I like all those ideas. It has recently occurred to me that perhaps we should be spreading the word (teaching, leading workshops and seminars, etc.) to the many, many members of our profession who, equipped with just a bit more knowledge, might make good emissaries to their clients, to architects, contractors, engineers, etc.. And then also to teach the decision-makers, as well.
I recently spoke with the education director of a local botanical garden (hmm, who could that be?) about leading a workshop for LAs on the variety, value, and needs of native plants. He sounded receptive, and next I’ll talk to a colleague or two (in LA and in horticulture) about teaming up with me on it. It might be a start, especially if we can get the BSLA as a sponsor.
And when do we outline our first book?
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So, what to do? If people don’t know our capabilities (as a profession, as individuals), the invitation to the table is not going to happen. And it’s hard to crash a party when you don’t even know when and where it’s happening.
Here are some thoughts, none of them especially original or well-informed, all overlapping:
- Become part of a client organization, as employer, leader, volunteer, or board member.
- Team with those people who are being tapped for their expertise in areas where we think we should be in on the conversation.
- Get famous. Write a book, have a tv show, win a competition. Make sure your vehicle positions you as what you want to be.
- Teach the decision-makers. That’s what Radcliffe does. Under the guise of teaching garden designers to design gardens, they’re teaching influential people how to understand and value landscape. They’re helping people of means and achievement become enlightened clients.
- Have enlightened clients.
Or, as the old joke goes: I’ll tell you how to be a millionaire. It’s easy. Ready? Ok, so first you need a million dollars . . .
Posted in Working Landscape | 1 Comment »
I’ve found that sometimes we’re invited to participate in developing an integrated approach to maintenance and design, sometimes we have to assert the need for at least some role, and sometimes we’re denied the opportunity even to educate ourselves on an institution’s maintenance practices and standards so that we may adapt our design to the care it will receive.
Sadly, this is just one example of a broader phenomenon, which is the expectation that landscape architects play an ancillary role in overall project design, and little or no role in urban design, institutional growth, “branding,” long-range budgeting, strategic planning, land acquisition, architecture, land use, political strategy, fundraising … the list goes on. We are not qualified to do all of these things on a solo basis, but in fact few of these things happen on a solo basis. What our work and training qualify us to do is to be members of teams working on these things (and teamwork is something we know how to do too). Until we have a place at the tables where the big decisions, it’s going to continue to be deck chairs on the Titanic.
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The new issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine arrived yesterday, and at the end of the book, as always, was the Critic’s Corner section, in this case reviewing a Swedish park. The critique was mainly focused on the concept (which the author liked) and the park’s materials (some of which she didn’t like), and noted also the park’s poor maintenance. Of course, the reviewer noted, it’s beyond the landscape architect’s power to determine a maintenance regime, so that shortcoming can’t be laid at the LA’s feet.
Somehow, though, I believe that landscape architects can and should play a much greater part in determining how a place is maintained. We should be asking about maintenance intentions in our first client discussions, and taking time to educate our clients about the importance of funding for and executing maintenance. Maintenance planning presents billing opportunities, in addition to giving us greater control over how our designs age and how they represent our ideas. Good maintenance can help popularize a place; poor maintenance can doom it. And when we advocate for the care of our places, we step up to the charge we landscape architects have accepted, to be stewards of the land.
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Just a quick little post, to mention the idea of working with plants to achieve a design idea. An email arrived last week from a client when I was out of town, telling me that bees had started swarming all over the Teucrium we’d planted near the new spa on her property. She’d had the gardener remove the plants and heel them in elsewhere until we could come up with a better location for them.
When I returned home, I drove over to see the offending plants. Sure enough, they were in full bloom, and bees covered the blossoms.
Here’s the thing: bees like and need flowers. They’re indifferent to people, unless people harm or seriously threaten them. They don’t really want to sting you, and if a bee is on a flower, it is not going to leave the flower to harm you.
That’s impossible to convey to a worried client, so the Teucrium on this property will stay away from the spa. One suggestion I wish I’d been around to make before the gardener moved the plants, though: flowers are not generally the point of Teucrium in a landscape, generally, and certainly aren’t in this landscape. It would have been an easy thing simply to snip all the flowers off (sorry, bees), so the plants could stay in place, remain unstressed, and continue to do their job as part of the overall design.* Sometimes the low tech solution is the best one.
*Teucrium chamaedrys (Wall Germander) is an attractive little broadleaf evergreen that grows between 1-2 feet tall; it makes a good edge or low hedge plant, especially in protected areas in Zones 5-9. The white or pink or purple flowers are small and pretty, but not the main feature of this plant; nipping them off would do no harm to the plant, and would more likely only make it bushier. (Some gardeners take this approach with Stachys lanata (Woolly Lambs’ Ears), which have great big fuzzy leaves and gawky-looking flower spikes — they cut the spikes off early in the game, letting the leaves hold the spotlight through the season.)
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Not to get hung up on Wordle, but here’s another example of what it can do.
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courtesy www.wordle.net
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I am casting about for ways to combine words and images to say things about design. My previous two posts use the same tool (see plasq.com) in two different ways (while keeping the pictures constant) and found that each graphic style led the text in a different direction.
So now I come to you, my vast audience (pause, sound of crickets chirping) to ask what you think of each approach - clarity, tone, appeal, impact, potential. I’ll keep messing around with this thing, and I don’t really need to choose; I’m just curious about what you like and why.
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Deb
Toby
