LANDSCAPE DESIGN 5/Project 2
Sister of Social Service
The Sisters of Social Service Retreat Center in Encino is home to the sisters who live on the property and functions as a retreat and community center. The Sisters want to reimagine the central section of their campus as a place to grow food, restore ecology, and create spaces for people to enjoy.
For this project, students were asked to transform this central landscape through the design of three interconnected garden experiences: a Healing Garden for reflection and restoration, a Water Garden exploring water as both an ecological and experiential element, and a Nourishing Garden focused on edible planting and food production.
INSTRUCTOR: Pamela Brief
JUDGES:
Cassy Aoyagi
SCRIBES:
Holly Cory
SCASLA Achievement Award
Judges commended the nice graphics and coordination with the "Big Idea" of the crystal colors, with good use of shrubs, groundcover and layering.
Crystalline Sanctuary
Laura Williams
This project is a planting plan for a site in Encino for the Sisters of Social Service. Required elements for the planting plan included a healing garden, a nourishing garden, and a wildlife-friendly water feature.
SCASLA Honorable Mention
Judges liked the plant schedule and plant palette, which was easy on the eyes. The planting plan was commended with well presented information and good sensory qualities.
The Sensory Sanctuary
Lauren Rupp
The Sensory Sanctuary is a planting design prepared for the Sisters of Social Service in Encino, CA. Thoughtful planting, seasonal variation, and sensory elements create an immersive space where visitors can reconnect with nature. The spiral design symbolizes the cycle of life, growth, evolution, regeneration, interconnectedness, and unity, the spiral provides a tangible, visual map of one’s internal journey. The project aimed for mostly native, water-wise plants. The main site constraint was the middle circle needing to remain flat for emergency vehicle access.
The Common Table
James Kang
The Healing and Nourishing Garden creates a restorative landscape centered on reflection, connection, and care. Inspired by the Sisters of Social Service’s mission, the garden moves from quiet spaces for contemplation and healing to productive spaces that nourish both people and the land. Through shaded pathways, diverse planting, pollinator habitat, and edible gardens, the landscape becomes a living expression of service, stewardship, and community.
Sisters of Social Service
Danielle Moncarz
The Soul Gate Garden
Ryan O’Leary Jones
Planting design for the Sisters of Social Service retreat center. The project brief centered on creating a healing, water, and nourishing garden. The design focused on a heavily traveled area where the chapel, residences, and offices converge, preserving valued mature sycamores and oaks while reconsidering planting and circulation to create a landscape that inspired healing and restoration to go along with the Sisters mission.
The project became the Soul Gate Garden, a procession inspired by the concept of the Korean “soul gate,” and themes of healing and acceptance explored in K-Pop Demon Hunters. Research into Korean shamanic traditions and their relationship between healing, sacred space, water, and the earth informed a sequence that moves visitors from Healing Gardens, through Rain and Fountain Gardens, and ultimately into a productive Nourishing Garden. Together, the planting design uses the journey through the garden to move from healing, through transformation, toward nourishment and wholeness.
Sun Halo Garden
Elisa Reclusado
Sun Halo Garden is a proposed planting design for The Sisters of Social Service in Encino, California. Our clients wanted a nourishing garden, healing garden, and a pond garden. In addition to these, the maintenance of the gardens should be sensitive to less physically-abled bodies, especially the nourishing garden since the Sisters and residents will be hands-on in this garden. There is also only two maintenance staff, so maintenance needs should not be extraordinary. The plantings in the center circle must be non-woody and a fire truck should be able to drive over in the case of an emergency. The healing garden should promote mental and physical healing and be available for residents to harvest from. The pond garden is shaded and the design of the water feature is our choice.
My design was inspired by sun halos, a type of rainbow that circles around the sun. Sun halos represent a connection to Heaven and Earth. They symbolize transformation as well. I designed my gardens through an emotional lense. I've designed a rainbow of color around the center fire access circle. The three gardens wrap around this circle.
The Living Apothecary
Marissa Vega
This project was to develop a plant palette for a new healing and nourishing garden at the Holy Spirit Retreat Center in Encino, owned and operated by the Sisters of Social Service. My project is inspired by medieval cloister gardens and the traditions of herbalism and reimagining this cultivated landscape as a place of healing, nourishment, contemplation, and connection to the natural world. We were to select a mix of CA native and other CA climate-appropriate plants with similar climates, adapted from our previous plant palette project in Shrubs. My previous project in Shrubs was based on a Healing Meadow Tea Garden, but I expanded on celebrating herbs not only as culinary and tea plants, but also as sources of healing, ceremony, fragrance, and sensory enrichment.
Sisters of Social Service Wellness Garden
Kelsey Woodworth
Four Bowls of Care for Mind, Body, Spirit & Ecology
Brian Bautista
This project takes place in Encino at the Sisters of Social Service Catholic Retreat Center. We utilized plant palettes and concepts developed in our Plant Materials class to renovate a section of the Sister's large central courtyard. The garden is designed after a fusion between Western and Eastern garden ideologies.