…The ipe wood boardwalk has weathered to a lovely silvery grey, the trees have begun to mature and provide shade, and shrubs and wetland have matured and filled in providing wildlife habitat as well as gorgeous backdrops for countless senior and wedding photographs! Like all living landscapes, however, plantings are never meant to be static and in some cases nature has forcefully reclaimed areas meant to be formal landscape beds. As an unirrigated project, several trees and shrubs have struggled over the years in the hot, dry summers that plague the Midwest.

Vireo has committed to visiting the majority of our built works over the next year, documenting and learning from what we discover in the field. We will share some of our findings here, as well as other quick walk-throughs of some of our favorite designs…

According to a recent report, "It’s not your imagination: it really is taking longer to get to work than it used to." With more cars on the roads these days, average daily driving commutes are increasing. All the more reason we should consider multi-modal transit alternatives.

Simple right? Maybe not so much…

Why do we value our natural environment as part of design? Maybe it’s just the serenity or peacefulness away from the ‘norm’ of the day. Maybe it’s an internal stirring that we find from a woodland, Savannah, or grassland that justifies borrowing from these basic characteristics as one approach to designing the intentional landscape?

Site design and landscape solutions are generally crafted with varied degrees of formality, complexity, and diversity. The notion of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, aside from proper horticultural principles, can be a matter of preference and flair…

They may seem like a small touch to some, but they’ve actually been part of a massive effort to bring about the largest resurgence in the city’s history.

Ten years ago, city leaders recognized that downtown would have to be, as they called it, “clean, green and safe” to attract the kind of reinvestment in downtown they were hoping for and that many thought could never happen. One of the key components of greening downtown was a system of planter boxes throughout the city, adding a touch of life to every block and creating a softer, friendlier environment…

As landscape architects, we're proud of what we do and we're passionate about creating spaces that make a difference. But it's not every day we get to be a part of a story like this one. In what our clients can only describe as a "God-driven experience", a simple idea to include an old pickup truck in a Memory Playground for a memory care facility connected generations of families from Olathe, Kansas to Kearney, Nebraska.

Workers lifted the modified '68 Ford into place at Cedar Lake Village this week, but its journey started almost 50 years ago.  It's a story you really need to hear, and it's one that reminds us how what we do today can echo for years or even generations to come…

For the past four years, our trail designers have been working on an active transportation trail through Kansas City that will eventually connect 103rd Street at Alex George Lake to the Missouri River. While some parts involve new, wider paths over existing sidewalks, some parts are a lot trickier.

Construction crews worked this week to place an 80-foot pedestrian bridge on a dime, just west of 51st and Hardesty and over a stream feeding the Blue River. The steel and wood bridge, trucked in from Alexandria, Minnesota, weighs nearly 28 tons and had to fit perfectly to the mounting bolts on each abutment, with a total margin of error of about two inches. And it fit like a glove…

For decades, we’ve been building roads to make way for more cars, but something happened along the way – we made some of them nearly impossible for anything but driving a car. Bike lanes and shared use paths have been gaining in popularity, though…

Overland Park has been known for a lot of things around town, but an extensive network of bike trails and lanes hasn’t been at the top of the list…until now…

If you've ever wanted to ride your bike right down the middle of Ward Parkway (and live to tell the tale) here's your chance. Kansas City's Cycle In The City is coming up May 16 from 2-5pm and everyone's invited…