Parking Day is a global public project that temporarily repurposes parking spaces, turning them into public parks to advocate for public spaces and reclaiming streets. This fall, Kansas State University's College of Architecture Planning & Design students participated by transforming parking stalls into an interactive parklet in the center of the Manhattan farmer's market.

 

As community members shopped for produce and browsed handmade crafts, the Master of Landscape Architecture Students invited them to paint garden rocks as bumblebees and design colorful origami butterflies.

The students enjoyed engaging with the Manhattan community over a game of connect four to discuss native plants, pollinators and their displayed planting design projects from their courses in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional and Community Planning. Joining the 2024 national parking day theme of native plants, the Student Chapter of ASLA coordinated with a local nursery to provide a temporary plant display of recommended native and pollinator plants.

The plant display attracted not only people, but also friendly pollinators like bees and butterflies!