Memories of the Preparation of a Master Plan for Fort Ward Park in the Summer of 1979
By Kathleen Kust
James Chasnowitz, the City Landscape Architect, hired me as a summer intern for the City of Alexandria. I was to produce an overarching plan that would be used as the basis for the five-year plan for improvements to Fort Ward Park. The task was most of all to protect the historic earthworks while enabling visitors to continue have the intimate experience of walking the fort walls that they had come to expect.
We walked the park as Jim related the history of the fort, and the most recent history of the park. Only part of the original earthen fort walls still existed. During the Civil War there had been a lookout tower* in the still-standing bastion at this highest vantage point, and Jim talked about building a representation of it for park users. I was given a map that showed the original footprint of the fort. The five-pointed star fort extended over what was now the paved park road and Braddock Road.
First of all, I had to consider the fact that people walked on the top of the walls, tracing the outline of the fort, and walked and ran up and down the exposed earthen sides of the walls. The sun soaked high bastion slopes were planted in grass, but the rest of the earthworks were shaded by trees, and the soil exposed. Children loved to play on the walls, rolling down the neatly mowed slopes. There were eroded or cut-through breaks in the walls that would continue to erode naturally or by foot traffic. We had to find a way to gently and naturally direct foot traffic onto surfaced paths. A study of the need for and recommended specifics for footbridges over the damaged parts of the fort walls was needed. Stormwater drainage and erosion control needed to be part of the design.
Jim provided me with a list of elements to incorporate into the plan, and design guidance from his experience and input from stakeholders. These included an auxiliary parking lot, a picnic area, signage, and an enhancement and maintenance plan for the azalea collection throughout the park. He told me to consider whether we should continue to allow foot traffic on the top of the fort walls, or to make a path below the walls and prohibit walking on the earthworks. He made it plain that we wanted to allow access to the walls, if we could just prevent their quick destruction through trampling.
It seemed impossible to prevent people from walking wherever they wanted without fencing them away from the earthworks, so we decided to protect the walls by designating a path where people wanted it to be, bridging gaps in the walls, focusing on drainage, shaded area groundcover planting, and using low-impact equipment to mow the existing grass.
I had to decide whether we needed to remove some trees growing from the walls, which were obviously not there during the Civil War, but were helping to stem erosion now. I can't remember what sort of path surfacing I recommended, but in the end, a path was retained on top of the walls, and some trees directly in this path were marked to be removed.
We decided that the option of removing all of the trees from the fort walls in order to protect the walls by growing grass on them would probably be too destructive. Not mowing the grass would blur the profile of that point of the fort. I suggested planting groundcover on the grass-covered slopes as well as the shaded slopes, because this would deter playing and walking on them, and prevent the compaction and erosion that comes from regular mowing. The mowed grass was seen as better at preventing erosion than groundcover, and it allowed the outline of the fort to be clearly seen, so it remained. I did not know that most groundcovers in use at that time were invasive plants. I settled on Euonymus fortunei for the shady areas, because it does not have the distracting flowers of Periwinkle and spreads faster, and it has a finer texture than English Ivy. Today, I would grow native no-mow Red Fescues and Sedges featuring a low profile and a non-distracting texture.
To attract children to something more fun to play on than the fort walls, I designed a five-point star fort playground, mimicking the shape of Fort Ward. It had climbing walls and a swinging gate. I think there was a play-cannon to climb on.
I wanted to have as much of the full outline of the fort as possible evident throughout the park - painting it on the park road, and designating it with other materials elsewhere.
I think I remember writing an accompanying design report (or there was enough description on the plans and from our discussions), and then Jim used elements from this Master Plan to develop the five-year plan for the park.
January 31, 2011
* This is what I remember - there might not have been a lookout
tower here during the war.
By Kathleen Kust
James Chasnowitz, the City Landscape Architect, hired me as a summer intern for the City of Alexandria. I was to produce an overarching plan that would be used as the basis for the five-year plan for improvements to Fort Ward Park. The task was most of all to protect the historic earthworks while enabling visitors to continue have the intimate experience of walking the fort walls that they had come to expect.
We walked the park as Jim related the history of the fort, and the most recent history of the park. Only part of the original earthen fort walls still existed. During the Civil War there had been a lookout tower* in the still-standing bastion at this highest vantage point, and Jim talked about building a representation of it for park users. I was given a map that showed the original footprint of the fort. The five-pointed star fort extended over what was now the paved park road and Braddock Road.
First of all, I had to consider the fact that people walked on the top of the walls, tracing the outline of the fort, and walked and ran up and down the exposed earthen sides of the walls. The sun soaked high bastion slopes were planted in grass, but the rest of the earthworks were shaded by trees, and the soil exposed. Children loved to play on the walls, rolling down the neatly mowed slopes. There were eroded or cut-through breaks in the walls that would continue to erode naturally or by foot traffic. We had to find a way to gently and naturally direct foot traffic onto surfaced paths. A study of the need for and recommended specifics for footbridges over the damaged parts of the fort walls was needed. Stormwater drainage and erosion control needed to be part of the design.
Jim provided me with a list of elements to incorporate into the plan, and design guidance from his experience and input from stakeholders. These included an auxiliary parking lot, a picnic area, signage, and an enhancement and maintenance plan for the azalea collection throughout the park. He told me to consider whether we should continue to allow foot traffic on the top of the fort walls, or to make a path below the walls and prohibit walking on the earthworks. He made it plain that we wanted to allow access to the walls, if we could just prevent their quick destruction through trampling.
It seemed impossible to prevent people from walking wherever they wanted without fencing them away from the earthworks, so we decided to protect the walls by designating a path where people wanted it to be, bridging gaps in the walls, focusing on drainage, shaded area groundcover planting, and using low-impact equipment to mow the existing grass.
I had to decide whether we needed to remove some trees growing from the walls, which were obviously not there during the Civil War, but were helping to stem erosion now. I can't remember what sort of path surfacing I recommended, but in the end, a path was retained on top of the walls, and some trees directly in this path were marked to be removed.
We decided that the option of removing all of the trees from the fort walls in order to protect the walls by growing grass on them would probably be too destructive. Not mowing the grass would blur the profile of that point of the fort. I suggested planting groundcover on the grass-covered slopes as well as the shaded slopes, because this would deter playing and walking on them, and prevent the compaction and erosion that comes from regular mowing. The mowed grass was seen as better at preventing erosion than groundcover, and it allowed the outline of the fort to be clearly seen, so it remained. I did not know that most groundcovers in use at that time were invasive plants. I settled on Euonymus fortunei for the shady areas, because it does not have the distracting flowers of Periwinkle and spreads faster, and it has a finer texture than English Ivy. Today, I would grow native no-mow Red Fescues and Sedges featuring a low profile and a non-distracting texture.
To attract children to something more fun to play on than the fort walls, I designed a five-point star fort playground, mimicking the shape of Fort Ward. It had climbing walls and a swinging gate. I think there was a play-cannon to climb on.
I wanted to have as much of the full outline of the fort as possible evident throughout the park - painting it on the park road, and designating it with other materials elsewhere.
I think I remember writing an accompanying design report (or there was enough description on the plans and from our discussions), and then Jim used elements from this Master Plan to develop the five-year plan for the park.
January 31, 2011
* This is what I remember - there might not have been a lookout
tower here during the war.
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