Hand, Education Programs Consultant, California Department of Education and. To children, a puppet for role play, and/or a list of possible. In springtime Joe's students meet on the lawn to. Recording of a science interview, or photographs of science work. Berkeley, from Dodge and Colker 1992.
Best Manual Lawn Mower Review: My wife and I have spent most of the time living in apartments. After a few years, I had built my beautiful home with a nice lawn. To keep the lawn looking neat and clean all the time, I had to look for a lawn mower.
In most American homes, you will find everybody using gas powered mowers. For my case, I decided to do things differently and purchased a best manual lawn mower. I have a small lawn, and I find it pretty easy mowing. There are so many benefits that are associated with a manual lawn mower. Let me highlight a few of them. Good for the health of your grass.
Do not produce noise. They don’t pollute the environment. They are easy to acquire. Allow you to exercise your body. Safe than power mowers. Produce the best results We must agree that manual lawn mowers are not for everybody.
If you want to enjoy the above benefits, you need to select the best manual mower on the market. I have provided you with unique lawn mowers that work well and help you maintain your lawn at its best. Read on to find the review of every mower. Best Manual Lawn Mower 2018 Our Top 3 Pictures Name Details Great States 415-16 16-Inch Reel Mower. Best Manual Lawn Mower Reviews & Top Picks Fiskars Staysharp Max Reel Mower Keep the grass in your yard well trimmed with the Fiskars lawn mower. This manual lawn mower makes good use of patent-pending technology and a nice ergonomic design that provides you with a nice cut. You do not have to experience the hassles of using gasoline, oil or dealing with cords.
Neither will you experience the loud noise produced by other different types of. The mower has an Intertia Drive Reel that provides twice the cutting power of other standard mowers.
The blade also remains very sharp hence eliminating the chances of frequent sharpening. For a clean cut on different types of grass, this lawn mower has Versa Cut technology so you can easily set the right cut height. Key Features:. Eco-friendly lawn mower with clean cuts. Has very sharp blades. Wider cutting width of 17 inches.
The mower is lightweight. Very easy to push. Provides 4 height positions from 1-4 inches American Lawn Mower 1204-14 Hand Reel Push Lawn Mower If you have cold season grass in your yard like blueglass, rye or fescue, you need a perfect lawnmower like the American Lawn Mower 1204-14 Hand Reel for the best performance.
The mower provides clean and precise scissors like cuts that leave the grass in your yard looking wonderful. It provides you with a cutting width of 14 inches and a cutting height of ½- 1-1/2 inches, so it’s easy for you to determine the right cutting height you need for the grass in your yard. It has a zinc-plated handle with plastic grips that provides you with a secure grip and comfort when you are pushing the mower. For durability, you can count on this mower. Having an alloy steel construction is a guarantee of quality and durable product that will serve you for long.
Key Features:. Easy cutting height adjustment. Works well with turf grass. Has a strong steel construction for durability. Lightweight and easy to assemble. Polymer wheels provide easy movement GreenWorks 25052 Reel Lawn Mower with Grass Catcher When it comes to lawn mowers, you can never go astray with Greenworks. They have the best selling lawn mowers on the market today, and the GreenWorks 25052 model is not different.
The lawn mower has a nice eco-friendly design and gives you the opportunity to keep your yard maintained without using oil, electricity cords or batteries. It is designed with five rust-resistant blades with a cutting width of 16 inches per pass. This means that if you have a small or medium-sized yard, it will take a very short time to mow because of the large cutting width. The cutting height of the mower is also adjustable from 12 inches to 2-1/4 inches so you can cut uneven grass surfaces and higher levels of grass effectively.
For effortless maneuverability, this lawn mower is designed with two rear wheels and an easy grip handle that provide comfort. Key Features:.
It comes with a collection bag. Very sharp rust-resistant blades. Two rear wheels provide easy maneuverability. Has a comfort grip handle.
Doesn’t need gas, batteries or electricity to function Sun Joe MJ501M Mow Joe Manual Reel Mower with Catcher Make your outdoor look appealing with the Sun Joe MJ501M lawn mower. For the many different types of best manual lawn mowers that I have used, this unit remains my best.
I love how it is easy to use, lightweight and its incredible cutting performance. It doesn’t matter the type of grass that you have in your lawn, this mower will always give you satisfactory results.
With its wide 18-inch cutting length, you can get your job done pretty fast. It is also designed with a convenient rear collection bag which ensures that your yard always looks neat and tidy. Again, you are in control of the height you want to maintain your grass. It provides you with a cutting height of up to 2.44 inches so you can determine the ideal height you prefer. Key Features:. Compact design. Maintenance-free.
Comfortable foam grip. Easy to use.
Lightweight. Comes with a grass collection bag Great States 415-16 Standard Full Feature Push Reel Lawn Mower A well-maintained lawn improves the overall appearance of your home. Additionally, keeping the grass short eliminates chances of pests and other animals like snakes from hiding in the grass. With the Great States 415-16 16-Inch, you can easily keep your lawn maintained without sweating it or suffering from the loud noise produced by other lawn mowers. The mower features a tempered alloy steel reel alongside a bed knife blade that provides even trimming for your grass.
The blades maintain their sharpness for long hence giving you the best cuts. The best manual lawn mower provides you with 16-inch cutting width and height adjustment from ½ inches to 2-1/2 inches.
It is also designed with a powder coated finished handle that lasts longer and prevents rusting from taking place. Key Features:. The mower is easy to use. Provides quality cuts. Offers you with height adjustment.
Cost effective Scotts 2000-20 Classic Push Reel Lawn Mower There is nothing that makes your home look better like a well maintained lawn. Keeping grass trimmed at the ideal height gives your outdoor the best look. If you want to have a best manual lawn mower that will help you cut grass with ease, try the Scotts 2000-20 20-Inch, and you will be impressed. The mower is designed with a cushioned loop-style handle that provides you with comfort when you are cutting grass.
