Lake County Adaptation
Lake County, Illinois
Designing for healthy soil.
Above: The meadow in the fall one year after grazing ended and before the spring prescribed burn.
Practice Landscape is working to revitalize a 42-acre residence along with adjacent crop and pasture fields in agricultural Lake County, Illinois. The landscape is in transition from grazing land to a more ecologically complex mix of wetland, meadowland, and mixed shrubland.
Nestled within the landscape is a 5-acre compound, the Homestead, with an existing family home and a cluster of new and repurposed structures, designed and built with project architects Kiel Moe and Decentralized Design Lab (DDL). For instance, the pole barn has been largely deconstructed, its remaining walls capped and painted to form the Croft Garden, a protected enclosure for planting. The removed wood was used to build a garage/workshop, a caretaker residence, and a sauna, acting on the premise that perhaps there is enough building material in the world; it just needs to be rearranged for future use.
Landscape adaptation, installation, and wetland restoration in collaboration with ENCAP and Mariani.
Practice Landscape is working to revitalize a 42-acre residence along with adjacent crop and pasture fields in agricultural Lake County, Illinois. The landscape is in transition from grazing land to a more ecologically complex mix of wetland, meadowland, and mixed shrubland.
Nestled within the landscape is a 5-acre compound, the Homestead, with an existing family home and a cluster of new and repurposed structures, designed and built in collaboration with project architects Kiel Moe and Decentralized Design Lab (DDL). For instance, the pole barn has been largely deconstructed, its remaining walls capped and painted to form the Croft Garden, a protected enclosure for horticultural planting. The removed wood was used to build a garage/workshop, a caretaker residence, and a sauna, acting on the premise that perhaps there is enough building material in the world; it just needs to be rearranged for future use.
Above: Barn unbuiling and croft installation in process. Middle: Homestead planting spring and fall 2022.
Bottom: Wetland restoration with ENCAP in progress.
Ecological Assessment
The project started with an Ecological Assessment of the site that serves as a baseline for future analysis and experimentation. In the era of climate change it is more important than ever to recognize and document benchmarks against which we can measure. The Ecological Assessment is a sort of prequel to the Landscape Strategy which will hold the record of management regimes, analyses of the results, and practices used to restore the woodlands, meadowlands and forestlands, and homestead. We prepared the ‘Ecological Assessment’ in order to inform a closer reading of the existing site, paying careful attention to dynamics often concealed underfoot and that evade direct experience. What is revealed is how the lands were conditioned by change, the result of a series of transformations that span not only centuries but millions of years. The evolution of the land is depicted at three moments in time, representing different scales. Understanding the current status of the land informs all future decisions.
Landscape Strategy
We design with adaptive management because landscape is a process not a product. The landscape strategy is a planning document that replaces the fixity of a masterplan by providing scenarios that vary over time, acknowledging shifting plant communities and maintenance regimes and integrating the cultural and ecological landscape. Existing land-use practices have had a profound and continuing impact on the site. The transformation of those practices will eventually reshape both the surface of the land and the composition and structure of the soil. Healthy soil than can hold water and encourage diverse and deep root systems will be the key to long-term success of any landscape design.
Ecological Assessment
The project started with an Ecological Assessment of the site that serves as a baseline for future analysis and experimentation. In the era of climate change it is more important than ever to recognize and document benchmarks against which we can measure. The Ecological Assessment is a sort of prequel to the Landscape Strategy which will hold the record of management regimes, analyses of the results, and practices used to restore the woodlands, meadowlands and forestlands, and homestead. We prepared the ‘Ecological Assessment’ in order to inform a closer reading of the existing site, paying careful attention to dynamics often concealed underfoot and that evade direct experience. What is revealed is how the lands were conditioned by change, the result of a series of transformations that span not only centuries but millions of years. The evolution of the land is depicted at three moments in time, representing different scales. Understanding the current status of the land informs all future decisions.
Landscape Strategy
We design with adaptive management because landscape is a process not a product. The landscape strategy is a planning document that replaces the fixity of a masterplan by providing scenarios that vary over time, acknowledging shifting plant communities and maintenance regimes and integrating the cultural and ecological landscape. Existing land-use practices have had a profound and continuing impact on the site. The transformation of those practices will eventually reshape both the surface of the land and the composition and structure of the soil. Healthy soil than can hold water and encourage diverse and deep root systems will be the key to long-term success of any landscape design.
Ecological Assessment
The project started with an Ecological Assessment of the site that serves as a baseline for future analysis and experimentation. In the era of climate change it is more important than ever to recognize and document benchmarks against which we can measure. The Ecological Assessment is a sort of prequel to the Landscape Strategy which will hold the record of management regimes, analyses of the results, and practices used to restore the woodlands, meadowlands and forestlands, and homestead. We prepared the ‘Ecological Assessment’ in order to inform a closer reading of the existing site, paying careful attention to dynamics often concealed underfoot and that evade direct experience. What is revealed is how the lands were conditioned by change, the result of a series of transformations that span not only centuries but millions of years. The evolution of the land is depicted at three moments in time, representing different scales. Understanding the current status of the land informs all future decisions.
