Allegheny Public Square
Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture

The Allegheny Public Square revitalization transforms a central park in Pittsburgh, improving connections, increasing green space, creating a model for sustainability, and establishing a venue for public art. Pine & Swallow designed soil and drainage strategies to support a range of plantings, including a bio-treatment area, inten­sively planted beds, and street trees.

(Image: Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture)

Bethel Woods Center For the Arts, Bethel NY
Olin Partnership

The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts includes a 15,000 seat outdoor performance venue, smaller performance sites, a museu,m and a system of trails and protected open spaces at the site of the original 1969 Woodstock festival. A particular challenge was to create a seating lawn at the new pavilion, given the naturally poorly drained clayey on-site soils. Pine & Swallow designed a two-layered, sand-based soil design to withstand the high use, but which drains rapidly and is suitable for seating. P&S also developed strategies for amending on-site soils for other varied lawn and planting areas.

(Image: bethelwoodscenter.org)

Boston Children’s Museum, Boston, MA
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
ASLA Honor Award

The Boston Children’s Museum includes a public space which is a popular tourist destination along the waterfront of Fort Point Channel, adjacent to the city’s Harborwalk. A recent expansion project included significant enhancement of this space. Pine & Swallow identified existing conditions ranging from essentially impervious clay fill to rubble materials and site planting challenges including salt spray, storm flooding and saline groundwater tidal conditions. P&S then provided recommendations for plant materials and designed complex subsurface environments to support plantings.

(Image: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates)

Boston Common
Boston Parks Department

The Boston Common Parade Grounds is a prime visual, historic, and functional public lawn in Boston. The area, over both structure and urban fill, is intensely used on a daily basis as well as for major events. Pine and Swallow worked with the Boston Parks Department to analyze existing conditions and develop strategies for soil modification and lawn restoration to better withstand the high level of use.

Boston Convention and Exposition Center
Richard Burck Associates

The new 1.7 million square foot Boston Convention Center anchors a mixed-use neighborhood in South Boston's historic seaport district. The landscaped entranceway was designed to express the strong geometry of the architecture with plazas planted with honey locust to flank the ceremonial and civic portal. Pine & Swallow developed structural soil strategies, targeted soil blends and a system to harvest stormwater runoff from the plaza surfaces and redistribute it to the rootzone below via gravity. The rainwater harvesting system was created as a prototypical long-term, sustainable solution for the passive irrigation of urban trees over structure.

(Image: Richard Burck Associates)

Brooklyn Botanical Garden
HM White Associates

Originally designed by Frederick and John Olmstead, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden contains renowned specialty gardens on its 50-acre site. The landscape design for a new visitor center includes a series of vegetated cleansing and water collection features in the form of bioswales and rain gardens. New plantings have been intro­duced and are featured as a new horticultural exhibit while providing a unique landscape context for the center, adding further prominence to the Garden's new entrance. Pine & Swallow provided technical support including soil profile design and horticultural soil specifications for a wide range of site conditions and locations.

(Image: Brooklyn Botanical Garden)

Brooklyn Bridge Park
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
ASLA Honor Award

The 85-acre Brooklyn Bridge Park runs approximately 1.5 miles along the East River at the Brooklyn Bridge, including six piers and associated uplands. A large con­structed landform with slopes up to 45 degrees, requiring various stabilization strat­egies, runs the length of the park to provide separation of the waterfront from nearby highways. Pine & Swallow was responsible for the design and specification of all planting soils and for soil drainage strategies on the project, including high use and amenity lawns, play areas, major shrub, and tree zones, and new freshwater and coastal tidal wetlands. The design included stormwater harvesting and a con­struc­ted stream and wetland system to treat collected stormwater prior to its reuse for irrigation.

(Image: Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corp.)

Carnegie Mellon Gates Computer Center, Pittsburgh, PA
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

The landscape for the new Gates Computer Center transforms a former “back door” to the campus into part of the Carnegie Mellon central campus landscape in Pitts­burgh, and creates pedestrian connections through the site, in turn allowing for future campus expansion. Pine & Swallow designed planting media for a range of landscape conditions, including rooftop, meadow plantings, tree groves, and numer­ous steep slope conditions. P&S also assisted with both subsurface ground water controls and stormwater runoff design.

