Contact: Leah Barbour
STARKVILLE, Miss.--When Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Mississippi, Inc. leaders resolved to build an education garden and park, they turned to the Mississippi State University landscape architect who masterminded the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum's rain garden.
Assistant professor Cory Gallo, a licensed landscape architect, stresses sustainability and conservation, both in the university courses he teaches and the outdoor spaces he designs. He supervised and directed more than 100 students as they constructed a rain garden at the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum in Starkville.
The museum garden, the only one of its kind in the state, serves as a regional demonstration site for green infrastructure and sustainable building technologies. In 2013, the project won the American Society of Landscape Architecture's highest honor, the Award of Excellence in Student Collaboration.
Sean McCarthy, an environmental specialist at Toyota Mississippi, first contacted Gallo in 2010 after landscape architect Wayne Wilkerson recommended him to develop ideas for a sustainable landscape at the Corolla assembly plant in Blue Springs. Wilkerson, former director of the MSU-based Mississippi Water Resources Research Institute, retired in February.
"Later, Wayne took us to see the museum when Cory and the students finished the rain garden, so when it came to designing the park, the first person we thought of was Cory; he was the natural choice," McCarthy said.
Toyota Mississippi donated materials and labor valued at more than $120,000 to build the Toyota-Blue Springs Education Garden and Park, said Emily Wilemon-Holland, external affairs representative for Toyota Mississippi.
"The project will be completed Sept. 20 as part of Toyota's National Public Lands Day volunteer event, the nation's largest hands-on volunteer effort to improve and enhance the public lands Americans enjoy," she said. "Between 200 and 800 Toyota Mississippi Volunteers participate in National Public Lands Day annually, the highest number of volunteers from any Toyota plant in the country."
Toyota Mississippi representatives worked directly with the town of Blue Springs to determine the community's vision for the park, and they took the information to Gallo, who then visited Blue Springs to get a personal perspective on the half-acre parcel donated to the town.
"All great parks have great people; they're the main ones who will make this park successful," Gallo said. "The conceptual master plan has a pavilion, pergola, playground and a small community garden," he said.
Other features include a play structure to enhance the playground, compost bins to feed the community garden, a water cistern to water it and a wild flower garden with a swale to attract monarch butterflies. Gallo said signs will be posted to provide gardening information and explain the butterflies' lifecycle and migration patterns.
"This is just a great project, and the plan is coming together," McCarthy said. "It's a neat feeling to see this design coming from Cory's mind, becoming a drawing and watching it come to life.
"Being involved in this project has given Toyota the unique opportunity of helping the community utilize local resources, such as Cory from Mississippi State," McCarthy continued. "He's helping make this vision come true for the folks of Blue Springs, and it's pretty rewarding."
Gallo said he appreciated Toyota's emphasis on education.
"Even the small things in this park will have an educational component," he said. "The signs will explain the community garden and the butterfly garden. The people at Toyota want to make this a great park and show off just how great it is."
For more about MSU's landscape architecture program, visit www.la.msstate.edu.
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