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Landscape Architecture

UWLA Students Awarded Top Pacific Horticulture Design Futurist Prize

by Chris Copeland (MLA 2025)
In the summer of 2023, Pacific Horticulture held a design competition to support new planting ideas for Pioneer Park in San Francisco, CA. Working with an historic site like Coit Tower, which can attract up to one hundred and fifty thousand visitors per year, our team wanted to use this opportunity to draw attention to the historic ecosystems of California. These communities of plants and animals are iconic and beloved. However, in a changing and increasingly unstable climate, we wanted to provoke visitors to imagine how changing ecologies could still be vibrant, biodiverse, and beautiful.  We won top prize, and below is a repost from the award website.

Top Prize Winner

Migrating Mosaics – Site Plan

Sarah Chu, Chris Copeland, Liz Forelle, Matt Jernigan (all MLA 2025)

Chosen Themes: Growing for Biodiversity, Drought and Fire Resilience, Nature is Good for You, Garden Futurist, Sustainable Growing

Read more about it here.

This image is an overview of ecotype zones and site context. Our design focuses on three historic California ecosystems: Chaparral, Oak Woodland, and Grasslands.

“This design wove evocations of historic ecosystems oak woodland, California grasslands, and chaparral into a living “mosaic.” Yet the designers didn’t limit themselves to historic plants, preferring a more agile, experimental approach. “The environmental mosaic of California is shifting to the north, which has many different effects. We have included species from as far south as Baja. If historically native species are no longer suited for this climate, these garden beds will be experiments in how to create climate adapted ecologies for the future. In other words, our planting design looks to the past to show the ecologies that made California what it is today and looks to the future to understand how we can make it healthier for the next generation,” the designers noted.

Judges appreciated both the design’s forward-thinking approach, that it considered maintenance strategy, and how well it acknowledged the site terrain.”

Planning Bed Details

The front entry creates a mixed mosaic of the coastal scrub (chaparral) three subtypes found through California from the Northern border down to lower San Diego, they include Northern coastal scrub, coastal sage scrub, and maritime succulent scrub. Substrate changes throughout the planting reflect these plant communities and informs the shape of the planting beds.

Design Insight

We included a comic to highlight specific maintenance relationships we considered in crafting our design. Our aim is to show that we have longevity built into our ideas, and that we recognize the importance of labor in landscape architecture.