Earth Design was awarded the commission to design and implement the landscape at Pickens County Museum in Pickens South Carolina. The landscape design concept was to capture the essence of the natural beauty of Pickens County and present it in an educational manner that is low maintenance. The design and landscape offers a glimpse of the unique geology, cold-water rivers, majestic mountains and indigenous plants. The community has embraced the landscape and schools often bring students to study and learn from the natural systems created here. The landscape at the Pickens County Museum shall long serve the citizens of Pickens by embracing the natural beauty, providing community pride and strong educational values.

The Earth Design team successfully designed the League Academy Tree Garden in Greenville South Carolina. The project was awarded by Trees Greenville a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and protection of trees in Greenville under a grant through the South Carolina Forestry Commission. The scope of our work included walking trails, educational nodes, signage and lesson guidelines. The landscape consists of trees, shrubs and perennials that are native to the southeast and offer great educational opportunities, aesthetics, and wildlife values for the students of League. The League Academy Tree Garden shall serve as a model for future projects and environmental education. 

Earth Design is currently working to establish a 38-acre environmental education center in the heart of Easley, SC. The Nalley Brown Nature Park shall consist of a state of the art environmental education building, walking trails, boardwalks, themed native American exhibits, early American pioneer culture, and native plant restoration models that shall serve as teaching opportunities for historical piedmont landscapes.

The Earth Design team has served as a guide through the process and has designed the preliminary Master Plan. The Nalley Brown Nature Park shall serve the children and citizens of Pickens County for many years and bring awareness to the rich natural and cultural heritage of the region.

Earth Design has designed and installed the green roof system at Riverside High School in Greenville South Carolina. The roof garden design is a modular system with native plantings based upon a natural plant community ‘Granitic Outcrop’ with low growing drought tolerant sedums, lichens and mosses. The landscape also has a seep or bog community type and native grasses. The roof garden is to be used to study heat island affects, evaporation rates, weather patterns and link to a global system of information exchange. The roof garden will serve the students of Riverside High for many years.

The South Carolina Academic Learning Environment is a unique to scale model of the state of South Carolina constructed on 6.5 acres in Spartanburg County. This on going project represents the natural ecological models and plant communities as they exist within the different geographical areas of the state. As principal designers for the project Earth Design produced deliverables that included conceptual and final site plans, landscape design plans, public and private presentations, and construction observation from ground breaking through completion.

Earth Design assisted in the Funding for this project that was accomplished through multiple grants and donations. Earth Designs vision for the SCALE project was implemented by first defining by survey, the state boundaries, then interstate highways representing the major pedestrian routes throughout the site, and major cites to represent educational nodes and outdoor classrooms. Other unique geographical features of the state such as major rivers, lakes and reservoirs, were also represented. Within this structure, these various regions of the state were further defined by using native plants and native plant communities, as they would occur naturally.

In order to inventory the existing trees and effectively develop the master plan in the most efficient and cost effective manner Earth Design used GPS and GIS technology to streamline the collection of tree data and to layout trails and identify educational nodes. As this data was generated, maps were produced to document the progress, and produce construction drawings for implementation of design elements. In addition an ARCView GIS data base was delivered which contains data on all trees identified during the tree inventory. Specific Data collected at this time included location, species, diameter, height, and health of each tree.

River Ridge Elementary is a 26-acre elementary school the majority landscaped using native plant material. The school grounds have over 5,000 native plant groupings based on plant community models. The campus features detention basins designed as mini-wetlands and early successional meadows that demonstrate the natural character of the rural piedmont landscape. The entire campus serves as an outdoor learning lab for the students. Earth Design working with the school district developed and successfully implemented this unique educational landscape. After five years since implementation, River Ridge Elementary now serves as a model for schoolyard landscapes provide savings on yearly maintenance costs and greatly enhance the learning opportunities for the students of District 5.