A tiny residential landscape in Saint Paul, Minnesota, has proven that exceptional design doesn't require vast spaces. The "Little Project," created by landscape architect Wanjing Ji at her Summit Hill home, transforms a modest urban lot into three distinct zones that foster community engagement while demonstrating sustainable design principles. The project has earned recognition with a 2025 ASLA Honor Award in Residential Design.
Ji, founder of Ping Design LLC, designed the landscape primarily to help her shy young daughter engage socially by creating an attractive space for neighborhood children to play. The project replaced an underused lawn dominated by foundation plantings with a carefully orchestrated series of interactive spaces that exceed their small footprint in both function and beauty.
The landscape surrounding the family's early 20th-century bungalow forms three distinct programmatic areas, each serving different community needs. The "Little Prairie" extends from the sidewalk to the front of the house, encompassing 1,010 square feet of natural playground that welcomes community play. This front yard features log steppers, a balance beam, a bench etched with coordinates marking the wood's origin, and a reclaimed wood runnel that offers opportunities for discovery and play.
Behind the craftsman-style house, the "Little Garden" provides 800 square feet for a lounge area and pollinator habitat designed for more passive use. Visible primarily through a large kitchen window, this intimate space offers seating for two nestled within lush plantings, including voluminous hydrangeas that gracefully bow over black chairs. The third zone, the "Little Farm," flanks the pollinator garden and spans 840 square feet between the home's primary bedroom and detached garage, featuring a carpentry deck, dining area, grill, and distinctive wedge-shaped weathered-steel raised vegetable beds.
The project's environmental performance extends beyond aesthetics, addressing practical challenges that existed on the site. Before Ji's intervention, the property suffered from water management issues, including runoff from neighboring downspouts that made its way into the basement and a problematic maple tree whose roots had infiltrated the sewer lateral. Ji's design incorporates a rain barrel and small rain garden to manage stormwater while creating educational and interactive elements for children.
Ji's background significantly influenced the project's philosophy and execution. After working for more than a decade at Coen & Partners and in China, she launched Ping Design LLC in 2024, with the Little Project serving as her firm's inaugural built work. Growing up in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China, Ji chose the name "Ping" from the Mandarin character meaning "ordinary," reflecting her firm's mission to create the extraordinary from the ordinary.
"I want to bring what I learned through high-end or high-budget kind of projects to the everyday spaces," Ji explains, "to elevate people's experience in those spaces and expose them to the possibilities." This philosophy permeates every aspect of the Little Project, from material selection to spatial organization.
The project's material palette demonstrates innovative reuse of local resources, distinguishing it from typical residential landscapes. Ji incorporated reclaimed metal panels from a nearby church and black locust wood from locally felled trees throughout the design. The perforated metal panels now function as retaining walls within the Little Prairie, with one doubling as a bench backrest. Reclaimed wood creates the log steppers, balance beam, etched bench, and runnel.
Ji's approach to material reuse was influenced by her work in Yunnan, China, from 2016 to 2017, where traditional design methodologies and sourcing challenges make material reuse common practice. However, she encountered significant obstacles when attempting to replicate this process for commercial projects in the United States, where few suppliers stock reuse materials with specified properties. For the Little Project, she overcame these limitations by specifying dimensional ranges and three acceptable wood species while remaining adaptive during construction.
The project's success depended heavily on collaboration with specialized local professionals who shared Ji's vision for sustainable, community-focused design. Brian Luedtke, owner of Holistic Tree and Forestry, provided crucial expertise in reclaimed lumber sourcing and preparation. Operating from a 2.7-acre stockyard in Andover, 30 miles north of the project site, Luedtke maintains an encyclopedic knowledge of his inventory, readily reciting each log's species, age, and arrival date.
Luedtke's background in bonsai, urban forestry education from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, and interest in permaculture align with his systems approach to tree care and woodland management. He particularly values municipal park projects where he can retain logs after removing limbs or trees, creating a sustainable supply chain for reclaimed materials. "No one else keeps the logs," Luedtke explains, "so if they have good logs on the trees, then usually they give us those work orders."
For landscape architects considering reclaimed lumber, Luedtke emphasizes the importance of understanding wood species and their properties. In Minnesota, white oak, bur oak, and black locust are the most readily available rot-resistant species for exterior applications. Specifications should include the degree of debarking required and finish grade of cuts, from chain saw coarse to sanded smooth. He recommends drawing the envisioned log to ensure proper communication with suppliers.
Contractor Brian Nelson of Nelco Landscaping completed the project team, bringing 15 years of experience working with landscape architecture firms and specializing in natural materials and rainwater management. Unlike traditional design/bid/build projects with meticulous documentation, Ji provided only plans, material schedules, and a SketchUp model, allowing for what Nelson calls an "organic installation" through collaborative problem-solving during construction.
The project's most challenging element proved to be the raised weathered-steel vegetable beds, which Nelson considers the most exceptional part of the Little Project. Creating the curved forms required using a rotating grapple on his excavator to bend the metal to specified angles. Ji identifies these beds as one of the project's best moments, both for the fun spaces they created and their relatively low cost, demonstrating how common materials used in unexpected ways can create extraordinary results.
The project's financial accessibility represents another significant achievement, with surprisingly low costs of approximately $33,000 for the Little Prairie and $18,000 for the Little Farm, including its carpentry deck. This cost-effectiveness, combined with the project's innovative approach, has already inspired larger-scale applications of the same principles.
Ji, Luedtke, and Nelson have collaborated on a nature playground at Brooklyn Center Elementary School, just north of Minneapolis, in partnership with the Trust for Public Land. Opening in August 2025, this project provides outdoor exploration using many of the same reclaimed play elements as the Little Project, with additions including climbing logs and two play areas that double as outdoor classrooms.
The horticultural design creates true four-season interest, bucking many residential trends and contrasting sharply with the lawn-dominated landscapes typical of the neighborhood. Ji's attention to bloom time, foliage color and texture, and horticultural structure brings biodiversity and visual continuity between zones while accommodating Minnesota's short growing season through careful winter interest planning.
Neighbor reactions confirm the project's community impact and aesthetic success. Lori Nyberg, whose property adjoins the Little Project, observes, "I think it's beautiful. We've kind of watched it evolve, and it's just been really fun to see how things have grown since then." Her husband Paul notes that the landscape "reflects Wanjing's personality and who she is, and what she's hoping to do, and [invites] people in with something new and something different."
The project's success as both a family space and business development tool demonstrates the multiple benefits of thoughtful residential design. A small sign with Ping Design's logo discreetly advertises Ji's work to neighbors, while garden parties allow prospective clients to experience her imaginative approach firsthand. Regular visitors include neighborhood children who have formed friendships with Ji's daughter, fulfilling the project's primary social engagement goals.
During a recent garden party, guests mingled among the hydrangeas while children completed vegetable-garden scavenger hunts and scampered across log steppers wearing butterfly wings. The event featured craft activities where children stamped insects and owls around inked ferns, creating lasting memories while demonstrating the landscape's capacity to foster creativity and connection.
The Little Project ultimately demonstrates how landscape architects can embed extraordinary moments into everyday spaces through careful curation and community-focused design. By transforming a modest urban lot into a multifunctional community asset, Ji has created a model for residential landscape architecture that prioritizes social engagement, environmental performance, and material sustainability while remaining financially accessible to a broader range of clients.