It features five blades arranged at a different inclination to reduce friction. The blades are sharp and offer quality cuts.
To meet your mowing requirement, you can easily adjust the height of the mower from 1-3 inches. The mower also has a collection bag that collects the grass for easy disposal. Key Features:. Designed with a wide cutting deck. Easy to maneuver.
Adjustable cutting height American Lawn Mower 1304-14 Push Reel Five Blade, Lawn Mower Give your lawn the best look with the American Lawn Mower 1304-14 manual mower. This tool has a 14 inch cutting width that a pretty large space in just one pass. You can therefore finish your work in less time. It has 10-inch composite wheels that offer easy movement when you are mowing. You can push it with ease on your lawn without tiring yourself. The mower is also designed with zinc plated handle with plastic grips that make it comfortable for you when you are mowing.
For the most appealing cuts, this manual mower features heat treated blades that remain sharp hence delivering very quality cuts. Key Features:. Corrosion resistant. Comfortable handle. Works well with small lawns. Compact and lightweight.
Comes at an affordable price ALEKO GHPM16 5-Blade Hand Push Lawn Mower If you are irritated by the noise and maintenance requirements of gas powered lawn mowers, buying a best manual lawn mower will make your work pretty easy. The ALEKO GHPM16 mower makes your yard look wonderful all the time with no noise or emissions left behind. It works quieter such that you can even cut grass at night without worrying about disturbing your neighbors. The mower is compact and lightweight hence giving you an easy time when you are mowing. You can push it with ease without using much effort.
The mower is easy to put together, and it also comes with instructions to guide you through the installation process. It has five very sharp blades that offer even grass cutting. You will love the look of your lawn after using this lawn mower. Once you cut the grass, it collects in the removable grass catcher hence making it simple for you to throw the grass away. Key Features:. Compact and lightweight.
Easy to assemble. Has a removable grass catcher for easy dumping. Works silently. You do not need gas or cords Great States 815-18 Five Blade, Push Reel Lawn Mower Mowing your lawn gives you so many benefits. Not only does it make the grass look neat and clean but also eliminates pests from the grass.
For those who are looking for a best manual lawn mower to keep the grass short can try the Great States 815-18 Five Blade. This tool provides the scissors-like cuts without the use of fuel, oil or cords.
You just need to push it on the surfaces you want to maintain the grass short, and the blades will trim the grass to the desired height. The mower has heat treated blades that stay sharp for long. You don’t have to keep sharpening the blades all the time. It also has 10-inch wheels with ball bearings and radial rubber tire that roll with ease and provide traction when you are mowing. The handle is designed with cushion grips that provide comfort hence making it easy to operate. Key Features:. Easy height adjustment.
Cushioned handle for comfort. Designed with Unbreakable steel side plate. Wheels provide easy maneuverability Fiskars Staysharp Push Reel Lawn Mower Hiring a lawn mower every time you want to cut grass can be expensive as compared to owning one.
The Fiskars Lawn Mower is a perfect selection for people with small and medium sized lawns. As compared to other traditional mowers that are hard to push and get blunt easily, this one works amazingly well in maintaining your lawn without giving you a difficult time. It features advanced technology that makes it 30 percent easy to push.
The mower is also eco-friendly because it doesn’t need the use of gasoline, oil or charging the battery. It has an exclusive StaySharp cutting system with hardened steel blades that cut grass without touching.
This reduces friction hence prolonging the life of your blade. Key Features:. Works well with all types of grass. It has a wide 17-inch cutting width. Very easy to push. The mower is eco-friendly.
Designed with hardened steel blades How To Choose The Best Manual Lawn Mower I have highlighted some of the crucial factors that you should check when you are buying a best manual lawn mower. Size Of Your Yard You need to find out the size of your yard before buying a best manual lawn mower. If you have a bigger yard, these mowers might not be good for you. They are best suited for small and medium sized yards.
If you are mowing over 8000 square feet, it is important if you go for a power mower. Cutting Width The larger the cutting width of a mower, the less time you will take mowing because the trips are less.
In as much as the mower will be heavy with a larger blade, you will take very little time. Cutting Height At what height do you want to maintain the grass in your lawn? You need to check out whether the lawn mower allows you to adjust the blades up and down so that it will be easy for you to maintain the required grass height. Weight Of The Mower How heavy do you want your mower to be? Of course, you don’t want a unit that will be difficult to push. Select a mower that is lightweight and doesn’t compromise on the quality build. This will help you push the mower with ease and using a little effort.
Direction Of Grass Spray You should also find out whether the mower sprays grass in front or behind the mower. I wound recommend a mower that sprays grass in front so that it doesn’t cover your legs with clippings. Final Words If you want to purchase the best manual lawn mower that will work well, any of the models reviewed above is a number one selection. I have covered top products with positive reviews, and they work amazingly well when cutting grass. Pick your ideal manual mower to keep your yard ever looking neat. You May Like To Read.
Transit Street Design Guide / Island Press The new, the third in a series by the, is a must-have reference manual for city and transportation planners, engineers, urban designers, and landscape architects involved in the design of streets. These books, which include and, formulate a new approach to the design of our public rights-of-way, not only as transportation corridors but as important spaces for city life.
Street and highway design has been dominated by civil engineering technical manuals, namely American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)’s — otherwise known as the “Green Book” — along with the. These together form the core documents that state, county, and city transportation departments have relied upon as street design criteria for the last half century.
