by Roxanne Finn
Admissions Manager, the Conway School
Sometimes our friends are constraints… and sometimes they are other designers
“Constraints are your friend.” That is a lesson I learned early on in my exploration of landscape design, a journey that started with some scrappy permaculture organizing in New York City, propelled me through an apprenticeship at the Paradise Lot urban permaculture homestead in Holyoke, MA to the Conway School, where I now manage admissions. The limitations of a site, be they a shady corner, toxic soil, or a wetland restriction, are often more instructive than the possibilities, and keep the potholes of analysis paralysis from deflating our epic design dreams. What happens, though, when these limits aren’t site-related, but instead life-related?
In the fall of 2019, I first stepped foot on a ten-acre parcel of land in the hilltowns of western Massachusetts. A neglected farmstead awash in rusty fencing, rotting lumber, and endless goldenrod, it immediately captured my heart. I finalized the paperwork on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020, and it became a quarantine sanctuary for my family, a place where we could find respite from our newly masked reality; a spot to breathe easy, free of the sudden constraints this new virus had imposed on our lives.
With the collapsing remains of a 200-year-old farmhouse, its ornamental garden escapees, and a mix of old and new water systems – a river and natural spring along with a recently installed well and leach field – it was also a place to dream, perhaps larger than life. I was excited, wanting to do everything, everywhere, all at once. In this case, “constraint” was not a concept I was eager to invite to the celebration. However, my design training served me well, and I spent a full year in observation, learning how the land moved through the seasons and meeting the different species and climate patterns that rippled across its topography. I took fixed point photos and soil samples. I plotted solar projections and drew basemaps. When the year was up, I was still in compilation mode, trying to manage all the things. Outside forces began to weigh in, as conservation commissions and building inspectors got involved. I told myself I could make sense of all this data I was gathering and manifest a design using only my wits and a few mobile apps in the minimal hours of free time I had available to me each week as a working single parent in the middle of a pandemic. These constraints were not friendly. I was overwhelmed and in need of assistance.
At Conway, non-faculty employees are welcome to submit an application for a small-scale fall project, and it was an easy decision for me to apply to be a fall client. The site was accepted, and I was introduced to Elena Zachary, a talented artist and graphic designer, and the student who would be stewarding our project. After an initial discussion of goals and walkthrough of the site, she got to work, regularly checking in with questions or clarifications. I was invited to shadow her and Conway’s wetland ecologist faculty as they performed soil samples and plant identifications, learning more details about the land than I ever would have on my own.
The author and Elena Zachary working on a site analysis in the field
By midterm Elena had completed a comprehensive site analysis of the entire parcel, visualizing the zones of function through a series of individual maps that, when combined, presented a view of the existing conditions that was both summarized and itemized, a useful approach that allowed me to zoom in and out of a particular topic of interest. The natural channels that water took across the sloping meadows were highlighted. In addition to the pathways that the deer and other animals frequented, I began to recognize the traffic patterns that we humans were carving into the landscape. Out of overwhelm emerged understanding.
We then moved into the design phase. From the beginning, my plan was to work within a two-acre section of the site that had historically been cleared and was in early succession, and leave the remaining second-growth forested areas as they were. Elena developed multiple design alternatives that included short-term plans for several structures and gathering spaces, as well as longer-term visions for edible crops and pollinator habitat. Through her illustrations I could begin to see a future version of this landscape, as well as a solid trajectory for arriving there.
It’s now two and a half years on, and that tangle of fencing and goldenrod has evolved into a living, working landscape. The design plan set that Elena delivered has been an indispensable part of our implementation strategy. My partner Jay and I have used its maps as visual guides in meetings with the Conservation Commission, building inspector, and contractors. We’ve established some beds and have been slowly adding plants to increase the native biodiversity and provide more habitat for pollinators and other insects. After clearing some goldenrod we are starting to see other species such as Zizia aurea (golden alexanders) and Asclepias syriaca (common milkweed) popping up as the sunlight reaches them, and were rewarded with a boom year of Monarch caterpillars. We even had our first bluebird sighting last week! Somehow amidst all of this we managed to cut and raise a small timber frame structure. As we witness our abundant ash and beech trees quickly and shockingly succumb to borers and nematodes, I am considering replacement species such as hickory. I take Elena’s plant palettes with me to the nursery so I don’t lose focus and end up buying a trunk full of plants I don’t need, though I will admit that my impulse buying still occasionally gets the better of me (I’m looking at you, Artemisia abrotanum). Elena graduated in June 2022 and has been working as a designer with Regenerative Design Group in Greenfield, MA, a fantastic ecological design firm. I was not at all surprised when they hired her, as I’d seen firsthand the designs she could produce, and am happy that she arrived at such a great place.
I realize that not every project site is as initially hospitable as this one, and not all consultants have the ability or desire to let eager clients tag along while they do their work. However, I am grateful for the collaborative process that the Conway School offers. Those unfriendly constraints at the beginning of the process introduced me to some wonderful friends and beautiful, functional designs. Sometimes the constraint is just the messenger.
Editor’s Note: Thank you to the Conway School and Roxanne Finn for submitting this article on Landscape Design. We hope to include articles from the school from time to time. The Conway School both teaches and practices design of the land that is ecologically and socially sustainable. For more information about the school, please visit their website.
