Mission-Driven: Planting Design for Conservation, Education, and Progress

This session highlights two projects underway in Saint Louis, MO: The new “Gateway to the Garden” at the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Peace Park. Both projects include significant planting design components, driven by the missions of the places and organizations that they serve.  

At the Missouri Botanical Garden, over 46,000 plants were selected, representing over 300 different species, for the new Gateway to the Garden.  Using an ecosystem-based approach to planting design, plants from similar global habitats are combined to reveal similarities and differences existing within related genera. By collaborating closely with MBG horticultural staff, the design is tailored to showcase and preserve several threatened and endangered species, to educate the public, and to highlight the Garden’s broad conservation impact.  The result will be a landscape that balances beauty, biodiversity, and legibility to create a bold new teaching landscape.

At Peace Park, in underserved North St. Louis, a city-wide group of stakeholders have come together to transform underutilized property into a paradigm-shifting park. The Green City Coalition, which includes the City of St. Louis, Missouri Conservation District, and numerous supporting partners, is collaborating to move beyond a traditional, lawn-based framework for city parks. Instead they advocate a broadly-arrayed park planting strategy that bridges conservation values and community uses for health, recreation, aesthetics, and food production. The design - led by local landscape architects Arbolope Studio - is a pair of legible, designed planting systems entwined with park program, education, and local maintenance resources.

Both plantings are slated for installation in 2023.

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