As a city always mindful of its history, Philadelphia takes a long-term view of park landscape design. That’s why every major park landscape project begins with input from an array of interests, including landscape architects, maintenance personnel, horticulturists and park conservancies.
“Your approval processes and your guidance you give your landscape architects will determine the outcome,” says Christopher Palmer, director of operations and landscape management at the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation. “If they design something in a vacuum, without the input of the appropriate maintenance and horticultural staff, you’ll end up with a lesser project and often a project that will cost you more in the long run.”
Mark Focht, first deputy commissioner for Philadelphia Parks and Recreation and president-elect of the American Society of Landscape Architects, notes that long-term maintenance of the park is a key early consideration in the design.
“Almost all of our designed landscapes that have been built in the last eight or nine years, whether it’s a new park or a restoration of a park, are done with a high degree of collaboration between our operations staff and the project team,” Focht says. “We bring the issue of maintenance in at the forefront of the design process.”
“I look at the whole design-build- maintenance aspect as being so very integral that maintenance staff have to be part of the discussion early on in order to make sure the design isn’t beyond the capacities of the resources available for maintenance,” Palmer adds.
One area where maintenance is integrated into design is in the use of standardized fixtures that save time as well as money. Since parts are bought in bulk and are on-hand in inventory, repairs can be made more quickly. And standardized paving choices also mean that repairs are also much simpler, such as after utility work, according to Palmer.
Focht says, “Working with our skilled trades group, we tested several benches and several different light fixtures and picked standardized ones that we can now either have contracts to maintain or buy parts like ballasts for lights and bulbs in bulk, so things aren’t overly customized.”
However, that doesn’t mean the department isn’t willing to occasionally try new things. Sister Cities Park, designed by Bryan Hanes, features a café with a green roof and a children’s interactive water feature with complex maintenance requirements that staff reviewed thoroughly in the design phase. The $1.6 million renovation of Hawthorne Park includes permeable pavers, and the park is completely disconnected from the city stormwater system. The parks department worked closely with the city water department on the stormwater management features and maintenance plan. Some of the more fun features of the park design by LRSLA Studios are molded plastic sculptural chaise longues in a bright “orange-mango” color.
“We ordered and bought one of the mango chaises, and we tried to demolish it,” Focht chuckles. “We literally graffittied it, we burned it, we gouged into it with a knife — we tried to do all this stuff to it in order to see how it could be maintained. It held up very well and we found we could repair it, so we ordered four of them and installed them in the park. A year later, they [look like they] haven’t been touched, even though people use them all the time.”
Choosing materials that will hold up to site conditions is another long-term design strategy with maintenance in mind. The department considers the history of graffiti in a neighborhood when choosing between wood and metal benches for parks, for example.
Park usage is another consideration. Benjamin Franklin Parkway is a beautiful stretch of parkland running from city hall to the art museum that provides a huge space for events ranging from charity walks to marathons to concerts to Fourth of July celebrations. Major landscape projects have reconfigured the area, especially around the Swan Fountain and Logan Circle. According to Palmer, even the most durable landscapes and hardscapes would have difficulty withstanding such abuse, but everything is designed to be easily restorable.
Philadelphia’s changing climate is even taken into consideration. With increasingly hotter summer weather, more and more Philadelphia parks include irrigation systems. One senior park staff member serves as the liaison for all irrigation systems in the parks and reviews all of the irrigation plans. The parks department now has a system-wide contractor to maintain all irrigation systems, and they review design plans as well. Palmer notes this intense coordination can help avoid problems like sprinkler heads being placed too close to sidewalks and potentially being hit by snowplow blades.
“In the RFP process...a lot of questions are about maintenance and their familiarity and comfort with working with operations staff during the design process,” Focht says. “We’ve been doing it this way for so many years now that it’s really second nature to almost all the consultants we work with.”
One important partner in long-term maintenance for high visibility downtown parks is the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Founded in 1827, PHS began working on improving Philadelphia parks in the late 1980s. For downtown parks, the society has raised money and hired landscape architects to design the parks. Once the design is complete, PHS takes on management in concert with the parks department by hiring a project manager to oversee the landscape contractor hired by the parks department. The group also provides funds to provide more modest design improvements at neighborhood parks.
Nancy O’Donnell, director of PHS public landscapes, says their ongoing role in park landscape maintenance brings in-depth background knowledge to new design projects as well as the long-term maintenance of existing landscapes.
“We understand at a pretty deep level what the idea behind the design was initially,” O’Donnell says. “The people part of the landscapes is really critical — that you have people who are knowledgeable about landscapes and who get to know these landscapes really well.”
For example, she describes how at the azalea garden, landscape architects are brought back occasionally to walk through the garden, looking at how the shifting of sunny to shady spots may affect different perennials. Or at the Swan Fountain in Logan Square, strong “desire lines” through plant beds were solved by moving a few things around.
“There’s this constant sort of evolution of the details, but we want to really keep the big picture very coherent,” she says. “You have to tweak things over time and make some common sense and sometimes thoughtful decisions.”
Above all, however, is the importance of long-term project collaboration between maintenance staff and the design team right from the start.
“They’re absolutely critical — I think we’ve been much more successful in the parks we’ve done in the past ten years because we’ve brought maintenance in up front and have engaged them early on with our project team,” Focht says. “I really appreciate the fact that all the landscape architects who work for us actually welcome that input and enjoy that interaction, and they learn from it too.”
“Openness and flexibility, a willingness to communicate, learn and educate each other — these are truly simple ways to advance these projects,” Palmer notes. “You can pick up the phone…and share information to educate each other. Ultimately it becomes a much smoother project. Each project we work on becomes easier and easier because we start thinking like each other.”
Elizabeth Beard is the Managing Editor of Parks & Recreation.