Senior Living Courtyard

This continuing-care community asked for a renewal of its central courtyard — the outdoor room its residents cross and gather in every day. The existing garden has decades-old plantings with character, a fountain at its heart, and an irrigation system past its useful life. The ask: places to sit together in the sun, planting the residents can reach and tend, and a water-wise retrofit of the aging irrigation.

I mapped the courtyard's sun hour by hour across the seasons: the north half of the central garden earns a genuine sun window — about eight hours in summer — while the south half sits in building shade most of the day. That one map organizes everything. Paths and seating go where the light is; the shade planting takes the rest.

Then the original structural drawings confirmed what the site hinted at: a parking garage sits beneath most of the courtyard. Soil depth is limited, the slab already carries real load, and a healthcare campus answers to its own layer of state review.

So the courtyard goes tree-light — the big canopies stay off the structure — and the planting works in communities matched to exposure and soil depth instead: meadow over the garage, deeper-rooted planting off the structure. The palette is built on California natives, organized into two hydrozones so each community is watered only as much as it needs.

The project is in design development now, part of a phased renewal across the campus — earlier phases are already through permitting and field review. This page will grow as the work does; construction photography comes when there's construction to photograph.