Existing proposal

What to keep and what to redesign

2024 City plan set with the July 2025 project description. Drawing extracts show the submitted scheme, not a restoration proposal already delivered.

In this section

The complete submitted landscape plan
The proposal’s overall landscape character
Locate the 65 inventoried trees
Oak #59 and the northwest group
Interior willow/cottonwood cluster
River/trail and street-tree interfaces
New tree palette
On-parcel river-facing planting
Treatment-cell vegetation
Treatment as visible landscape
Tree pits and shared soil
Canopy and heat
Fence as habitat architecture
Connect habitat across the campus

The complete submitted landscape plan

What is known

The five adjoining HMH plans cover the Orchard arrival and substation (10.3), SJC04 (10.4), SJC06 (10.5), the water-tank end (10.6) and PG&E switching station (10.7). Together they show extensive internal planting, parking trees, stormwater basins and the river-facing landscape, alongside roads, fences and service areas.

Design opening

Read these as one campus landscape before redesigning individual features. Connect its planted spaces into a richer native habitat network, while keeping the building, utility and access relationships legible. The existing Guadalupe River Trail is adjoining infrastructure; the drawings’ limits of work do not establish ownership.

Complete HMH landscape sheets 10.3–10.7, in order; PDF pp30–34. Each retains its key plan, legend, north arrow and scale. Submitted proposal, not built conditions.

Complete HMH landscape sheets 10.3–10.7, in order; PDF pp30–34. Each retains its key plan, legend, north arrow and scale. Submitted proposal, not built conditions.

The proposal’s overall landscape character

What is known

HMH’s concept sheet brings together the intended trees, planting near the riparian setback, basin and bank planting, seating, paving, bicycle facilities and fence types. These are reference images for the submitted scheme, not photographs of an installed SJC04 landscape.

Design opening

Use this as the visual baseline for the redesign: retain the ambition for planted spaces throughout the campus, then give them a coherent, locally native identity, stronger seasonal character and more habitat value. Reinterpret the planting and furnishings together rather than treating biodiversity as an added border.

HMH · complete concept-imagery sheet 10.13, PDF p40: furnishings, fences, trees, riparian-edge and biotreatment planting.

Locate the 65 inventoried trees

What is known

HMH Exhibit A locates 65 trees on and around the site: west trail edge #1–10/#65; interior #11–25; Orchard #26–38; northern neighbor/access edge #39–48; north/northwest oaks #49–63 and pine #64. The inventory extent is not an ownership boundary.

Design opening

Carry tree IDs onto the civil property/easement plan. Retain viable on-parcel trees and protect affected neighboring/street-tree roots. Read sheet 10.1 removal symbols alongside the numbered survey; do not assume all inventoried trees belong to Microsoft.

HMH Exhibit A · complete numbered location map, north arrow retained. Dashed outline is as published.

Oak #59 and the northwest group

What is known

Tree #59 stands in the cluster by the neighboring campus parking/landscape edge. Nearby #56, #58 and #60–63 are also substantial coast live oaks; the 2022 table rates this group Good for preservation.

Design opening

Compare the grove with the northwest water-yard/road geometry. Shift feasible on-parcel paving and pipes to protect viable roots/crowns; coordinate any work affecting neighboring trees. Establish trunk ownership and rooting protection separately before proposing removals or new dry understory.

Exhibit A close-up · #59 among the neighboring mature oaks. See inventory for diameters and condition.

Interior willow/cottonwood cluster

What is known

The interior line contains walnuts #11–15, willows #16–20 and #22, invasive acacia #21, and cottonwoods #23–25. HMH rates the large multi-stem #23 Good; these trees sit within the proposed developed campus area.

Design opening

Draw a retention alternative for #23 and viable willows against building, road, drainage and grading requirements. Keeping this cluster may require more than a plant-palette change. Do not replace its moist-root habitat with a dry meadow prescription.

Exhibit A · interior #11–25. #23 is the large cottonwood; #24–25 are smaller neighboring trees.

River/trail and street-tree interfaces

What is known

Oaks #1/#3 and walnuts #2/#4–10/#65 line the river/trail side; some were recorded growing into chain-link. Orchard trees #26–38 sit along the frontage affected by access and sidewalk work.

