Woodlands Garden Nature Preserve

Description:

Woodlands Garden Nature Preserve is a 7-acre historic nature preserve focusing on education and preservation of native Georgia Piedmont plants and trees. TSW was retained to develop a master plan for the grounds that will improve the visitor experience, and expand the types of educational activities the garden can provide.

The effort kicked off with a series of stakeholder meetings and charrettes focused on identifying environmental and educational programming needs for the new plan. Important items to focus on were preserving the existing mature woodland canopy, and integrating native landscape in all aspects of the new development.

The key feature of the new plan is a fully accessible trail loop that connects and explores all of the unique native environments of the garden. This trail forms the backbone of the interpretive programing for the garden linking the visitor’s center to the serpentine hillside garden, the event lawn, the natural play area, and the woodland ravine.

TSW addressed physical issues, including:

• Provide handicap accessible access to and within the Garden.
• Providing additional parking to accommodate school group bus access
• Visitors center enhancements to accommodate groups and expanded educational activities.
• Construction methods for preserving existing mature tree canopy.
• Enhancing the existing storm water detention system and providing additional non-intrusive capacity as may be required accommodate site improvements.
• Integrated landscape stormwater quality features.
• Providing new public restrooms and accommodating service and garden storage needs.
• Repurposing the existing loop driveway to function both for off-hours service vehicle access as well as pedestrian circulation.
• Buffering traffic noise intrusion from Scott Boulevard while improving a visual identity from the street.
• Wayfinding and identification signage
• Construction cost estimate for improvements: $2.5 million