As an extension of the Puente Hills Regional Park project, RE.CO founder, Rodrigo Rodarte, worked with Studio-MLA to expand the Youth at Work program into a partnership with Test Plot, a non-profit focused on community-based landcare, to design and install a living experimental Test Plot across from the site of the future Puente Hills Regional Park. With training and oversight from Studio-MLA’s professional design staff, Test Plot’s deep knowledge of native plant care, and Rodrigo’s experience in placemaking and experiential planning, students in the program conceived design ideas, selected and planted native plants, planned a successful community planting event, and created a monitoring plan so that future cohorts of students and community members could continue to care for the plots.

The Puente Hills Test Plot represents a unique collaboration with Youth at Work, engaging local students in hands-on stewardship and educational activities centered around environmental restoration and native plant cultivation as well as community-oriented programming. Through volunteer planting days and site maintenance events, young participants actively contribute to the growth and preservation of this interpretive native garden, fostering a deeper connection to local ecology. This partnership not only empowers youth with practical skills and ecological knowledge but also strengthens community bonds by highlighting collective responsibility for sustainable land management and conservation efforts. In a measure of the success of the program and a testament to the community-driven practice at Studio-MLA, several students have graduated on to more formal internships with Studio-MLA while attending nearby colleges and have developed plans to pursue landscape architecture related professions longterm.