Landscape Strategy
We design with adaptive management because landscape is a process not a product. The landscape strategy is a planning document that replaces the fixity of a masterplan by providing scenarios that vary over time, acknowledging shifting plant communities and maintenance regimes and integrating the cultural and ecological landscape. Existing land-use practices have had a profound and continuing impact on the site. The transformation of those practices will eventually reshape both the surface of the land and the composition and structure of the soil. Healthy soil than can hold water and encourage diverse and deep root systems will be the key to long-term success of any landscape design.
Practices
Practice is the interaction between humans and plants. The adaptive management plan sets into motion foundational practices that mutually enhance life on site. These commonplace acts link the everyday and the transformational.
Stack: Pruned deadwood is stacked, layering large branches and twigs between an existing wire fence and recycled posts from a dismantled animal enclosure. Stack is a scalable human effort, a way of collaborating with place. The design emerges over time, in the accumulation and break down of material and the fostering of new life.
Mulch: Mulch is not a noun; it is a biology. Mulching not only reduces waste, it fosters and encourages the growth of microorganisms. Designing with mulch is an offshoot of designing with plant life because mulch itself is alive. Mulch is collected and created on site, and donated from nearby coffee roasters in the form of coffee chaff.
Prune: Humans manipulate plants, and in response, plants change people. If we allow ourselves to slow down and work with the time scales of other species, novel management practices emerge. Root suckers become chip mulch, vigorous branching is cut and stacked as material for screens, and live cuttings are planted to grow a living fence.
Practices
Practice is the interaction between humans and plants. The adaptive management plan sets into motion foundational practices that mutually enhance life on site. These commonplace acts link the everyday and the transformational.
Stack: Pruned deadwood is stacked, layering large branches and twigs between an existing wire fence and recycled posts from a dismantled animal enclosure. Stack is a scalable human effort, a way of collaborating with place. The design emerges over time, in the accumulation and break down of material and the fostering of new life.
Mulch: Mulch is not a noun; it is a biology. Mulching not only reduces waste, it fosters and encourages the growth of microorganisms. Designing with mulch is an offshoot of designing with plant life because mulch itself is alive. Mulch is collected and created on site, and donated from nearby coffee roasters in the form of coffee chaff.
Prune: Humans manipulate plants, and in response, plants change people. If we allow ourselves to slow down and work with the time scales of other species, novel management practices emerge. Root suckers become chip mulch, vigorous branching is cut and stacked as material for screens, and live cuttings are planted to grow a living fence.
Practices
Practice is the interaction between humans and plants. The adaptive management plan sets into motion foundational practices that mutually enhance life on site. These commonplace acts link the everyday and the transformational.
Stack: Pruned deadwood is stacked, layering large branches and twigs between an existing wire fence and recycled posts from a dismantled animal enclosure. Stack is a scalable human effort, a way of collaborating with place. The design emerges over time, in the accumulation and break down of material and the fostering of new life.
Mulch: Mulch is not a noun; it is a biology. Mulching not only reduces waste, it fosters and encourages the growth of microorganisms. Designing with mulch is an offshoot of designing with plant life because mulch itself is alive. Mulch is collected and created on site, and donated from nearby coffee roasters in the form of coffee chaff.
Prune: Humans manipulate plants, and in response, plants change people. If we allow ourselves to slow down and work with the time scales of other species, novel management practices emerge. Root suckers become chip mulch, vigorous branching is cut and stacked as material for screens, and live cuttings are planted to grow a living fence.
Practices
Practice is the interaction between humans and plants. The adaptive management plan sets into motion foundational practices that mutually enhance life on site. These commonplace acts link the everyday and the transformational.
Stack: Pruned deadwood is stacked, layering large branches and twigs between an existing wire fence and recycled posts from a dismantled animal enclosure. Stack is a scalable human effort, a way of collaborating with place. The design emerges over time, in the accumulation and break down of material and the fostering of new life.
Mulch: Mulch is not a noun; it is a biology. Mulching not only reduces waste, it fosters and encourages the growth of microorganisms. Designing with mulch is an offshoot of designing with plant life because mulch itself is alive. Mulch is collected and created on site, and donated from nearby coffee roasters in the form of coffee chaff.
Prune: Humans manipulate plants, and in response, plants change people. If we allow ourselves to slow down and work with the time scales of other species, novel management practices emerge. Root suckers become chip mulch, vigorous branching is cut and stacked as material for screens, and live cuttings are planted to grow a living fence.
Below: Stacking debris and pruned branches for a living wall. Quercus ellipsoidalis collected on site to grow individuals from seed. Coffee chaff to be used as mulch, donated by Parlor Coffee. A prescribed burn with ENCAP, Inc. in March as part of the long-term meadow management plan.
The site is located on the traditional unceded homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. Many other tribes such as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, and Fox also called this area home. The region has long been a center for Indigenous people to gather, trade, and maintain kinship ties. We acknowledge the indigenous roots of the state of Illinois and recognizes the deep history of the land tied to the traditions of the Potawatomi Tribe.