However, in the past few decades — as automobile transportation peaked, personal vehicle miles traveled per day soared, and congestion increased, resulting in wasted time and productivity — officials in some of our larger cities moved towards more productive forms of transportation, using transit street designs not seen in AASHTO or MUTCD. An emerging movement coincided with three city planning trajectories: 1) “smart growth” — compact, mixed use development, centered on high-capacity transit stations in a pattern that favors walking and bicycling; 2) the renaissance of America’s downtowns as desirable places to live, work, recreate, shop, and enjoy culture; and 3), enhanced or new transit to city centers. Because downtowns use existing developments and rights-of-way, this spawned new ways of thinking about not only moving people in urban streets but also how street space is a part of civic open space.
Street space offers a great opportunity: In my home town of Portland, Oregon, streets occupy over 45 percent of the land area downtown. The stage was then set for a new transportation movement. NACTO was formed in 1996 as a coalition of city departments of transportation for 22 of the nation’s largest cities and now includes 17 affiliate cities. NACTO gained legitimacy in the industry and stimulated a more multi-modal outlook in AASHTO and MUTCD’s guides. In turn, NACTO refers back to AASHTO and MUTCD manuals for more detailed technical criteria. Transit Street Design Guide is a reference manual so it’s not necessary to read from cover to cover in one sitting, but it’s ordered in a way to easily find the topic you want to explore and go directly to that section. This has been the format of all the books in NACTO series and their free,.
The book offers advice on choices, how to interpret specific recommended criteria (critical, recommended, and optional, for example), and clear references back to other technical manuals. In the introduction, NACTO lays down six key principles for innovative thinking. For example, one principle is “growth without congestion,” which calls for “serving more people in less space” and “making transit trips faster on streets with high travel demand.” The other five principles set the stage for creating richer street places, providing better service and mobility for the whole city, ensuring safety, and generating economic benefits from reliable travel choices. NACTO also explains why transit reliability matters, and the components of design and service that create reliability. Chapters explore transit streets, stations and stops, station and stop elements, transit lanes and transit ways, and intersections. These are all organized with the principles that underlie all street designs and should be kept in mind as a landscape architects and engineers make decisions. These are then followed by a description of the different contexts for design.
Clear paragraph headings — such as application, benefits, considerations, critical, recommended, and optional — make it easy to choose a design for further analysis. These segments typically include one to two-page spreads for each design type featuring outstanding illustrated graphics. Simple line drawings are in birds-eye perspective with color tone and numbered legend symbols.
User-friendly illustrations are complemented by photos of the design types built in cities across the country. An example of the birds-eye illustrations. In this case, paired parallel transitways / NACTO A bonus chapter on transit system strategies peeks into the world of transit system planning and includes sections on systems, ranging from multi-hub (a series of inter-modal transfer stations where passengers change to another line); grid network (great for cities with consistent grid street patterns and distributed destinations); radial network (great for cities with strong downtowns), with benefits and considerations noted. Again, great graphics are used to help a lay-person grasp these concepts. Example of the excellent graphics.
In this case, a menu of different bus stop configurations / NACTO The last segment — performance measures — is particularly important. For decades, the traffic capacity of streets and intersections was the primary performance measure for street design, and the results of these measurements trumped all other concerns. The book advocates a holistic approach called “Measure the Whole Street” — as in, average person capacity per lane space, safety, public space and social life, health, sustainability, and economic productivity as additional performance measures.
A very graphic way of understanding how person-trip capacity (the number of people moving through a lane space) changes dramatically between your mode choice: auto, bicycle, local bus, express bus and light rail / NACTO One quibble with the guide: in the double-page birds-eye perspectives of transit street types, the caption lists street width in parentheses. This is typically, but not always, the curb-to-curb dimension. Because overall street width from building face to building face is so critical in total street design, I would have listed both curb-to-curb and building face-to-building face widths so the reader would know at a glance what the sidewalk widths are. You can uncover those missing dimensions in other detailed segments, but it’s important to list total street space. If you are new to the NACTO series but genuinely interested in 21st century street transportation and street design, get all three books. They are worth the investment.
If you’re already a NACTO fan, add this book to your library. Going forward, street design must increase circulation for all transit modes, improve economic vitality and safety, and result in great placemaking — places that promote community identity, health, and well-being. Brian McCarter, FASLA, AICP, is principal urban designer at based in Portland, Oregon. He has 30 years of experience creating urban street designs in Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Calgary, Boise, and, notably, the, an ASLA 2011 Professional General Design Award of Excellence winner.,.
Gold Coast, Australia, beach erosion / csiro.au As the formulates a new approach to our changing world, its Board of Trustees sought to learn what other major design associations are doing to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. At ASLA’s mid-year meeting, representatives from the, and explained how they are helping their collective membership, which totals hundreds of thousands, face the new challenges. Serene Marshall, executive director of, said their goal is to reduce carbon emissions from buildings — which consume about 40 percent of global energy and produce around the same amount of emissions — by 50 percent by 2030. Strategies that will help include: greater building energy efficiency, education for building tenants on energy consumption, distributed local energy systems, transit-oriented development, urban green areas that help increase the acceptance of density, and local sustainable food production.
At the same time, ULI wants to increase the resilience of communities to “floods, fire, droughts, and increased heat.” Developers need to “avoid the unmanageable effects of climate change while managing the unavoidable.” A major part of this involves changing “where they build real estate.” “Water will be for the 21st century what oil was for the 20th century,” said Jason Jordan, director of policy, APA. Up until now, “water has been too compartmentalized in the planning process.” But Jordan said some forward-thinking communities are already planning for the expected problems that will come with having “too much or too little or too polluted water.” APA has partnered with the Dutch government’s water experts, creating a working group that will lead to a new policy guide for “how to live with water.” APA’s second focus area is planning for hazard mitigation competence at the local level, and they are working with and the to create local standards. Lastly, APA is also focused on creating new models for public engagement and how to “better address social equity issues.” “If we deal with climate change in isolation, we are not going get to where we need to,” said Joel Mills, director of.
