Thinking about the garden #4

Once the park closed in the late fall of 2012 it would not re-open again until the end of February 2013.  In the early fall we had begun our efforts to establish a “master plan” of the garden and outer island area, which would entail dozens hours of detail that would accumulate onto drawing paper.   The project would become a project within a project as would eventually happen many of the things that we would undertake.

Ron Ture and I began the process by establishing specific measurements of the island and all of the existing features, existing plants and boulders.  Prior to this time we had established true north, south, east and west and placed pins in the ground and established a grid.   Once the grid was established we also set a stone that would become a reference point from that day on and would be left there until the end of the project.

Ron took on the measurement of all of the existing detail this lead to the placement of all of those things being measured onto drawing paper to a specific scale, which we decided would be ¼ inch to 1 foot.  Not only did he position the materials in the proper place but actually showed the items in its true shape as well.  Now everything would appear as a true bird’s eye view of the Island.

Now that the drawing was established to this point we agreed that we needed a common area to work on the rest of the detail since we would be working together on the rest of the plan.  We were invited to use office space at Gresham City Hall which meant that we could come and go at different times without having to go to one or the others homes.  Our goal was to complete the final draft of the plan by the end of December 2012.  We were able to deliver the design package to Parks and Recreation for review on January 2^nd 2013.  The package that we presented included the design drawing, irrigation layout, in-ground drainage layout, view area details, covered area detail, bridge detail showing a new railing design.