(Image: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates)

Central Wharf Plaza, Boston, MA
Reed Hilderbrand
ASLA Honor Award

Central Wharf Plaza creates a connection between Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway and Boston Harbor at the Aquarium. Twenty-six 12-inch Pin and Red Oaks were planted within the plaza and as street trees around its perimeter. Pine & Swallow specified sand-based structural soil to provide structural support for cobble­stone paving, designed as permeable pavement and as horticultural support for the plantings. P&S also designed a stormwater harvesting system to collect storm water in slot drains and distribute it through slotted pipes to the horticultural soil under the cobblestones. The sand-based structural soil provides stormwater bio-treatment prior to deep infiltration.

(Image: Reed Hilderbrand)

Cincinnati Riverfront Park
Sasaki Associates

The 45-acre central riverfront park is the remaining and largest jewel in a series of public parks reconnecting the heart of Cincinnati — Fountain Square — to the Ohio River. The park includes a major event lawn and street tree plantings over an underground parking garage as well as a large park area adjacent to the Ohio River, including a series of individualized park areas. Site conditions ranged from over-structure plantings to flood zones along the river, all designed for intense public use. Pine & Swallow provided soil and subsurface design and planting recommendations, including a structural soil system for street tree plantings.

(Image: Sasaki Associates)

Cleveland Medical Mart & Convention Center
Gustavson Guthrie Nichol

The approximately 14-acre CMMCC site creates a landscaped mall in the center of downtown Cleveland, located over the Cleveland Convention Center. The project de­sign incorporates historic alignments, including broad pedestrian allees and a large lawn area designed to accommodate high-use civic events and celebrations. Pine & Swallow evaluated alternative structural soil strategies, advised on tree plant­ings to match available rooting volumes, and provided soil designs for varied planting conditions.

(Image: LMN Architects)

Deer Island, Boston Harbor, MA
Carol R. Johnson and Associates

As part of the Deer Island Treatment Plant located on a Boston Harbor island, a massive landform was constructed to visually isolate the facility from the residential community and accommodate the recreational public as part of the National Park system. Since new soil materials required costly barge transportation to the island, reuse of all available on-island earth materials and minimizing off-island borrow was essential. Challenges included slope stabilization and creating growing media from essentially impermeable native glacial till soils. Pine & Swallow designed soil mixes totaling more than 100,000 cubic yards to support extensive plantings and create a low maintenance naturalized settings tolerant of harsh New England coastline conditions.

Don River Park, Toronto, Canada
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
Royal Architectural Institute Award for Sustainable Design

Don River Park is a focal point for a major downtown Toronto re-development and includes construction of new wetland systems, flood protection levees, wet meadow, athletic fields and a large urban prairie. Pine & Swallow developed strategies to treat both on- and off-site stormwater with treatment wetlands. P&S also designed a structural soil system for major street tree plantings. PSE's interpreted and complied with stringent environmental regulations which governed all soil designs.

(Image: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates)

Department of Transportation, Washington DC
A. Morton Thomas & Associates; Lee & Associates

The Washington DDOT is developing sustainable standards for all future street construction and tree plantings. Pine & Swallow is working with A. Morton Thomas & Associates and Lee & Associates to establish standards for permeable pavement design, for stormwater bio-treatment, and for street trees / structural soils. This work will create strategies and specifications suitable for projects on all DC streets, ranging from local street improvements to major construction projects.

(Image: Reuters)

Four Freedoms Park
Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, LLC

The park stands at the southernmost point of Roosevelt Island in New York City and is a memorial to FDR. Originally designed by Louis Kahn, a double row of trees narrow as they approach the point of the island, framing views of the New York skyline and the harbor. At the point excerpts from Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech are carved on the walls of a simple monument. Pine & Swallow developed a structural soil system beneath the pavements to support trees, and developed planting soils for turf and beds to support a range of horticulture.

(Image: fdrfourfreedomspark.org)

Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA
Carol R. Johnson and Associates
BSLA Honor Award

The Fresh Pond Reservation is a 162-acre preserve surrounding a City of Cambridge drinking-water reservoir. The new park area included a soccer field, community gardens, path and trail systems, a butterfly meadow, and new wetlands and wet meadows. Pine & Swallow provided hydrologic design for the wetland storm-water treatment system to protect drinking water supplies while creating an ecological design feature, developed a soils management plan and soil blending strategies for the range of site landscapes, and assisted with stabilization systems for naturalized paths.

