The February issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine should be hitting mailboxes and newsstands any day now. Here is a preview of what’s inside:

• Rutgers University in New Jersey is diversifying its landscape architecture program by attracting students from community colleges. Six of them share how they found their way in.
• Public housing in San Francisco gets a boost from Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture. The firm designed the landscape at a new affordable housing development that invites outdoor play and offers residents a sense of refuge.
• The Austin, Texas-based firm dwg. finds new tools for monitoring soil health to learn what’s going on underground.
• Falon Mihalic, ASLA, of Falon Land Studio spent months experimenting with materials to create Meander, a concrete and resin sculpture for Houston’s historic Market Square Park.

Also in this issue: cozy plans for winter outdoor dining, Crane Cove Park in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood repurposes a shipyard for waterfront recreation space, Snøhetta creates a “living” presidential library in North Dakota, and more.