Our team recently attended the groundbreaking for the Visitor Plaza at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. Years in the making, the reimagined visitor experience reclaims its roots by restoring historic mid-century structures and the original entry sequence. The new design includes a welcome plaza with demonstration gardens, diverse seating options, a variety of donor opportunities, and ample flexible space. Demonstration gardens introduce low-water planting and low impact development and points visitors to a larger network of interpretive gardens throughout the Arboretum through a thoughtfully curated system of signage and displays. The project is pivotal to the Arboretum’s continual effort to make the gardens accessible for all visitors.
EPTDESIGN’s history is entwined with the LA Arboretum. Two of our founders – Bob Eriksson and Owen Peters – met at the Arboretum as assigned partners on a Sunset Magazine demonstration garden in 1957! Bob’s son Nord, a current principal, grew up in the Arboretum, taking lifelong inspiration from its rich community resource. This one definitely feels like home, and we hope to build on and share that feeling with its members.
We are honored to serve as the landscape architect and prime consultant for this important project and provide leadership for our design team: Dunbar Architecture, Hunt Design, and Ware Malcomb Civil Engineering.
You can watch the fly-thru animation of the project here.