Design opening

Relieve damaging fence/trunk contact where the project has authority, preserving roots. Coordinate Orchard gate/sidewalk changes and street-tree retention with the City. Trail-side trees must be located against the property line; their inclusion in the inventory does not authorize off-site alteration.

Exhibit A crop · river/trail trees and walnut #65; Orchard trees appear on the full map above.

New tree palette

What is known

Sheet 10.8 lists 4 western redbuds, 39 saucer magnolias, 13 pōhutukawa / New Zealand Christmas trees, 20 fruitless olives, 8 Chinese elms and 66 zelkovas. Western redbud is the only California-native tree species in this schedule.

Design opening

Retain useful small-tree positions but replace suitable larger positions with oak or moist-ground riparian canopy. Do not present drought tolerance or cultivar sterility alone as evidence of native food-web value.

Six-species tree schedule, sheet 10.8; California-native share is 4 of 150 proposed trees.

On-parcel river-facing planting

What is known

The submitted palette includes a native-rich river-adjacent mix: yarrow, ceanothus, buckwheats, sky lupine and California fuchsia. This is a more useful ecological starting point than the ornamental tree palette.

Design opening

Build on the native-rich mix in the parcel’s western landscape areas, outside AND inside the security perimeter. Connect suitable meadow/shrub patches and retained canopy without treating the intervening trail, levee or riverbank as campus land.

The actual “Adjacent riparian planting” list, sheet 10.8.

Treatment-cell vegetation

What is known

The basin palette includes Berkeley sedge, a South African restio listed as Chondropetalum tectorum, and a Juncus patens cultivar. Basin-bank entries include sticky monkeyflower, red-flowering currant and creeping sage.

Design opening

Keep engineered treatment while using locally appropriate sedges/rushes in the wettest zones and dry-tolerant plants above them. Replace non-native restio where native plants can provide the required form and water tolerance. Do not add tall marsh plants to dry underdrained cells.

Basin and bank/slope palette, sheet 10.8; names transcribed from the drawing.

Treatment as visible landscape

What is known

Several landscape sheets show bioretention integrated with roads, paths and building edges. These spaces already connect water engineering and planting but are fragmented by campus operations.

Design opening

Make internal bioretention a visible, inhabited landscape for authorized campus users. Offer views from existing public frontage and the proposed southern connector where possible. Preserve treatment/access; bridges or paths inside security need not become public routes.

Treatment-cell layout, sheet 10.5.

Tree pits and shared soil

What is known

Planting details include root barriers and structural-soil arrangements. Small isolated pits constrain mature canopy regardless of the number or size of nursery trees specified.

Design opening

Enlarge connected soil volumes beneath or beside pavement, while maintaining foundations and utility clearance. Use canopy-sized rooting design instead of copying a pit detail across every species.

Tree in structured soil: complete detail and notes, sheet 10.9.

Canopy and heat

What is known

The tree-shade plan uses projected canopy areas and discounted overlaps. Its parking-only and parking-plus-drive figures differ substantially; neither directly measures summer shade along the public route.

Design opening

Study afternoon shade at seating, sidewalks and trail approaches. Reduce avoidable pavement and use native canopy where clearances allow; retain low vegetation under wires rather than promising impossible tree coverage.

Both shade calculations retained in this extract, sheet 10.12.

Fence as habitat architecture

What is known

The concept sheet offers fence/furniture products; the landscape sheets already contain internal planting and bioretention. Security, ecological habitat and public access are separate design layers, not an inside-industry/outside-nature split.

Design opening

Shape the fence and adjoining native planting as a multi-species habitat corridor, linking the river-facing edge with internal gardens, basins and trees. Layer flowers, groundcover, shrubs and canopy where space allows. Keep inspection access and sightlines clear, and protect electrical compounds without excluding habitat from the whole campus.

Original sheet 10.5 · substantial internal landscape remains part of the design opportunity.

Connect habitat across the campus

What is known

Internal planted belts, treatment cells and tree groups already form the basis of a campus habitat mosaic. Section C shows ground both outside the west fence (28–180 ft) and between fence and road (13–44 ft); these are drawing ranges, not clear habitat widths.

Design opening

Weave compatible planted patches into a campus-wide habitat network for pollinators, birds and other local wildlife. Link perimeter planting with internal gardens and retained trees; route connections around roads, gates and utility yards. A corridor can support many species without every animal crossing the secure fence.

Civil section C · outside-fence parcel ground and inside-fence landscape/road relationship.