The term croft refers to a small agricultural unit, usually an enclosed field, a tradition in which gardening plays an essential role The Croft centers and celebrates manifold species through horticulture amid a sea of single-crop rotation fields, by transforming a pole-barn into a walled garden. The walls of the barn are cut to 6.5 feet, and a remnant of the gabled roof provides respite from the winds that sweep across acres of fallow fields adjacent the Des Plaines river in Illinois. While the challenge was to create a florific garden out of a storage shed, the design maintains the ethos of the site-wide adaptive reuse while establishing a strong connection to the heritage and vernacular of the farm.
