Coastal Maine Botanical Garden
Coastal Maine Botanical Garden
Boothbay, Maine
Unknown Studio is proud to share our proposal for the invited competition for the heart of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (CMBG).
One of Maine’s top tourist attractions, the 300-acre coastal gardens are a beloved seasonal destination, renowned for their holiday lights and vibrant summer botanical displays. As part of the continued growth of the gardens, Unknown Studio was invited to conceptualize a new entry garden in the heart of the site.
Inspired by CMBG’s Mission “To inspire meaningful connections among people, plants, and nature through horticulture, education, and research,” our team developed a holistic concept design for the client’s consideration.
As a design framework, our proposal, “Garden of the Sky Pools” builds on the perched freshwater hydrology of the site, eliminates “leaky spaces” with an expansive and surprising void within the amplified spruce-pine forest, focuses on the rarity of topsoils in Maine, and choreographs a much more romantic and contrasting entry sequence from today. Our proposal eschews traditional signage, demonstrating that landscape cues, water as wayfinding, compression and release, aspect, and viewsheds are sufficient intuitive guides for the garden guest.
The garden celebrates the rugged geology and glacial retreat-shaped coast of Maine, speculates on potential bedrock outcroppings, celebrates the winter season, and experiments with seldom used landscape mediums such as dormancy, groundwater, ice and winter light. In addition, the reforested edge foresees global warming, with a proposed hardwood-conifer mix for a future resilient forest ecosystem.
As a design principle, our team outlined an approach that prioritizes the local knowledge and importance of work and operations of the garden—gardens are a maintenance-driven endeavor and the hands of the gardeners and the hyper local expertise on horticulture already exists at CMBG. Unknown Studio also provided detailed estimating, sequencing, and an approach to guest experience during projected construction of the Garden.
Project timeline: 2023
Client: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Scope: Invited Design Competition Entry
Size: 1 acre
Cost: $4M
Partners | Consultants:
DEW Inc (Toronto) – Water Feature Design Concepts
Lumen (Boston) – Lighting Concepts