(Image: Carol R. Johnson Associates)

Governors Island, New York, NY
West 8 / Mathews Nielsen

The Governors Island plan preserves 87 acres of open space close to downtown Man­hattan, plants more than 1,300 new trees, and creates a cluster of steep hills that form a focal point at the park's center and an array of parkscapes ranging from a "hammock grove" to athletic fields to large public event expanses. Sustainability was a core principle driving the plan. Pine & Swallow carried out an analysis of existing conditions, including available soil resources and subsurface drainage re­quirements and developed soil designs to minimize the need for imported soils. The team for this project is led by the landscape architecture firm West 8 and includes Mathews Nielsen (associate landscape architect), Rogers Marvel Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Tillotson Design Associates, Pentagram, and Magnusson Klem­encic Associates.

(Image: Mathews Nielsen)

Greensboro Center City Park, Greensboro NC
Halvorson Design Partnership

Center City Park created a civic focal landscape from a utilitarian area including parking lots. The design includes a fountain serving to represent the seasonal streambeds in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, as well as a great lawn, a path system with plantings reflecting the regional plant palette, and a revitalized street­scape. Pine & Swallow provided soil design, including sand-based structural soil for the streetscape plantings and designed drainage strategies for the complex landscape.

(Image: Friends of Center City Park)

Harvard Allston Science Center
Stephen Stimson Associates

The $1 billion Harvard Allston Science Complex is envisioned to be a world class center for science and is the first structure on the new Harvard Allston campus. The entire project is being developed as a sustainable site with a high-level LEED rating. Pine & Swallow designed soils and assisted with design of a bioswale stormwater treatment system which runs through the four-building project integrating landscape spaces designed for varying micro-climate conditions.

(Image: Stephen Stimson Associates)

The High Line, New York, NY
James Corner Field Operations
ASLA Honor Award; Black Pencil Award

The High Line establishes a greenbelt park along an abandoned 1.5-mile section of a former elevated freight railroad on the lower west side of Manhattan. This project won numerous prestigious awards. It created a variety of ecological environments as well as public amenities in an over-structure condition, and has transformed this portion of the city. Pine & Swallow designed all soil and drainage strategies, and conducted construction observations.

(Image: Friends of the High Line)

Hudson River Parks, New York, NY
Mathews Nielsen

The Hudson River Parks extend approximately five miles between Manhattan’s West Street and the Hudson River, encompassing 550 acres. The park project includes a waterfront esplanade running its length providing views of the River, paralleled by tree-shaded lawns, gardens, tennis courts and other facilities for more active recreation. The park also creates street tree plantings along West Street. Pine & Swallow prepared a Master Soils Specification for the various individual park areas, including material descriptions, soil profiles, soil volume requirements for tree plantings, in-place and laboratory testing procedures, and material placement operations. P&S also developed strategies for construction on thirteen old maritime piers as well as in varied urban soil conditions along the waterfront.

Indianapolis Art Park
Landworks Studio

The Indianapolis Art Park will include new civic amenities while also creating a new transportation corridor, all designed to the highest sustainability standards. Pine & Swal­low is working on the design of large bio-treatment areas to collect all runoff from the site and from surrounding streets and remove pollutants prior to re-directing the runoff to storage containment for re-use. All runoff from a new street passing through the site will pass over porous pavements that serve to irrigate street trees. Sand-based structural soil that will support the porous pavement will provide stormwater treatment. The bio-treatment areas are being designed as visual amenities with varied hydrologic conditions to support wetland, wet meadow and upland plant communities, providing varied visual conditions.

(Image: Landworks Studio, Inc.)

King Khalid City, Saudi Arabia
Brown & Root

King Khalid Military City in Saudia Arabia is a 50,000-inhabitant new city con­structed in a desert area of Saudi Arabia. Pine & Swallow carried out soil, water, and horticultural analyses for development of the entire landscape for the city and pro­vided specifications for a laboratory and landscape testing program, an on-site field station, and a plant production nursery. P&S also provided analysis of artificial ground water conditions due to extensive proposed irrigation and design of a sub­surface drainage control network.

