Abundant Design: Go Big! Drake's Harkin Center

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Go Big! Drake's Harkin Center - Phase 2

After the first stormwater basin was renovated, a bigger portion of the remaining original design was slated for renovation the following year. The West entrance featured double stormwater collection basins with a curved sidewalk to the parking area.

Harkin Center ph2 the following May

Again, Kelly Norris was tasked with reimagining the space to take it the next level, and Abundant Design was chosen as the contractor. Originally the surrounding areas were planted with prairie dropseed and echinacea, with sedges in the basin floors.

Before pics

Most of the existing plants were removed. The basin sedges were left in place, but we did get some of the weeds removed. The turf lawn was removed, from the existing planted space to the west parking lot; this ground was so hard we tore up two sodcutters and had to use the tooth bucket on our Dingo™ to remove the turf grass.

Many of these plants ended up transplanted at Sprout, between the garden fence and parking area. Another bunch of them were donated to the DMACC Food Forest and Learning Garden to fill in some gaps.

We also removed the turf from the open space south of the main entry lobby.

That's a LOT of plants!

The layout begins... yep, that's a lot of plants...

Planting, planting and more planting!

Just keep planting! Time is short, called in a few reinforcements for the weekend.

Watering - Again this project was late in the season, but watering new plantings is critical to success.

Long days made for some late watering

Planting completed, but it was late enough in the season that any visual impact would just have to be anticipated...

After winter the plants were coming up nicely by May. Several of the evergreens didn't make it however, guessing due to the late season planting and the drying winds funneled up University Avenue. We replaced those as needed.