Faculty and Future Landscape Architects Tour the Great Park

The Coalition is collaborating with Cal Poly Pomona Department of Landscape Architecture on a cool student learning project.

Students from this diverse and highly respected program will apply the foundational elements they’ve been taught in a studio design course using a 40-acre site at the OC Great Park as a model. The goal is to develop numerous garden possibilities for new and evolving botanic experiences at the park.

Eighty students, accompanied by Professor Andrew Wilcox and his faculty colleagues, made a one-day field trip to the Great Park on Friday, February 28, 2020. Students rotated between rides up in the Big Orange Balloon for a bird’s eye view of the wide-open parkland while other teams inspected the specific garden site at ground level. Special guest Rick Hume, Director of the American Society of Landscape Architects, challenged the students to cast their gaze a full three-hundred-and-sixty-five degrees, as their assignment will require an alert sensitivity to social, environmental, and technical aspects of planning a garden of the future.

Finally, the group enjoyed lunch provided by the Coalition at the Great Park Farm + Food Lab, with time for questions and a lively discussion before students set off on their own to explore the surroundings. The final design projects—graphics, diagrams, rendering, and models—are scheduled for review in May.* We look forward to sharing some of the student’s best innovative ideas with OC Great Park Board and Coalition supporters.