Kaiser Roof Garden during construction.

Construction on the garden began in late fall of 1959. John Sue, a recent graduate of University of California at Berkeley school of landscape architecture, was hired to draw up the plans and hardscape details. Kaiser wanted the building and garden to display as extensive a use of Kaiser products as possible, including aluminum, cement, and other materials, which meant many items were project specific and designed by Sue to be made of such materials. It was Sue who suggested enhancing another dimension to the garden by the addition of soil mounds in areas other than just around the trees. The technology for building a roof garden such as the Osmundson & Staley design was largely nonexistent at that time which meant they pioneered new methods to deal with problems as they went along.

Given this disadvantage, the garden was a tremendous technological success and has survived without major problems for nearly fifty years.

While Osmundson supervised the installation of the ground-level landscaping, partner John Staley was in charge of the roof installation. Load-bearing capacity was a crucial factor throughout. As the garage was not specially constructed to hold the additional weight of a roof garden, the designers had to closely adhere to the critical capacity of weight per square foot both during construction and in the final garden. They worked with the Soils Laboratory at U.C. Davis to tailor a version of the renowned U.C. Soiless Mix that would work for the roof garden. Staley carefully plotted traffic patterns on the roof and instituted the use of rubber-tired heavy equipment to move materials from place to place. The heaviest items - the trees - had to be positioned directly on top of supporting structural columns beneath and a system of drains was placed within these columns.

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