The Solution

Rehabilitation Plan for Piedmont Way in Berkeley, California, PGAdesign, Inc. 2007

With an award from National Trust for Historic Preservation FPW initiated a Current Conditions Study of the surviving landscape in February 2006. The study serves two needs; as a pilot project to test standards adopted by the Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS) www.nps.gov/hdp/ and as a critical first step in FPW’s rehabilitation effort for the beleaguered parkway.

In September 2006, FPW hired landscape architect Cathy Garrett of PGAdesign, Inc., www.pgadesign.com to draft a Rehabilitation Plan with funds awarded by the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund. Garrett’s deftly considered Plan, drafted with the assistance of Kirsten Johnson, a UC Berkeley graduate student in Landscape Architecture, had duel tasks: to take into consideration the identified period of significance of the streetscape (1865-1930) and to balance those parameters with present day needs. The final Rehabilitation Plan recaptures Olmsted’s notion of an inviting shady street within the context of a thriving population of students and community members.

In July 2007, the City of Berkeley budgeted $75,000 for Contract Documents and UC Berkeley’s Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund acknowledged the importance of the project for the second consecutive year; awarding FPW $75,000 towards replanting. In November 2010 FPW, together with the City of Berkeley and Cal Student volunteers, we planted 32 Chinese Pistache trees along the historic parkway. We anticipate planting 22 more trees including Coast Live Oaks, Scarlet Oaks and Japanese Zelkova in the Channing Circle and neighboring medians during Spring 2011. We continue to work to build a Long-Term-Maintenance Endowment Fund to allow planting of California native understory in the medians and to keep the parkway planted and maintained in perpetuity.