THE DISCOVERY GARDEN

wolfe's neck center for agriculture & the environment

Freeport, Maine

Consultants: Thomas Fowler, P.E. (Civil Engineering)

Site Planning / Landscape Design / stormwater management

The Discovery Garden at Wolfe’s Neck Center is an experiential education field laboratory located along a central spine linking the facilities that support WNC’s educational programming. The forms and materials of the Discovery Garden, developed using the regenerative farming techniques practiced in the surrounding working landscape, give form to intimate and accessible spaces while providing the content for education programming.

Regenerative agriculture is focused on farming practices that increase soil health and facilitate soil carbon sequestration. The Discovery Garden highlights the ecological processes that are critical to healthy ecosystem function. The cyclical nature of these processes – decay and regrowth, plant community succession, seasonal harvests – requires a design approach that embraces ecological change and transformation and brings traditional ideas of how designed landscapes exist through time into question.

DISCOVERY GARDEN SITE PLAN

THE DECAY GARDEN

The Decay Garden highlights the critical role of fungi and decomposition in the development of healthy soils. Dead stumps, snags and logs are allowed to decay in the garden demonstrating one of the key components of regenerative agricultural practice while providing play structures and content for the Farm’s experiential education programming. Nearby hügelkultur mounds – a compost-based soil building technique – help differentiate program areas and add growing space for food crops. The Discovery Garden is designed as an accessible, tactile field laboratory, engaging all ages by connecting people to their environment.

RIPARIAN BUFFER PLANTING

Stormwater flowing through heavy soils and over ledge outcrops in the Discovery Garden becomes an opportunity to expand the diversity of plant communities and moisture tolerant species within this experiential educational landscape. Seasonally and intermittently wet areas provide habitat for amphibians, invertebrate pollinators and birds. Dense above ground vegetation and below ground root systems prevent soil erosion and protect surrounding coastal habitats through the rapid uptake of excess nutrients produced by livestock. The Discovery Garden changes with the seasons and the weather, connecting people to the natural systems shaping their environment.

SILVOPASTURE AND EXPANDED WOODLAND EDGE

Silvopasture is a regenerative agricultural practice integrating trees, pasture and livestock. Planted trees extend the woodland boundary into the Discovery Garden pasture, providing shade and shelter for livestock, which, in turn, contribute manure for soil and tree nutrition. Mychorrhizae (fungi that develop symbiotic relationships with living plants) follow the tree roots from the woodland into the pasture, expanding food resources for the woodland fungal network and increasing soil carbon sequestration. Edible plants in the pollinator matrix and riparian buffer plantings contribute snacks for visitors and value-added crops for the Farm.

DISCOVERY GARDEN FROM LOOKOUT POINT