Koch Institute, MIT, Cambridge, MA
Reed Hilderbrand

The Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research has created new public spaces. Lines of trees create pedestrian corridors breaking up the expanse of sidewalk and creating visual interest. Sand-Based Structural Soil was used beneath the entire plaza and sidewalk areas to provide horti­cultural soil for both the trees in paved areas and trees in planters that had inadequate soil volume to support large trees. Perforated pipes beneath the paving provide necessary aeration to the horticultural soils and serve as conduits for drip irrigation tubing. Trees include Honey Locusts, Ginkgos, and a variety of other species.

Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, MN
Halvorson Design Partnership

Lakewood Cemetery, renowned for its magnificent landscape, was modeled after the rural cemeteries of 19th-century France. An elegant contemporary landscape design now integrates a new visitors' reception building, a new garden mausoleum, and a classic Byzantine Chapel. Pine & Swallow restored and modified existing on-site soil resources to respond to new landscape requirements, including high-use lawn panels, focal planting beds, over-structure conditions, and naturalized plantings.

(Image: Bryan Jereb, Halvorson Design Partnership)

Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA
Halrvorson Design Partnership / Mount Auburn Cemetery

Mount Auburn Cemetery contains thousands of shrubs, herbaceous plants, and trees (more than 600 species) on 175 acres of hills, dells, ponds, woodlands, and clearings. Pine & Swallow worked on various horticultural and drainage issues to restore, maintain, and enhance this extraordinary and historic landscape.

(Photo: Mount Auburn Cemetery)

Mystic River Reservation, Medford, MA
Carol R. Johnson and Associates
ASLA Honor Award

The Reservation was constructed on 200 acres of land along more than a mile of the Mystic River to provide active and passive recreational facilities where saline dredge spoils and random urban fill materials had previously been placed. Some areas were underlain by soft sediments and former marshlands. 250,000 cubic yards of horticultural soils were blended to create specific planting mediums to support specially selected plant materials. Subsurface drainage and salt control systems were designed, settlement analyses were carried out, and preload areas were designed and implemented.

Newport Beach Civic Center
PWP Landscape Architecture

The Newport Beach California Civic Center project creates a 16-acre park including a civic lawn for outdoor events, sculpture installations, and 1-1/4 miles of walking and viewing trails as well as new civic structures and parking. Pine & Swallow developed soil resource management plans for reuse of existing soil and identified new regional soil resources in order to create appropriate planting soils for the numerous planting conditions.

(Image: PWP Landscape Architecture)

New York Botanical Garden
Oehme Van Sweden

Featuring 50 gardens on 250 acres, the New York Botanical Garden is one of the premier botanical gardens in the United States. Taking advantage of the site's diverse growing conditions, the new Native Plant Garden displays a variety of native plants and water features combined in an integrated and comprehensive design. Planting areas include native woodlands, meadows, plant beds, and areas where new plants are integrated with mature specimens. Pine & Swallow assessed existing soils, developed strategies for maximizing reuse of on-site soils, integrated stormwater management with new surface water features and created specifications for all horticultural soils.

(Image: New York Botanical Garden)

New York Police Academy
Balmori Associates

The landscaping for the new NY Police Academy in Queens includes an interior courtyard and muster area and landscaped buffers, including naturalized meadow areas. An on-site drainage swale was designed with a variety of native plants, resulting in an on-site open space amenity. The project incorporates a variety of sustainable design components to achieve LEED Silver requirements. Pine & Swallow developed soil planting strategies, including stabilization of the tidal drainage areas, over-structure plantings, meadows, and structural soil to support extensive tree plantings in parking areas.

(Image: Perkins & Will)

Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston, MA
Bechtel Corporation

The Boston Central Artery project, the Big Dig, removed an elevated highway that divided the city and created a new landscape corridor, transforming the entire city center. Pine & Swallow participated in general planning for soil resources and pro­vided master soil specifications for planting soils and for sand-based structural soil systems. P&S also pro­vided soil and drainage design for individual park seg­ments.

(Image: Massachusetts Turnpike Authority)

St. Albans School
Richard Burck Associates

The Cornerstone Memorial Garden is located on the historic grounds of the National Cathedral Close on the St. Albans campus in Washington, DC. The landscape design included landscaped terraces, gravel pathways, stone walls and plantings on slopes. Pine & Swallow specified the soil design for the garden plantings as well as planting areas around new academic buildings, and also consulted on the restoration of an eroded hillside disturbed by construction.

