A ‘wulip’ garden has taken root at Wichita State University

What in the world is a Wulip?

These tough-as-nails flowers, fashioned from chicken wire and bamboo, were planted in late November on Wichita State University’s campus as part of an initiative to create a unique environment for campus visitors.

Wulips sport Shocker colors with bright yellow bell-shaped blooms and black stems. Five hundred of them currently sit along the banks of the pond in Braeburn Square, bravely withstanding the wintery winds.

Ty Tabing, the university’s placemaking consultant, said the project was a collaboration between students and four local artists and WSU alumni, including Kristin Beal, Hallie Linnebur, Meghan Miller and Mike Miller.

Students enrolled in Beal’s “Intro to Community & Social Practice” class worked through about 10 bales of chicken wire to make the Wulip Garden possible.

“Her class ended up being a perfect fit for the realization of the project,” Tabing said.

The class consisted of about 10 students interested in a variety of different disciplines, from computer engineering to theater.

Beal said the project was a great opportunity for students to get involved and “take ownership” of the area.

“I think the students became very proud of this project as it grew… When you work with a team to make something happen, there are relationships that form in that process, and that’s the power of this kind of work,” Beal said.

Students from Linnebur’s 3D design class also worked on the Wulips.

The students would build the flowers at the direction of the artists, and then work with the paint shop at WSU to color the chicken wire.

“We really wanted to have kind of a professional paint job and the WSU paint shop really delivered on that front,” Tabing said.

Braeburn Square, the current location of the Wulip Garden, is a new development on WSU’s campus intended for restaurants, shops and housing that will enter its second phase of construction in 2019.

“We wanted to create something that would generate a little attention and get people to come down and see this part of the university,” Tabing said.

But Tabing said the Wulips are moveable and may pop up somewhere else in the future as a way to draw attention to new initiatives or to activate other more dormant areas on campus.

Wulips are just the first in a series of placemaking projects the university is currently working on, Tabing said. One of these projects includes painting all the electrical boxes on campus, which Tabing said is almost finished.

“We want to get students to have a richer experience on campus and attract external audience to campus as well,” Tabing said. “The goal is to really kind of attract Wichitans in general, to get more people to visit campus and see it as an interesting resource and facility.”

This story was originally published December 22, 2018 at 5:00 AM.