The City of Lynnwood was selected to site a Gold Star Family memorial in its Veterans Park. Started in 2010 by Hershel “Woody” Williams, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient from WWII, Gold Star Family Memorial Monuments installed nation-wide honor those families who’ve lost loved ones in combat or due to combat-related illness. Nakano Associates was selected to develop design and construction documents for the addition of this monument and monument plaza. In collaboration with those at Nakano Associates, Brenda developed a design which pays tribute to the twenty-two veterans who are lost each day to post-traumatic combat stress. Twenty-two sculptural seats flank the Gold Star Memorial which is nestled into an existing slope. Two existing planting islands were removed to create a plaza for events and additional seating was added to the park and along the plaza perimeter. A drought-tolerant climate adaptive planting design was created for remaining planting islands.