Re: Sore Subject; was Street Plantings, now Designer's Culpability, This is a long one...
- Subject: Re: Sore Subject; was Street Plantings, now Designer's Culpability, This is a long one...
- From: d* f*
- Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 12:18:14 -0800 (PST)
Speaking as a landscape designer, it is not just the
fault of the homeowner when gardens don't get properly
maintained. Sustainability of design gets no more
than lip service from most designers. Very few
designers are able to give an estimate of time needed
to maintain their designs, nor do they include
maintenance guidelines or follow-up consultations as
part of their design services. We are all probably
guilty of designing for the quick initial effect,
rather than designing around slower growing plants
that won't require the hacking to maintain them.
Some parts of the country are notorious for
overplanting, and I cringe every time I go to Orange
County, California,(home of Disnyland and Irvine
Ranch), and see the massive tree pruning practiced
everywhere. Fast growng trees like Eucalyptus, Ficus,
Liquidambar are usually planted much too close, and
then pruned annually to maintain them at half their
mature height and spread. One is less likely to see
this as a general condition in northern California.
If the client is only willing to budget for a mow and
blow gardener, it is foolishness to design something
that will require more. Being an amateur psychologist
comes into play at the time of the initial
consultation/first meeting, when the designer needs to
be able to read the clues, as well as ask the
pertinent questions. The main sin of landscape
designers and clients is giving into the urge for
instant gratification, usually by designing for a
mature looking garden within a 2 to 3 year timespan.
These gardens will be vastly overgrown/overcrowded
within 5 years, and usually require removals and
renovation. Some designers take the other approach,
and assume that this is the life span for a garden,
and this gives them repeat business down the road.
Nothing wrong with this approach if this is what the
client wants, but many times they aren't aware, or
assume it will be someone else's problem, as they move
on to another home.
I find that my 10 years experience of designing
gardens for developer model homes here in California
was very indicative of the tendency to overplant.
These gardens needed to look good immediately, and the
budget was usually insufficient to specify large sizes
throughout. The expectation was that the garden would
need to be renovated within 3 years time, but no one
ever told the future homeowner this. My efforts to
counter this would usually involve using quick growing
herbaceous filler amongst permanent shrubs, so that
the garden would look full at installation, with the
shorter lived filler plants dying out about the time
the permanent shrubs filled in. As the garden
installation was often done during the worst
conditions; no topsoil, compacted soils from heavy
equipment, waterlogged soils in the midst of winter,
minimal soil amendment beyond a scanty 3 inches of
bark mulch, the plants used had to be able to overcome
these conditions. I can go back 15 years later and
immediately see which projects were installed in
winter under these conditions, and those installed
under more favorable conditions. The larger trees and
shrubs never grew to their full potential, and the
ruined soil structure made the whole landscape less
appealing.
Construction schedules are unlikely to be delayed to
suit the landscape installation, and immediate impact
is the advertising that helps sell the product. For
private residential landscapes, the designer usually
has more control, and personla stake in the longterm
success. If maintenance budgets will be minimal,
design for this. It helps if the designer actually
has garden maintenance experience, can differentiate
between the trouble-free, long lived proven performers
and the their counterparts. Filling space with
temporary annuals/short lived perennials or
groundcovers which will eventually be shaded out as
the permanent shrubs and trees grow is also more
pragmatic than planting too many things too close
together which will have to be severely trimmed to
make them all fit. I also find it beneficial to
propose follow up site visits to review maintenance on
a quarterly basis, and strongly encourage clients to
include this as part of the intitial design
consultation.
One trend I notice amongst designers that I admire, is
the prominent use of plants with strong structural
forms that don't lend themselves to being sheared, and
mass plantings of plants with determinate size to give
long term continuity to the garden design. It is much
less likely that a Phormium or Dasylirion will be
butchered and sheared,(unless it wasn't given enough
space), but plants like Escallonia rubra or Dietes
iridioides seems irristable to the mow and blow
gardeners who love to get out the hedge shears. In
fact, although this Dietes is certainly a dependable
medit plant, I refuse to use it knowing that it is
usually poorly maintained, and will look bedraggled
after 3 years. D. bicolor is a much less rambunctious
species for similar effect, that doesn't end up
looking such a mess in the same time period.
I am sure we all could make a list of plants most
likely to be butchered. If you don't use them, you
may have won half the battle to have your design
maintained the way you envision.
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