Nuts and Bolts of Beauty

Since 1993, student landscaping crews under Mike Davidsohn’s direction in the Stockbridge School’s Landscape Contracting program have been highly visible, making the campus more beautiful each spring as they build stone walls, patios and seating areas fringed with flowering trees and shrubs. Two projects are located near the center of the campus: a small sitting garden of wood and stone is nestled into a terrace on the northeast side of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library; and in front of Bartlett Hall is a sunken sculpture courtyard which doubles as an al fresco classroom. Between Stockbridge Hall and Flint Laboratory is the Stevenson Fletcher Garden, a bluestone patio flanked by benches and planted with a variety of trees and shrubs.

Maintenance of each area forms another part of the Construction Materials Practicum, and allows students to preserve the work of earlier classes,going back to earlier projects such as a brick walkway to Wilder Hall, with plantings, small walls and benches; and stone walls under the magnificent beech trees in the meditation garden at the Durfee Conservatory.

In the past four years, work has focused on the dorm areas. In collaboration with Housing Services, Davidsohn selects a project that meets the course criteria. Each must be buildable within seven weeks, use a range of materials, and employ techniques such as grading, surveying, planting and earthwork – and, of course, be a worthwhile addition to the campus. At the Sylvan dormitories, where an uncertain boundary between lawn and parking area had led to lawn erosion, students built a stone wall border, backfilled it with earth and added plants and shrubs. At the Gorman residence hall, crews created two seating areas flanking a stairway that leads from the parking lot down
to the dormitory. Demonstrating how much these projects mean to students living on campus, Gorman residents began using the seating areas before they were even completed.

While moving earth, constructing walls and benches, and planting trees and shrubs, Stockbridge students learn “the process of landscape contracting, the connection between design and construction, and the nuts and bolts of how to build,” Davidsohn says.

An annual landscape exhibit at the New England Spring Flower Show in Boston gives Davidsohn’s Stockbridge students another chance to show what they can do, as well as to learn the process of design and construction. Over the past 10 years they have brought back one gold medal, two silver, many bronzes, and a host of other awards from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and other professional organizations.

Although the students love winning medals, says Davidsohn, the real point is that they are exposed to “the entire process of design and construction.” They design, build, and maintain the landscape display, solicit donations for all the materials, submit mounds of paperwork, and organize logistics for getting everything and everyone to Boston. For the nine days the show is on, students take turns stopping by every day to water plants and check for problems. Then they spend a portion of their spring break taking down the exhibit. It’s a great deal of work, but students are proud that about 150,000 people see their work.

When they complete their two years of course work, Stockbridge’s landscape contracting graduates are in high demand in the industry. Nonetheless, about half of each year’s graduating class goes on for bachelor’s degrees in plant and soil science, urban forestry, environmental design or landscape architecture.

Founded in 1918, the Stockbridge School offers a two-year associate degree program that prepares students for careers in the food crops, equine and
green industries. The school’s strengths include our 100 percent professional placement, and that the school is a bargain. We say we are “the small school with the big opportunities,” since Stockbridge students have access to all the opportunities available to other UMass Amherst students.

Nancy Garrabrants, director of the Stockbridge School

 

 

---