“1.4 million people are moving to cities around the world each week. Climate change is directly connected with urbanization.” But he also added that there is no one-size-fits-all urban climate solution. For example, “Austin has doubled in population while Detroit is fighting its way back.” To come up with solutions, communities must create their own dialogues based in collaborative approaches. In addition, AIA has signed on to the, which calls for all buildings to be carbon neutral by 2030.
And the group has joined the national in the built environment. “Today’s design criteria and codes are built on the weather of the past — this is the challenge,” said Dick Wright, with ASCE’s committee on the adaptation to a changing climate, which also recently released a on adapting infrastructure to the future. “The challenge is how to deal with uncertainties in the underlying climate data.” ASCE is promoting the use of the “observational method,” a “learn-as-you-go process for a life-cycle 50-100 years out.” Engineers now need to ask themselves “what is most probable scenario in 50 years and design for that, while also providing for the extremes.” As an example, the, which runs along the coast from Los Angeles to San Diego, is set on pre-cast concrete piers that can be shifted 5-feet up as needed.
The piers were constructed to be “deliberately durable to extreme exposures.” Wright concluded: “we’ve reached the end of handbook design — you can’t put in numbers and spit something out. Engineers must use ingenuity and imagination in dealing with uncertainty and adapting to future conditions.” ASLA President Chad Danos, FASLA, asked how can planning and design organizations actually impact climate policy? Mills said “every mayor is very interested in this issue,” and working bottom-up from the local level could result in a “grassroots movement.” For Marshall, it was those mayors who created the local actions and political room for the international climate change agreement reached in Paris last December. “The mayors made it easy for the national leaders.” Both Marshall and Jordan said avoiding the “ideology” of climate change was important.
Marshall said, “it’s better to just go to communities and ask, ‘do you have flood, drought, or air pollution problems?' ” Jordan thinks a successful strategy for changing climate policy will need to “refocus the discussion and get away from the polarizing dynamics.” The business sector, particularly real estate developers and insurance companies, may help create a “bottom-line approach that will have impact. Capital markets will drive change due to the vulnerability of some assets.” Most seemed to agree that “policy change will not happen on Capitol Hill,” but will be the result of many state and local efforts. Also, all agreed that cities and smaller communities only continue to build in vulnerable areas along coasts. As sea levels rise, this is increasingly untenable. Jordan said: “We need to take a hard look at where we are subsidizing risky developments. An honest conversation is needed.
That’s in the public interest.”. University of Virginia campus / Perfect Soccer Recruit “Landscapes have long been essential to the transfer of knowledge,” said, a professor of history, art, and architecture at Boston University at Dumbarton Oaks’. In ancient Greece, “Hippocrates taught the art of medicine under a tree. And in China, there has been a tradition of educational landscapes, including the book garden.” Fast forward to the founding of some early colleges and universities in the United States, and we see the beginning of a “distinctly American type of educational landscape,” with gardens, arboreta, and designed views. Early American university campuses were designed to “train the eye to outside beauty,” create a long-lasting appreciation for nature, and build important values like self-reliance. Today, some of those American universities are now at the forefront of education about sustainability and resilience.
“University landscapes can create a profound connection with the ecology of our world. We need students who understand climate change. A university can make these issues manifest in the landscape.” The symposium covered vast ground; here are highlights from some of the campus landscapes discussed: The University of Virginia: This model American campus was in the early 1800s. He envisioned a central mall surrounded by buildings, with “spaces for learning intended to promote the stewardship of knowledge, an academical village,” explained Bluestone. The idea was to give people “space to develop a sense of where they were” — in this case, the Virginia landscape, which was central to the original campus and became a sort of living learning lab, in today’s lingo, “where students could reflect on their place in the greater ecological scheme of things.” It was also a productive landscape: students would pass by kitchen gardens and know where their food came from.
(The image below is of Jefferson’s kitchen garden at Monticello, but it perhaps gives an idea of what those would have looked like). Vegetable garden at Monticello / UVA Green Dining Harvard University:, a fellow at Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany, gave a sweeping tour of Harvard Yard through the ages, arguing that the shift away from the grand Elm tree monoculture of Harvard Yard to a more diverse, resilient tree canopy, is mirrored in shift away from being a white, elitist college to a more diverse one. (However, one could also argue that only elite institutions like Harvard can afford to be so resilient). Claghorn traces the evolution of Harvard Yard over the years, explaining that there had been three waves of Elm deaths before the move diverse planting scheme was created, which still features the stunning Elm roof but also includes blooming yellow woods and many other species. Harvard Yard / Harvard Magazine Harvard, the oldest institution of higher learning in the U.S., has largely had an organic evolution over the past 375 years. In the beginning, there was no masterplan for the campus. Cooper Hewitt Teen Design Summit / Jared Green “I wish I had this opportunity when I was your age to meet all these amazing designers,” said Caroline Baumann, director of the, at the start of the in Washington, D.C., where 200 D.C.
Public high school students got to learn from national design award winners from all disciplines. Out of the whole group, about 25 students were put into small groups of four and asked to try out landscape architecture, practicing both design thinking and collaboration.
Students were given a variety of prototyping materials, including straws, paper, and wire, to create models based on challenges. Students were asked to either create a healthy outdoor park or a space that would benefit their neighborhood in just 45 minutes. As they raced to create their prototypes, national design award winning-landscape architects hovered, critiqued, and offered guidance. As the landscape architects interacted with the students, I asked them what they thought about the state of high school design education., ASLA, author of, who won the national design award in 2013, said “landscape architecture, and design in general, needs to be better integrated into the curricula.
