McLaughlin Trout Hatchery Courtyard Exhibit
Landscape Design

Belchertown, Massachusetts
2002

Visitors to the McLaughlin Fish Hatchery today are met with two rectilinear fish troughs in an austere concrete courtyard. DDA’s design for reconstruction of the courtyard responds to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management’s desire for an environmental exhibit approach. DDA’s design is of a simulated meandering free stone stream with riffles, undercut banks, feeding lies and a deep pool. Its running and still water from 4” to 3’ will become home to Rainbow, Brook and Brown Trout species. Stream banks planted with typical native New England flora or lined with rocks and a fallen tree trunk complete the symbolic habitat. Visitors leaving the new Visitor Center building by architects Juster Pope Frazier will be invited into the space by a fieldstone path, seating boulders and a timber bridge.