlooked or ignored: bike racks and bike parking. If bike parking is not easy to use and readily available, that is one more item a bike rider might add to their list of reasons not to ride their bike to run errands or commute to work.
The best bike rack is one if the simplest: the inverted U bike rack. This plain design looks just like the name implies, an inverted U shaped metal pipe that can be attached to the ground plane via welding to metal plates that are then screwed to the ground. Another installation option is setting the ends of the pipe in sub-grade concrete footers.
A good, basic inverted U bike rack.
Why is this modern classic the best bike rack design for bike users? It provides two stable points of contact to lean their bike; the bike frame can be placed close to the pipe for easy locking and securing (proximity is crucial when using a U-lock bike lock); and you can easily lock two average size/shaped bikes (one on each side) to one U bike rack.
The advantages for a property owner or a municipality who might install a rack is the basic inverted U bike rack is relatively inexpensive, and, unlike consolidated racks (multiple slots for several bikes all connected to one frame) you can install just one, or several racks. Additionally, the inverted U rack is a minimal site furnishing element that can be easily tailored to various building architectural styles.
Another good bike rack: a customized rack that is similar (in function) to an inverted U rack.
Variations on the U-rack abound. Usually they work as well
as the basic U, but if too many extra pieces are added to it, such as logos or
other parts, this can impact the ease of use of the rack, frustrating the
users.
Some of the worst bike rack designs are ones where the bike
owner can only secure and lock their bike wheel, and the frame of the bike does
not get close to the part of the rack where a user can attach a U-lock. This
can put torque or force on the wheel which could bend it. It is also not as
secure as getting the frame of the bike as close to the rack for locking.
Fortunately this design seems to be old and falling out of favor.
A perfect example of a bad back rack. It is difficult to get the bike frame close enough to use a U-lock, unless you lift the bike over the top bar which this bike owner had to do.
Another bad bike rack design is any type for which the bike
owner must lift their bike to attach to the rack. Considering some bike users
may be a child or an elderly person who may not have the strength to lift the
bike up, this kind of rack is not a good option.
And the only thing worse than a frustrating or mediocre bike rack is a non-existent bike rack. Such a situation may lead to the bike owner locking their bike in unwanted areas such as against the trunk of a young street tree, or in a location that might impede pedestrian traffic. Or, it could possibly lead to the bike owner leaving the premises, and going to a different business where there are proper bike racks. If you are a property owner who is considering what site elements and furnishings to include around your property to foster a healthy customer base, I highly recommend that you include bike racks and if possible, make them some form of the inverted U bike rack. Your bike riding customers will be grateful.
This is the official blog of Outdoor
Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects. For more information
about our business and our services, click here.