Design is a part of life and it needs to be better included in our educational system.” She said with the lack of opportunities to explore the world of design, “too many kids don’t even know they are designers.” She was one of those kids: as a high school student she was “completely bored working in 2D; I wanted to be in 3D!” But there were few opportunities for her to express herself using models., FASLA, who won the design award in 2015, said U.S. Undergraduate enrollment in landscape architecture is falling, in large part because there is so little awareness of the profession in high schools. He believes the mission of every landscape architect should be go to a high school and show students what it’s about. Coen said “when I go to talk to high school students, they don’t even know what landscape architecture is and what a powerful, broad field it is.
That’s a serious issue.” And Mary Margaret Jones, FASLA, senior principal at, which just won this year’s award, said “high school education for landscape architecture is non-existent. The biggest concern is these students never make it to a university program. We just aren’t getting the numbers we need.
I’ve spoken to people at the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), and they see a crisis coming. Employers are also having a hard time hiring and they are searching all the time.” Jones also said landscape architecture must become more diverse.
She added it was actually First Lady Michelle Obama’s idea to bring together the D.C. Public school students and the design winners — “I couldn’t agree more with this approach.” For some additional perspective, Halima Johnson, who runs teen programs at the Cooper Hewitt, said: “high school students in general don’t know landscape architecture is a thing. But landscape architecture isn’t the only design field with this problem. They also don’t understand interaction design or product design.” She said it’s important to keep it simple and “lead them to it.” For example, a good design challenge is asking them to design a park or outdoor space “before actually explaining to them this is a discipline.” Many of the students got into it. Watching the student groups busy constructing their models, Ruddick commented that “some groups are on fire and some are stuck.” With some groups, “there is a clear leader who catalyzes the design process, and then the others who are deferential.” She said in the real world, it’s not much different: “there always has to be one design lead, even in a collaborative process.
Otherwise, you can get lost and get design by committee.” The design leader “has to have the ability to let the process play out and not get freaked out but channel things without steamrolling.” Jones, also helping the teams, largely concurred: “there were some students who just dove in. They were natural design leaders.” But she said “someone started and then that gave others the ability to start, too.” And both smiled when they saw some teams were struggling with competing design visions. Jones joked: “wow, that never happens in the real world.” One team, seen in the image up top, ended up creating a set of cascading pools. As Big Daddy Sal, one student, explained, “there’s a kiddie pool, an intermediate pool, with a slide, and then an advanced pool that can only be reached by a 100-foot ladder. You can just chill up there.
There’s also a hot tub for older people.” Deshala, a local high school student, said her team created “a cool-kids spot, with a pool and an area where they can just sit on the grass.” Her team purposefully designed a space that would provide shade. Cooper Hewitt Teen Design Summit / Jared Green One team created a giant hammock, covered in solar panels that power a spinning umbrella upon which multimedia is projected.
They were also focused on providing shade. “There’s a special area just for pets, too.” Cooper Hewitt Teen Design Summit / Jared Green Marcus, another student, explained that their team created an outdoor coffee shop, with palm trees. Cooper Hewitt Teen Design Summit / Jared Green And, lastly, one team created a “Bad Girls Club playhouse, a sanctuary for anyone who is a girl to express themselves emotionally and physically.” The team went outside the toolkit provided the Cooper Hewitt, using the light from a cell phone to illuminate the model. Cooper Hewitt Teen Design Summit / Jared Green Cooper Hewitt Teen Design Summit / Jared Green As David Skorton, president of the Smithsonian, said later in the day, “design is an optimistic endeavor.” And perhaps for some of these students, the day made them more optimistic that they too can use design to solve our problems. Perhaps some will even consider a new path. Planting in a Post-Wild World / Timber Press Instead of laying down a layer of mulch to separate plants, let native plants grow into beautiful, layered masses, said Thomas Rainer, ASLA, co-author of, at the Potomac Chapter of ASLA Gala in Washington, D.C. Rainer believes it’s possible to both boost biodiversity and achieve beauty through the use of “designed plant communities.” It’s possible to avoid creating a “weedy-looking mess,” but still harness the “adaptive ability of plants.” In fact, only by taking this approach can landscape architects and designers “reconstruct natural habitats in our cities,” which Rainer thinks should be their goal for the 21st century.
In the near future, Rainer sees a largely urban world dealing with the challenges of a changing climate. In the era of Anthropocene, there may be less pristine nature, which leaves cities and suburbs as a primary place to restore and reclaim ecosystems. “The loss of nature may represent a new beginning: an opportunity to re-wild our cities.” Rainer sees a future where skyscrapers have meadows, water treatment plants have wetlands, and highways are ecological. So what’s holding all of this back? Rainer in part blames landscape architects and designers who are still pushing “formalistic arrangement of plants,” increasingly an anachronism in our world of biodiversity loss.
In a brief tour of landscape architecture history, Rainer explained that plants have long been used to “express order,” starting with the classical and French traditions. There was a pause in this approach with the English, pictureseque, naturalistic landscape style, which allowed for greater diversity of plant species. But that style lost favor amid the renewed formalism of Modernist landscape design, which “still dominates — with its mono-cultures of walls, carpets, stripes, and grids.” Modern formalism hasn’t been good for ecology. And while Rainer thinks that formalism may still have a place, more biodiversity must be introduced within this style. All of those striking Modernist landscapes, and their contemporary variations, have had a “high impact on critters.” Birds rely on insects that rely on specific native plants.
If you remove the plants from the equation, the whole ecosystem collapses. Today, “the lack of plant diversity is a real problem.” A way to introduce more diversity is through designed plant communities, which are “complex, adaptive systems” that require little maintenance. This new planting paradigm represents a shift from the Modernist approach of “plant as object” to a focus on “the power of systems.” Designed plant communities / Thomas Rainer and Claudia West If landscape architects and designers are worried how all this will look, Rainer points out that the High Line, with its wild yet artfully-curated sets of plants, is one of the biggest draws in New York City. Rainer thinks this is because “there is nostalgia for the lost wild spaces,” and people want to see them in cities. But beyond the beauty of Piet Oudolf’s planting schemes on the High Line, those plant communities are also more resilient because they are more diverse. Oudolf let the plants “naturally interact.” ASLA 2013 Professional General Design Honor Award. High Line, Part 2 / Iwan Baan ASLA 2013 Professional General Design Honor Award.
