Samuel Stewart · The Legacy Garden

Martin Luther King Jr. High School Entrance Median Sustainable Landscaping

Eagle Scout Project · Troop 176 · 2025–2026

The Legacy Garden

A 253-foot drought-tolerant median at the entrance to Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Riverside, California, designed and built by Samuel Stewart.

Median
253 × 4 ft
Plants
77
Boulders
4
Raised
$17,000
Volunteers
20+
Building
4 days
Blue-green agaves and a yellow-striped yucca in gravel beside a large rust-colored boulder, with the school marching band walking past on the road behind.
November 2026, eight months after planting. Agave and variegated yucca beside one of the four boulders as the marching band passes the entrance.

November 2026

The garden today

For years, irrigation water ran down this median and straight into the drain. It now holds agaves, aloes and yuccas on drip irrigation, set in gravel around four boulders.

Two agaves and a yellow-and-green striped yucca in gravel in front of a boulder, with a yellow school bus behind.
Agaves and Yucca 'Color Guard' Y1 with a boulder, at the bus lane.
A clump of narrow-leaved aloe with tall red flower spikes, looking down the length of the median.
Aloe in bloom, looking down the median.
A large spiky yucca at the curb with the marching band and a tree behind it.
A yucca at the curb, one of the tall accents in the plan.
A broad agave and a clump of aloe in gravel, with the median stretching away behind them.
Agave and aloe, with the rest of the 253 ft behind.
A clump of aloe in front of a tall boulder.
Aloe in front of a boulder.
A boulder, an agave and a striped yucca in the median as band members with brass instruments march past.
A band day at the entrance.

March 21, 2026

The people

More than twenty volunteers, a school that said yes, and donors who raised $17,000. None of it got built alone.

Seven people gathered around a boulder in the newly finished median: two teenagers and five crew members in grey work shirts, one seated on the boulder, with the MLK school building behind them.
Volunteers and crew around one of the four boulders. Meet everyone who helped →
Samuel in a white hard hat pointing down the median, directing where a boulder goes, beside a skid steer.
Samuel directing boulder placement.
Two volunteers standing on the grass by the parking lot, one holding a rake handle and one a shovel, with others resting on a cooler.
Shovels and rakes.
A group of teenage volunteers standing on the grass beside the road, drinking water and talking.
Water break.

From the planting plan

253 feet, plant by plant

Four boulders roughly every 63 feet, two trees, and a plant every 3.3 feet, center to center.

Sheet index

How it happened