Outside of office life, sometimes I like to think of fictitious interventions to document my thoughts about landscape and to exercise the left brain. On the banks of the Connecticut River, where the (now-decommissioned) bridge from New Hampshire touches down in Vermont, is a very underutilized open space and breeding ground for landscape ideas given its stellar location. The main event without question is the view of the stunning Mount Wantastiquet. It is hard to capture in photographs the haunting presence of this mountain as it pushes right up on the Connecticut River and, despite being across the river in New Hampshire, looms over Brattleboro, Vermont. When I first experienced Wantastiquet, it immediately reminded me of Twin Peaks. It is a magnificent backdrop to this town.
Photograph courtesy of the Brattleboro Historical Society.
The project site is situated between Malfunction Junction, a notoriously confusing 5-point intersection and the bridge to New Hampshire. Mount Wantastiquet is off camera to the right.
The curious mounding of this site is the result of an engineering effort to bury some vaults and other utilities. I tried to integrate this mound into the scheme in such a way that it appears more a consequence of a design intent than a burial.
The landscape program was shaped by the adjacency of the site to the planned Amtrak station. The site currently is an open field with two, forlorn municipal-looking picnic table/bench units. Brattleboro is a very community-oriented town and the townspeople are very connected to the land. These characteristics, to my mind, make a community garden a sensible proposal, especially since this very central intersection is equally accessible from within the town and neighboring Vermont towns as well as New Hampshire just across the river.