High Line, Part 2 / Mercer Country Master Gardeners Sadly, too many landscape architects and designers still want to “mass, group, and separate” plants, instead of allowing the plants to interact. One recent LEED Platinum building achieved all its site-related credits by planting the plaza out front with just one native plant, which seems to completely miss the point. There, “plants were treated like a piece of furniture.” But in the wild, “plants are social and react to changes in their network. If you take them out of their network, they lose functionality and resilience.” As an example of the resilience of nature, Rainer pointed to a strip outside his house in Arlington, Virginia, which gets inundated with salt in the winter and dog pee year round, but has a diverse, inter-mingled mass of 26 different “weed” species. Plant strip in Arlington, VA / A Way to Garden.com Too many landscape architects and designers also bring in generic soils and mulch, to ensure that “anything will grow there,” as opposed to using available local resources to plant layered native communities, which really act as “green mulch.” As Rainer notes, “you won’t find mulch circles in the forest.” Rainer said bringing in too much soil and mulch runs counter to increasing biodiversity. “It’s actually the lack of abundance of resources that leads to increased diversity. If you look at landscapes with a great deal of infertility like desert landscapes, that’s where you’ll see diversity, and a harmony of plants adapted to place.” Sonoran desert plant communities / Gateway to Sedona Biodiversity can look designed and be beautiful.
“We can reach a new intersection between ecology and horticulture. We can combine the best of the ecological plant traditions with the pleasing dynamics of aesthetic formalism. We can avoid weedy messes, but also let plant communities self-seed and move around.”. Explaining the 400-hectare park that follows a 17 kilometer stretch of the Deule Canal, Simon walks along, pushing aside branches that hang over the path.
Kneeling down, he pulls up blades of grass that he uses as drawing tools, illustrating the ideas that shaped the park. A series of perpendicular walkways of vegetation extend through the park, linking the canal and park-land to the surrounding villages, farm fields, and forest.
Simon pauses in front of a field with a tunnel of sculpturally-arched willows to explain: “I like working with the hearth, with mankind and its diversity. This diversity gives us teardrops, commas, curves and the like.
They intertwine, double back, twist around. People discover things differently here than in an open field. Everything is linear, rectangular, then suddenly something surprises them. That’s important.” Simon worked with dynamic processes, forging relationships between plants, soil, and materials that evolve long after their initial construction. He was a choreographer of vegetation, intervening with sensitive, formal edits that considered growth cycles, morphology, seasonality, and cultural use.
Community participation was vital to his process of maintaining and caring for designed landscapes. In Parc de la Deule, Simon invited friends and children to stage small theater productions on site, building papier mache gnome puppets who “spoke for the forest.” His projects remind us how imagination and play can free us from cultural constraints and help us to know a site intimately. Simon passed away in September 2015, but his legacy lives on.
Every April, in his playful and hospitable spirit, Gali-Izard invites the landscape architecture department to her home to celebrate his birthday. Students and faculty gather to share a meal and hear her recount stories from her lifelong friendship with him. As we sit cross-legged on the floor, flipping through page after page of his drawings, we can’t help but think of how our own practice and creativity might unfold.
Jacques Simon’s sketch books / Teresa Gali-Izard People and trees, Simon’s sketch book / Teresa Gali-Izard Though Simon has passed on, we can only hope that all of us will remember to play a little more, touch and experience the materials we are charged to work with, and not feel too tied to convention as we leave academia and enter the world of practice. This guest post is by Amanda Silvana Coen, Student ASLA, master’s of landscape architecture candidate, University of Virginia. Landscape as Urbanism / Princeton University Press Charles Waldheim, Affiliate ASLA, chair of the landscape architecture department at Harvard Graduate School of Design, is moving away from the “original assertions and ideological charge of landscape urbanism,” a controversial theory he has shaped and promoted. Instead, in his new book, Waldheim takes a broader view, arguing that landscape architecture is the design discipline best positioned to create more sustainable cities through “ecological urbanism.” Our cities are increasingly complex, and a systems-based approach is needed to sort through all the inter-relationships. In our multi-layered urban world, what better organizing tool can there be than the underlying ecology of a city? Much of the design press seems to agree with Waldheim.
The Architect’s Newspaper, CityLab, and other planning and design publications have expanded their coverage of landscape architecture, with the latest urban ecological plans, parks, and plazas now getting as much attention as major new buildings. And we are starting to see these ideas percolate into mainstream media as well. In a of founder and landscape architect Adriaan Geuze, ASLA, and his work at in New York City, The New Yorker wrote: “parks have become the new architecture stars, perfectly suited for our green and community-seeking age.” There is a growing awareness of the value of ecological landscapes, in all forms, in our cities. Waldheim’s book is not written for the general public. The writing can be tricky, but the book is rich in bold ideas.
He has a thought-provoking take on the twinned history of planning and landscape architecture, and how these disciplines have shifted roles in a few major cities over the past few decades. He increasingly sees contemporary urban planners as “rushing into document design,” and focused on “managing public relations, legislative processes, and community interests,” while landscape architects bring the sweeping, layered ecological visions and make them happen. “In many instances, landscape design strategies precede planning.
