Alice's Garden, 2006
Alice’s Garden is a one acre piece of land bounded to the north by W. Garfield Avenue, to the east by N. 20th Street, to the west by N. 21st Street, and to the south by Brown Street Academy. The Urban Open Space Foundation (UOSF) contacted CDS to develop a plan for the garden. Alice’s Garden is part of Johnson’s Park, located east of the site, and there is a plan in progress to revitalized the park including Alice’s Garden.
CDS was asked to come up with a design for a shelter for gathering and where classes can be held in conjunction with UW-Extension’s existing garden programs and Milwaukee Public Schools’ Brown Street Academy. The stakeholders involved with the project include: Urban Open Space Foundation, Brown Street Academy, Walnut Way Neighborhood Association, Johnson’s Park Neighborhood Association, and UW-Extension.
A community meeting to which CDS brought several different scheme ideas was facilitated to have users react to and voice critically what specific pieces of each scheme were particularly of interest to them; what about the garden was most important and how could their roles interact with the new planning and installations. This meeting and the feedback received from it formed a better understanding of what was desired and how the garden would be used. The comments and suggestions from the meeting helped form the basis for a final scheme of this truly community project.
The reception of the final presentation to UOSF in December of 2006 was welcoming and supportive. The Foundation asked for more specific cost calculations and would like to implement as much of CDS’s design as possible.
