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Durfee Gardens |
Projects
Sunderland Veterans’ Memorial and Park
Durfee Gardens
A Strolling Garden
A Plastic Garden
A Kettle Hole Garden
Bartlett Court
The James Rose Center
Private Access
Clark's Passage
Complete List of Projects
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Once this entire campus was a garden; its original conservatory
an elegant Victorian structure, and the conservatory's surroundings
a functional and beautiful grid of orchards, fields and vineyards.
Rapid unplanned growth in the 1960s resulted in a campus of leftover
spaces. |
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The plan for Durfee Gardens, organized along the historic agricultural
principle of the grid, removed the clutter and utilized existing ancient
trees as part of the fabric of a new landscape. It recaptured lost
space by strengthening pedestrian corridors and created along them
a series of five contemporary interlocking garden spaces inspired
by historic agricultural and landscape typologies. |
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The area nearest the conservatory is an entry courtyard and adjacent
prospect overlooking a glade. Here flat stones from the nearby Berkshire
Hills and round stones from the Connecticut River Valley define the
path, composing with an existing beech and spruce; as well as with
new plantings of birch and mountain laurel. |
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The glade contains ten different types of turf grasses, as well
as over forty species of perennials on its borders. Pressed slightly
into the earth and surrounded by sociable niches, the glade is further
articulated by eleven eighteen foot tall translucent trellises upon
which pink wisteria and morning glory twine. |
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North of the glade is an orchard. It resolves automobile and pedestrian
conflicts by replacing a redundant roadway and a traffic island with
a series of capillary pedestrian paths. These are defined by newly-planted
dwarf apple trees which are being trained to grow on cables; thus
demonstrating contemporary methods of fruit production, while garlands
of sweet autumn clematis herald the return of students to campus in
the Fall. |
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The translucent quality of the conservatory is echoed by screens
that highlight members of an ancient grove while defining edges to
a contemplative meditation garden. |
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The screens help reveal what has been here all along,
and provide a sense of being connected to the earth, plants and light. |
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In winter, the colorful trellises light up
the campus landscape. |
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The space-defining screens continue to reveal a play
of light, now at its lowest angles in relation to snow and rock compositions. |
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Overall, the garden can be seen as a subtle expression
of the interplay between the characteristics of the changing landscape
and its defining edges. |
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Durfee Gardens has been recognized by numerous awards,
including the American Society of Landscape Architects only Honor
Award for design in 1995. It has also been published in numerous periodicals
and books, including the ASLAs centennial One Hundred Years
of Landscape Architecture (1999). |
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