Project Spotlight:
Carondelet high school Meditation Garden 

Carondelet High School is an all-girls private Catholic high school in Concord, California. It was founded in 1965 by the Sisters of Saint Joseph and currently enrolls about 800 students. They provide their students with a quality college-preparatory education.

Having a long and rich heritage along with an attractive campus, Carondelet High School wanted to update some of its grounds with a meditation garden. The goal was to provide the students with a tranquil setting where they could relax and meditate. 

The school leaders contacted Cagwin & Dorward based on our reputation and briefly presented us with their idea and we concluded our meeting with a date to meet to discuss the details and let us see the property.

Ideas

It's not often we are asked to create a meditation garden so our team went to work doing online research about meditation gardens and finding some visuals we could use when we met with the school leaders who were leading the project. 

As always, with a talented team, we had many ideas. Now we needed to know from the school what they envisioned and what budget we would be working with to reach the goal.  

Site Visit

The idea they presented was to transform an enclosed area comprised primarily of grass and some plants into a meditation garden. 

Below is a photo of what the area looked like before we started. 

Obstacle

After meeting with school leaders, we realized the budget was going to be extremely tight but we were determined to help them find a way to achieve a tranquil setting and an attractive meditation garden.  

Planning

Considering the budget our team settled on three different designs that would fit within or close to their budget all of which were warmly received by the school leaders. 

Once we had the plan they loved and agreements in place, as project manager, I quickly began determining the resources, equipment, and the team needed to complete this project. 

Challenges

We had two primary challenges. 

The first challenge is we had one week to complete the transformation. 

The second challenge was the courtyard where this transformation would take place had only one way to access it coming and going and that was through a building hallway. This means everything from materials, plants, equipment, and people, had to go directly through this hallway. 

This proved to be a lot of hard work on top of the looming deadline. 

Development

The Outcome

I was recently asked what I love about working at Cagwin & Dorward and the first thing that came to my mind is the freedom I have in creating something remarkable. We are trained to be visionaries and to use our talent and skills to create beautiful landscapes. At Cagwin & Dorward I love that I work with people I enjoy being with and that every day I get to sharpen my skills in creating remarkable landscapes that our customers love. It's one of the reasons Cagwin & Dorward has such a great reputation and is the leader in landscaping.