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Landscape Management, January 2006
By Doreen Overstreet
This Florida Company Built an Outdoor FOX News Studio in Seven Days
In the competitive market of local television news, many stations are "taking it outside." They're doing this literally by designing outdoor studios to complement and enhance newscasts. In Lake Mary, FL, FOX's network affiliate WOFL wanted to take advantage of the state's year-round favorable weather by being the first Central Florida news station to have its own open-air studio.
"Central Florida is a lifestyle-driven market," says Rick Snyder, vice president of creative services for WOFL FOX 35. "What better way to connect with our viewers than by telling a story outdoors with informative cooking, gardening and weather segments?"
Good idea ... but not as easy as it sounds. FOX 35 needed the studio designed and built in one week to meet the deadline that corresponded to the close of its fiscal year. So Snyder called on Sanford-based Girard Environmental Services.
Transorming the Studio's Backyard
Girard was charged with transforming a 200- by 80-ft. space, located in WOFL's backyard, into an outside studio. The shady triangular-shaped area consisted of a retention pond, pine trees and overgrown grass surrounded by a fence.
"The space offered a wide variety of ideas for transforming the unsightly retention area into a functional landscape backdrop," says Nick Boehme, Girard's director of business development, who served as the project liaison. "Using our creative landscape ideas and developing a clear vision, we listened and worked closely with WOFL executives to make sure their outdoor studio was everything they wanted."
Girard assembled a 15-member team for the project, which included a project manager, a design team, and an irrigation and landscape crew. First, the team cleaned out most of the existing landscape and removed three 90-ft. pine trees in order to provide a clear view of the studio's backdrop.
The team used seven 80-ft. existing pine trees and reconstructed the entire irrigation system. The unkempt retention pond area also was transformed into an integral part of the outdoor studio.
All of the old overgrown bahiagrass and weeds were removed around the pond banks and surrounding areas and replaced with new St. Augustine sod and colorful shrubs, perennials and annuals. The Girard team also showed WOFL executives pictures of different foliage and indigenous plants and gave recommendations based on optimum visual appeal and upkeep.
"Our team had a vision of how we wanted the outdoor studio to look from a production standpoint, and the landscaping was essential in accommodating this vision," Snyder says.
Camera Ready
For the studio's backdrop, Girard included plants including Hawaiian Ti, variegated ginger, and Mexican petunias – and installed ornamental grasses like paspalum grass, red fountain grass and purple love grass.
"Ornamental grasses have a whispering effect, and it was important that the grass blew in the wind for visual appeal," says Richard Fife II, division manager of construction services for Girard, who handled the project's design/build process.
The site became even more colorful and eye appealing after the team strategically planted loropetalum 'plum,' gardenia radicans and four different varieties of azaleas. Amidst the color and shrubbery Girard also planted large trees including magnolias, weeping willows, oak leaf hollies, bald cypress and single-trunk crape myrtles to help frame the backdrop.
"We decided to use a lot of plants with red and dark accents to complement the colors in our logo," Snyder says.
WOFL's production team was an integral part of making sure the uncovered studio would be "camera ready." For the backdrop, the FOX 35 logo sign was placed between two pine trees along the pond slope. A camera was even panned around the environment to show the design/build team where to place the foliage for optimum frame shots.
"This was unlike any other landscaping project from the standpoint that everything we did had to be both aesthetically appealing and work with a panoramic view," Fife says.
The WOFL team also wanted to be able to use the outdoor studio during Florida's hurricane season to cover severe weather events. Three weeping willow trees, which have light, wispy branches that blow in the wind, were placed in the background to accurately portray real-time weather conditions.
To enclose the studio from viewers and create an additional sound buffer, Girard installed a 5-ft. podocarpus screen hedge to separate the adjacent office building along the existing black aluminum fence.
A 120-sq.-ft. vegetable garden was also created with a meandering flagstone pathway for the news team's outdoor gardening segments. WOFL partnered with the Seminole County Agriculture Extension Unit, which currently maintains the garden and grows fruits and vegetables suitable to Florida's weather throughout the year.
Weather, Traffic Problems
One of the main challenges with the outdoor studio was managing the run-off water that poured down from the rooftop to the project site. The standing water posed a problem because the water would most likely erode the new landscaping. Girard strategically situated more than four tons of decorative river rocks in order to form a drainage bed so the water would channel into the retention pond.
Another challenge was the studio's location along busy Interstate 4. An 8-foot podocarpus hedge was installed to serve as a landscape buffer to provide a pleasant backdrop for the newscasts. Also, because of the shade from the pine trees, the team had to choose shade-tolerant plants that were able to grow with partial sun.
A Killer Deadline
Girard met WOFL's 7-day deadline within the budget and made sure the studio was visually appealing and worked with all the camera shots.
"This project's success was due to constant and clear communication with the client," says Boehme. "During the 7-day job, our team constantly met with WOFL to make sure we were exceeding their expectations. Open communication, high-quality plant material and excellent, fast workmanship were essential to meeting the tight deadline."
FOX 35's outdoor newscasts will be "in full bloom" the first quarter of 2006.
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