The Desert Botanical Garden invited 3. Fromme Design and HDLA (Nashville, TN) to collaborate with Staff and Donors on two new spaces within the Core Trail. Fromme had previously led the development of the Core Trail Master Plan and the design of the Desert Portal and Terraces. The intent was to create two more distinctive spatial experiences celebrating the beauty and botany of desert plants. Both sites were previously ill-defined and underutilized areas of paving and haphazard plantings.

The Christensen Desert Oasis invites visitors to traverse a bridge floating above the Silver Garden and move through a grove of spectacular blue hesper palms. Several paths meander through the Color Garden, a year round exuberance of warm colored flowering plants adapted to the Arizona climate. Species appeal to pollinators as well as people. Several water features - two pools and a water wall - celebrate the precious sensuality of water in the desert. The Grove, a grid of trees emerging from decomposed granite provides shaded places to gather and linger while looking back down the bridge to an iconic butte on the property.

The Ahearn East Portal clarifies and gathers together a number of paths at a critical intersection, creating an entry plaza into the plant science center classroom and future exhibits building. Horticultural displays showcase native Arizona Agave with exceptional aesthetic merit and ethnobotanical interest.