Bloedel Reserve Begins Work On Their New Interpretive Master Plan
Bloedel Reserve has chosen 106 Group (106group.com) as the partner firm to develop an interpretive master plan for the organization. The firm’s focus on interpreting cultural institutions and heritage sites connected to tribal communities closely aligns with the Reserve’s culture and vision for the future. 106 Group will begin work with Bloedel Reserve in September 2023, with a project close-out expected in late 2024.
106 Group’s team blends backgrounds in Indigenous knowledge, interpretive planning, and award-winning design expertise with a shared purpose for illuminating the stories of a place and its people. They have collaborated at places such as Waḳaŋ Ṭípi Center in Minnesota, Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest in Virginia, and Garman Nature Preserve & Indian Mounds County Park in Wisconsin.
Bloedel Reserve’s Interpretive Master Plan (IMP) will identify and provide strategies from pre-selected goals and objectives, arriving at a plan of action that seeks to clarify storytelling, enrich the visitor experience, and develop a relationship to environmental graphic design in the landscapes. It is expected that this interpretive master plan will be a living document that continues to guide the Reserve’s relationship with itself and its community well into the future.
Interpretive Master Plan Goals
- To create a cohesive and uniform approach to interpretation at Bloedel Reserve that integrates storytelling into the visitor experience.
- To distill and clarify the main messages we would like visitors to take away from their experience, so they leave with a deeper understanding of the place, its history, and its mission.
- To create a safe, accessible, and informed experience for a broad range of visitors that reduces confusion, thereby increasing the chances that they have a relaxed, restorative visit.
- To simultaneously design and adopt a uniform visual environmental graphic design language that respects the founders’ intent.
About Bloedel Reserve
The Reserve is a public garden and forest preserve situated on north end of Bainbridge Island, WA in Puget Sound, a region that enjoys a most favorable climate for growing a diversity of plants and trees. Founded by Prentice and Virginia Bloedel and opened to the public in 1988, Bloedel Reserve is now one of the Pacific Northwest’s botanical, cultural, and environmental treasures and is considered a heritage landscape.
A conservation pioneer in the timber industry, Mr. Bloedel envisioned the Reserve as a choreographed experience of nature and a place to explore the role of humans as “trustees of nature.” It is a place where the positive benefits of nature on humans is palpable; a place to enjoy and learn the values of eclectic design, aesthetics, and ecology as catalysts for the harmonious interaction of people and nature.
Through the years, the Reserve has garnered widespread recognition for its outstanding and unique blend of native northwest forest and cultivated landscapes. Though not considered a botanical garden from a scientific standpoint, this combination of botanical excellence featuring rare and diverse plants collected from around the world, contextualized within a natural landscape makes the Reserve unique.
With the development and integration of highly acclaimed programs centered around creativity and inspiration and nature and well-being, a number of prestigious journals and experts have rated Bloedel Reserve among the finest public gardens in the United States.
Information and images provided by Etta Lilienthal, Communications Manager (for questions, please email: elilienthal@bloedelreserve.org)
Visiting the Reserve: TIMED TICKETS PURCHASED IN ADVANCE ARE REQUIRED FOR ENTRY. PLEASE NOTE: the Bainbridge-Seattle ferry line is closed to cars, motorcycles, and bicycles September 7-13. Join them on September 17 for Member Day.
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