St. Louis Gateway Arch
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

The redesign of the Jefferson Memorial National Park, including the Gateway Arch, will better integrate the east and west sides of the Mississippi River. The expansion will retain the original character of the park while blending in new areas. The redesigned park will be environmentally sustainable, including stormwater management, erosion control, and wetlands development. New recreational areas will be introduced. Pine & Swallow is evaluating existing soil and horticultural resources to develop long-term sustainable conditions.

Shelby Farms Park
James Corner Field Operations

For the Woodland Discovery Playground at Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Pine & Swallow developed strategies for amending existing, heavily compacted soils to provide appropriate soil media for new plantings and for restoration of existing plants. Those soil strategies became a central component for this project, becoming a Pilot Project for the Sustainable Sites Initiative. For the proposed expansion of Patriot Lake, P&S developed additional soil remediation strategies in scale with this 2-million-cubic-yard earthmoving project in order to solve soil drainage challenges and provide planting media in cost-effective, sustainable ways.

(Image: James Corner Field Operations)

Tanglewood Center for the Performing Arts, Lenox, MA
Richard Burck Associates

This 250-acre Tanglewood Center for the Performing Arts property is the site of summer music concerts and festivals, with more than 300,000 visitors each year. Located in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, the rolling campus of Tanglewood contains outdoor and indoor performance halls, studios, and classrooms and has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. In order to maintain the site’s casual character, Pine & Swallow assisted in creating an ADA-compliant crushed stone mix as a pathway paving material, integrating new paths with the existing landscape while meeting accessibility requirements. P&S also designed soil strategies for restoration of existing plantings and construction of new areas.

Teardrop Park, Battery Park City, New York, NY
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
ASLA Honor Award

Teardrop Park, with its varied plantings, extensive rockwork, waterfalls, and play areas, is a visual jewel and a center of activity in Manhattan’s Battery Park City. Pine & Swallow designed and specified nine manufactured soil blends to meet stringent and complex geotechnical and horticultural demands. P&S also designed subsurface drainage and a wetland system, worked with local soil suppliers to find appropriate soil resources, and provided construction observation for the complex soil construction. Sustainable initiatives include reusing gray water from surrounding buildings for irrigation as well as sustainable landscape construction materials. The plantings are designed to thrive in a relatively shady site and provide habitat for native and migratory birds. The soils are designed to support plant life without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides.

Transbay Transit Center
PWP Landscape Architecture

The roofscape of the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco will be an iconic 5.4-acre park, designed as both a public destination and a community park within down­town San Francisco. The park, which includes a variety of botanical gardens and habitats for birds, butterflies, and other pollinators, is being designed to the highest sustainable standards including absorption of carbon dioxide and a complex stormwater harvesting, treatment, and reuse systems. Pine & Swallow created soil specifications and rooftop drainage strategies for a range of conditions from wet­lands to support of major trees.

(Image: PWP Landscape Architecture)

United States Embassies
Carol R. Johnson Associates

Pine & Swallow has provided soil and drainage design for a number of United States Embassies including: Baghdad, Iraq; Kabul, Afghanistan; Oslo, Norway; Tunis, Tun­isia; and Paramaribo, Surinam. P&S evaluated existing soil and horticultural condi­tions at each site and researched soil supplies to meet complex planting re­quirements ranging from high-use turf to complex plantings in a range of climate and environmental conditions. Incorporation of local earth materials and utilization of local customary construction practices has been essential.

(Image: jeff.stikeman.architectural.art)

Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
ASLA Design Award of Excellence

The Alumnae Valley project transformed a brownfields portion of the Wellesley College campus into a visual focal area, a stormwater bio-treatment system, and a passive recreation area. A pond, wetland, and stream system now treat runoff that previously discharged directly into Lake Waban. The treatment system, surrounded by new landforms and plantings, creates both a park and a visual amenity. Pine & Swallow assisted with liner technologies to ensure hydrologic function, and designed soil blends for wetland and transition zones as well as for varied upland planting environments, and also specified steep slope stabilization techniques.

(Image: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates)

World Trade Center
AECOM

Pine & Swallow created soil designs to support street tree and associated plantings within the World Trade center site. P&S is working to develop plans and specifications for the District Realm Reconstruction, all meeting strict New York Port Authority requirements for this iconic site.

(Image: AECOM)