Mather Celebration Garden
Years: 2018 - Ongoing
Location: Stephen Tyng Mather High School, Chicago, Illinois
Status: Built
Hinterlands Team: Conor O’Shea
Collaborators: Javier O. Sandoval, David N. Zaya
Recognition: Finalist, Illinois Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects Annual Professional Awards Program
Conceived and installed through a collaborative and interdisciplinary process, this highly visible courtyard garden celebrates Mather High School students, teachers, and staff.
When a school staff member died suddenly, Mather High School teachers and staff rallied to create a garden in her memory. A collaborative and interdisciplinary process ensued, where Hinterlands Urbanism and Landscape collaborated with teachers and staff to create a framework for a student-led service learning project. The resulting Mather Celebration Garden is a highly visible 460 sf courtyard garden sited next to the hallway at the main entrance to the building, creating an uplifting visual amenity to the adjacent main office, principal’s office, library, and classrooms. The first season’s plant palette of sunflowers and milkweeds produced an explosion of blooms that coincided with the start of the 2019-2020 school year.
Over the course of several meetings with the teachers and staff, the garden’s purpose, originally conceived as a memorial to a single person, was recast as an inclusive garden to celebrate all former members of the Mather High School community. This turn was unanimously agreed upon, and set the tone for subsequent exploration of design ideas through the service learning unit as part of the Academic Decathlon team. The process was thoroughly democratic, giving students, staff, and teachers, a shared stake in the garden’s installation, as well as its future. This shared model also allowed for other collaborators, such as plant ecologist David N. Zaya and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Bachelor of Landscape Architecture student Javier O. Sandoval to seamlessly plug into the process.
A service learning project run as a distinct unit through the school’s Academic Decathlon course during the 2018 - 2019 school year preceded construction of the garden. The unit culminated with students all designing visions for the entirety of the courtyard and then collaborating on its design and installation. The unit included an introductory lecture on the profession of landscape architecture by Conor O’Shea and a design charrette with Javier O. Sandoval.
The design, installation, and cultivation of the garden was a collaborative and interdisciplinary effort that brought together members of the Mather High School community. At various stages of concept design, schematic design, and installation, members of the Academic Decathlon Team, the Mather Garden Club, teachers, principal, assistant principals, and students participated. The Mather Social Committee, Academic Decathlon instructor, and Garden Club teacher sponsor coordinated fundraising and purchasing.
