Bellwether Farm is a summer camp and year-round retreat center currently being develop on a 140-acre working farm southwest of Cleveland. The Farm will be a regional demonstration center for sustainable agriculture and an experiential education facility, providing support infrastructure for school groups and workshops and access to the Farm’s rich landscape mosaic.

The Master Plan incorporates the Client’s project programming and sustainability goals into the Site Plan using principles of Landscape Ecology. Non-farm buildings and landscape program elements are located within an ‘Expanded Edge’, a transitional habitat zone between farm fields and woodlands.

AKD proposed an incremental approach to developing the Expanded Edge. The ’25-Year Plan’ integrates agricultural technologies and planning with a managed process of plant community succession. The landscape time frame, where the life span of a single tree encompasses many human generations, allows for all ages of the community to be actively involved in the planting, harvesting and stewardship of Bellwether Farm’s evolving environment.

MASTER PLAN SITE PLAN

THE 25-YEAR PLAN:

SUCCESSIONAL EXPANDED EDGE DEVELOPMENT