Toledo Botanical Garden — Children’s Garden
- Location
- Toledo, Ohio
- Period
- 2007–2010
- Firm
- MESA Design Group
- My role
- Junior Landscape Architect
- Disciplines
- Children’s Garden, Interpretive Landscape, Concept Design
A MESA Design Group project for Toledo Botanical Garden, developed as a collaborative design effort. Work completed with MESA Design Group as part of multidisciplinary project teams.
Project imagery and photography courtesy of MESA Design Group.
Renderings and illustrations were prepared by other project-team members unless otherwise credited.
Context
The Children’s Garden translated discovery and learning into a playful landscape of garden rooms, paths, water, planting, and sculptural animal elements. The surviving work is especially rich in hand-drawn concepts that show ideas moving from narrative to place.
MESA Design Group's role
Landscape architect for the Children’s Garden design development and construction details.
My role
As a junior landscape architect on MESA Design Group’s team, I assisted with design development and construction details for the Children’s Garden. My work helped carry the playful interpretive concept into coordinated landscape elements and buildable details. The renderings and illustrations shown here were prepared by other members of the project team unless otherwise credited.
Design challenge
The garden needed to invite imagination without becoming arbitrary. Play, interpretation, safety, accessibility, horticulture, fabrication, and a coherent visitor sequence all had to reinforce one another.
Approach
An illustrative plan established the overall garden journey while detailed sketches developed memorable elements—birds, fish, gates, nests, dragons, and earth rooms—at the scale of a child’s encounter.
Result
The team produced a complete concept vision, illustrative plan, character sketches, and design-development and pricing material for the garden.
Looking back
This work shows how a system can still feel joyful: structure creates the conditions for exploration rather than controlling every experience.