In many of these projects, ecological understandings inform urban order, and design agency propels a process through a complex hybridization of land use, environmental stewardship, public participation, and design culture. Often in these projects, a previously extant planning regime is rendered redundant through a design competition, donor bequest, or community consensus.” In, Waldheim lists 12 projects he thinks are examples of this trend, and in his book, he holds up New York City, with its High Line, Chicago, with its Millennium Park, and, finally, Toronto, with its ambitious set of Waterfront Toronto parks, as prime examples of a landscape and ecology-first approach to city-making. Waldheim argues that these big, landscape architect-led projects are a sign that “landscape architects are the urbanists of our age.” However, Waldheim doesn’t go into any detail about the leadership, planning and regulatory frameworks, or local cultures that enabled these projects to happen in the first place.
For Waldheim, the role of the landscape architect is increasingly paramount. One of the most interesting chapters looks at the history of the term “landscape architect.” Waldheim argues that with landscape architect’s increasingly ambitious urban and ecological scope, the term doesn’t do justice. He reveals, though, that this debate has been ongoing since the late-1800s, at least among the leaders of the field. Frederick Law Olmsted particularly disliked the term landscape architect and “longed for a new term to stand for the ‘sylvan art.' ” Olmsted was quoted: “landscape is not a good word, Architecture is not; the combination is not. Gardening is worse.” Waldheim writes that Olmsted wanted a better English translation of the French terms that “more adequately captured the subtleties of the new art of urban order.” And, interestingly, many of the founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), which was formed in 1899, also “chafed” at the title landscape architect, including ASLA’s only woman founder, Beatrix Farrand. Waldheim floats the possible translation of the French and Spanish conception of architecte-paysagiste as “landscapist” and presents it as a more relevant title for an evolving profession.
Towards the end of Landscape as Urbanism, Waldheim moves away from the West and sees the future of landscape architecture in Asia, personified in the unique role Kongjian Yu, FASLA, founder of, plays in China. “Yu represents a historical singularity and is arguably the most important landscape architect practicing in China today.” Yu plays the role in China that Olmsted once played here in the U.S.
But perhaps on an even broader scale. (And through omission, Waldheim seems to say there is basically no one of his stature in our country practicing today). “Yu has leveraged this unique historical position to lobby Chinese political elites, most notably national leadership and mayors, for the adoption of Western-style ecological planning practices at the metropolitan, provincial, and even national scales.” Through this effort, his lectures to China’s Conference of Mayors, and his influential publications, Yu has “effectively articulated a scientifically-informed ecological planning agenda at the national scale.” Yu’s advocacy culminated in a recent project: a Chinese National Ecological Security Plan. Waldheim sees this as the epitome of the positive role landscape architects can play in shaping a more sustainable, ecological urban future. And Yu and others’ “ecological urbanism” may surpass the more limited landscape urbanism approach in earning followers.
Waldheim concludes that an “ecological approach to urbanism promises to render a more precise and delimited focus on ecology as a model and medium for design. This has the dual benefit of avoiding some of landscape’s luggage, whole rebooting the now two-decades-old intellectual agenda of landscape urbanism.” Ecological urbanism opens up a whole new set of opportunities. “Increased calls for environmental remediation, ecological health, and biodiversity suggest the potential for re-imagining urban futures.” What an exciting idea: marrying ecological health with good design for both humanity and other species in our cities.,. Half Earth / Liveright In his latest book, famed biologist and author E.O. Wilson makes the case for both preserving and restoring half of the Earth, which he believes is possible if we set aside some of the richest places of biodiversity on land and in the oceans. These arks can protect up to 85 percent of all current life as the planet’s human population continues to grow from the current 7 billion to an expected maximum of 11 billion in coming decades.
He believes humans have a moral obligation to be stewards of the millions of species that also call the planet home. And if we do not undertake such an ambitious conservation effort now, there could be potentially massive negative impacts for us, too. He reminds us that human survival is dependent on the survival of millions of other species, some of which are very tiny and not well understood. Wilson is highly critical of our current approach to the environment. “We are still too greedy, shortsighted, and divided into warring tribes to make wise, long-term decisions. Much of the time we behave like a troop of apes quarreling over a fruit tree. As one consequence, we are changing the atmosphere and climate away from conditions best for our bodies and minds, making things a lot more difficult for our descendants.” He seems shocked by humans’ collective thoughtlessness, which has severely affected other life forms as well.
“We are unnecessarily destroying a large part of the rest of life. Hundreds of millions of years in making, and we’re extinguishing Earth’s biodiversity as though species of the world are no better than weeds and kitchen vermin.
Do we have no shame?” Wilson concurs with other leading scientists that the planet is now facing its sixth great wave of extinction, largely thanks to us. While the conservation movement has essentially kept the patient — in this case, the world’s most critical ecosystems — on life support, the “heroic efforts” of both public and private-funded organizations haven’t been enough. Extinction rates are about 1,000 times higher than normal. Furthermore, according to a 2010 survey of two hundred experts on vertebrate land animals that analyzed the status of 25,000 known species, a fifth of these species are threatened with extinction and only a fifth have been stabilized due to conservation efforts. Wilson writes, “We might be inclined to say to the conservationists, ‘Congratulations. You have extended life, but not by much.'
” Oceanic ecosystems, which are still little understood, are even worse off, because vast swathes of the open seas aren’t managed by any one country. The result is a primary example of the “tragedy of the commons” in which “blue water, belonging to no one, is subject to no regulations whatsoever, save that established by international negotiation,” and, as a result, is plundered by all. “For generations, all marine waters, variously protected to some degree or not at all, have suffered over-harvesting of edible species. The downward spiral has been hastened by habitat destruction, spread of invasive species, pollution with toxins, and eutrophication from excess nutrient runoff.” In Half-Earth, Wilson finally responds to those who see some glimmer of potential in the new Anthropocene, our current planetary epoch shaped by man. Their vision is of a planet made up of “,” successfully managed to serve humans and perhaps some beneficial “nature,” but now degraded to its base functioning as “ecosystem services.” Their approach is a response to the failures of the conservation movement. It’s also rooted in their belief that “pristine nature no longer exists, and true wildernesses survive only as a figment of the imagination.” Wilson says some practical ideas have come out of this “new conservation movement,” like managing nature parks and reserves in a way that helps meet the needs of people, too. However, he is scathing in his critique of the clique of writers, restoration ecologists, conservation biologists, and designers promoting this vision, accusing them of great ignorance of how ecosystems actually function.
