Project Overview

When Ridge Hill opened in Yonkers, New York, in 2011, its central Town Square was designed to be more than a passage between stores and restaurants. The compact plaza included the distinctive Big Girl play sculpture, seating, and space for community programming — all surrounded by the activity of a busy mixed-use retail district.

Seven littleleaf lindens (Tilia cordata) were planted around the playground to bring natural shade and greenery into this highly paved environment. Beneath the surface, Silva Cells provided 4,533 cubic feet of soil, averaging approximately 648 cubic feet per tree. Within several years, the trees had developed broad, healthy crowns that transformed the playground into a leafy retreat at the center of Ridge Hill.

Natural Shade at the Playground

Shade was an essential part of the playground’s design. Large artificial canopies initially protected children and families from the summer sun while the young trees became established. But those structures were always doing something the trees were intended to do naturally.

With access to quality soil beneath the surrounding hardscape, the lindens grew quickly and developed substantial crowns. By 2017, their canopy extended across much of the playground, allowing the artificial shade structures to be removed.

The result demonstrated the difference between simply planting trees near a play area and designing the space around their long-term growth. Silva Cells gave the roots room to expand beneath the active surface while the trees above provided increasingly valuable shade, comfort, and enclosure. The trees grew enough canopy to make the original shade structures unnecessary.

Fitting Soil in a Complex Urban Site

Creating that rooting environment required working within an unusually constrained site. Fire lanes serving the surrounding buildings limited the available footprint, while the custom bronze play sculpture relied on concrete pilings extending through the area.

Rather than occupying a simple rectangular space, the Silva Cell installation followed the irregular perimeter of the playground and worked around its structural elements. The surviving material plan shows the system extending beneath much of the playground edge, placing usable soil beyond the individual tree openings while accommodating walls, pilings, and other site features.

A total of 145 Silva Cells were installed. The varying depths helped the design team fit meaningful soil volume into the available space. The trees were planted in sandy-loam soil containing approximately 3–5% organic matter and about 10% mature compost, with roots able to use the full soil depth of up to 43 inches.

Problem-Solving: Installing Beneath a Soft Play Surface

The specialized playground surface created another technical challenge. Silva Cells normally support conventional paving assemblies, but this project required a resilient, poured-in-place play surface designed to help cushion falls.

DeepRoot worked with the project team to develop a custom crushed-aggregate buildup above the Silva Cell decks. This created a stable structural base beneath the 3.5-inch rubberized play surface while preserving the soil environment below.

The completed assembly also needed to support more than everyday pedestrian and playground activity. Maintenance equipment, including extendable boom lifts used to install seasonal lighting, regularly entered the space. The Silva Cell system allowed the surface to carry those loads without compacting the soil required by the trees.

Epilogue: 2023 Redesign

The area looks different today, reflecting a new set of programming priorities for Ridge Hill. A redevelopment approved in 2023 and completed in 2024 substantially reconfigured Town Square, replacing the playground-centered layout with an expanded synthetic-turf event lawn, new seating, a performance stage, an LED screen, and new planting areas. The Big Girl sculpture remains part of the plaza but now occupies a different setting.

Many of the seven original trees were removed. This transformation does not diminish what the original installation accomplished. Before the redesign, the trees had spent more than a decade demonstrating the value of protected soil beneath a demanding urban surface. Their crowns became large enough to replace artificial shade structures, improve the comfort of the playground, and establish a genuine green center within a heavily trafficked retail environment.