Harris Center for Conservation Education

Working alongside architects and engineers on a new timber-frame pavilion, RDG designed the accessible landscape connecting it to the Harris Center for Conservation Education’s existing campus in Hancock, New Hampshire. The design threads an ADA-compliant path through challenging ledge and drainage conditions, reconstructs a dry-stacked fieldstone wall using on-site stone, and upgrades an aging culvert system to manage stormwater from the new construction. RDG also worked with the granite ledge to site an accessible Phoenix composting toilet building and improve overflow parking on an existing field with minimal soil disturbance. 

Native, low-maintenance plantings selected in collaboration with Harris Center staff soften the new pavilion’s connection to its site, incorporating salvaged perennials from the original gardens. The multi-year collaboration reflects RDG’s approach to built landscapes: solving real infrastructure problems — drainage, accessibility, grading around ledges — while keeping ecological and educational values central to a conservation nonprofit’s mission.