“It is been my impression that those most uncaring and prone to be dismissive of the wild lands and the magnificent biodiversity these lands still shelter are quite often the same people who had the least personal experience with either. I think it relevant to quote the great explorer-naturalist Alexander von Humboldt on this subject, as true in his time as it is in ours: ‘the most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.' ” To save biodiversity, scientists, policymakers, planners, landscape architects and designers, and the general public must “understand how species interact with one another to form ecosystems.” Yet, Wilson says our current state of knowledge about ecology is “so poor as to limit this effort.” In light of this general ignorance about ecology, he instead calls for protecting the “best places in the biosphere,” polling 18 international conservation experts to select those areas that can act as the few protected arks of life on earth. He writes that if these places can be protected and restored, “a great deal of Earth’s biodiversity can be saved.” In the U.S., these places include the redwood forests of California; the Longleaf pine savanna of the American South; and the Madrean pine-oak woodlands. Furthermore, Wilson calls for the world’s scientists to accelerate efforts to map and make more easily accessible the Earth’s biodiversity.
Some efforts are already underway. For example, multiple universities and research institutes have come together to create the, which will eventually hold more than 500 million records. There’s also the, a web site that describes some 1.4 million species, or more than 50 percent of known species. Other projects include the, and, which catalogues DNA sequences. Wilson sees a future where snippets of DNA sequences of mitochondrial genes can be typed into a search engine and the results would spit out likely species.
To collect all this natural data, Wilson also calls for greater respect and support for the world’s naturalists — the professional or amateur collectors of specimens out in the wild. Wilson concludes the book with his call to action: greater respect for the almost unfathomable complexity of our ecosystems, which he argues are even more complicated than the human brain. “If the approximately one billion years of evolution it took for the single-celled bacteria and archaea on our planet to evolve into more complex life forms were added, it is possible to sense how delicate our birthplace is, how complicated those parts of the ecosystem that shelter each species are, and how intricate and intertwined are the nonlinear interactions of the species.” Destroying this complexity in favor of short-term economic gains is a recipe for “self-inflicted disaster.” Maximum diversity equals maximum level of stability. This is in fact the essence of resilience, Wilson reminds us. An Anthropecene in which a much more circumscribed designed nature is managed to deliver humans various ecosystem services is a “large and dangerous gamble.” Only restoration to natural ecosystems will bring back that complexity, even if baselines are hard to establish. In today’s world of novel ecosystems, re-establishing baselines will be hard but also deeply rewarding work. The process involves “dealing with fascinating challenges deserving combined research in biodiversity, paleontology, and ecology.
This will be one of the challenges met as parks and reserves are made centers of research and education around the world.” Coupled with protecting and restoring half of the Earth, Wilson calls for higher-intensity and more sustainable development, which he believes is increasingly possible. Given our current constraints and the expected population boom, “the pathway of economic evolution will be set by growth that is increasingly intensive and less extensive.” And what will be the root of this new pattern of sustainable growth? Wilson believes it will be “contained in the linkages between biology, nanotechnology, and robotics.” Our planet’s rich biodiversity together with ever-advancing human technology will be the foundations of future growth and prosperity. Overton Bark fence / Overton Park Canine lovers everywhere are bow-wowing over new data from The Trust for Public Land (TPL): dog parks have grown 4 percent since 2015 and a whopping 89 percent since 2007. The cities with the most dog parks per resident are Henderson, Nevada; Portland, Oregon; Norfolk, Virginia; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Madison, Wisconsin. TPL released these findings and other numbers in their report.
Peter Harnik, Hon. ASLA, director of the center for city park excellence at TPL, said: “Americans love dogs, and parks increasingly reflect that people want places for them to get outside and take their dogs with them.” Furthermore, “nearly every big city now has at least one dedicated dog park, often with a name that reflects the creativity and exuberance of the movement. Fort Worth pups play at Fort Woof, Memphis pets frolic at Overton Bark, Dallas dogs run at My Best Friend’s Park, and Atlanta pooches scamper at Freedom Barkway.” All of those Fifis and Rexes have owners who are doing good work for parks overall.
Abby Martin, associate director of the center, said “dog owners have been some of the most vocal advocates for parks. They’ve hit the streets to make the case for park funding ballot measures, especially when new dog parks are included in the funding plan.” Off-leash dog-friendly areas can certainly enliven a park. “People walk their dogs from before dawn to late at night, and all that foot (and paw) traffic goes a long way to making other visitors feel safe.” What does this mean for landscape architects and designers who may be asked to design these spaces? Martin said any well-designed dog park should work for both dogs and their caretakers. “When dogs are playing, their people need a place to sit.
The best dog parks have benches and amenities for humans, too.” Washington Square Park, NYC Dog Run / Curbed NYC But she added that “successful off-leash areas also require careful planning. Dogs and young children may not mix well, so playgrounds and dog runs should be separated as well.” (Also, we would add that dog parks should be designed to sustainably cleanse themselves in order to keep them from smelling like a big doggie bathroom). Freedom Barkway, Atlanta / Atlanta Town Paper ASLA 2014 Professional General Design Honor Award. Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park / Copyright Albert Vecerka/ESTO For Brad Weston, president and chief merchant at Petco, this data confirms what his firm has been seeing as well. “With pet ownership on the rise across all demographics, it’s no surprise that dog parks, particularly those in urban areas, are on the rise.