80,000 plants, landscape architects, etc.

[shootingstar]

Without going through details of all landscape-engineering drawings, it would be safe to say there are under 40 different species amongst smaller number of families.

It would almost seem a necessary love of some gardening on the personal side, for a landscape architect to always have that memory skill and keep alive the understanding how plants behave under certain environmental conditions. Do you folks dream in conceptual spaces, colours and then details of plants...?

I'm not much good at any 3-D art, so have great respect for interior designers, landscape architects, sculptors, etc.

[bikerchic]

Do you folks dream in conceptual spaces, colours and then details of plants...?

I'm not a landscape architect but I do dream of trees, plants and shrubs, yeah I'm weird like that. I lived too long in the baren desert and just love the Northwest! I can't get enough of the green stuff and am so amazed at all the variety.

I've tried to get to know some of the names of my favorite plants and trees by looking at books and asking friends lots of questions, however my native to the NW friends seem to hardly care or know, sigh. I threaten to bring them cactus when I go down south to visit family! LOL

I used to think all forest trees were pine trees, now I know there are fur trees, cedar, pine, okay I'm tasked now....back to the books!

[NbyNW]

Among landscape architects that I've met &/or whose work I've studied, depth & breadth of plant knowledge varies greatly.

Some L.A.s really love plants in all of their diversity and this will be reflected in their work if they are not too constrained by building codes and design standards.

Others have limited knowledge and just stick to a few well-performing favorites. Especially if they are the type who have projects in multiple cities/countries. Then they may need to rely on a local expert to choose plants.

A lot of award-winning designs these days tend to stick to a limited number of plants.

[uk elephant]

As a field ecologist, it is all remembered through repetition and need. Working in Botswana, I had to learn the names of about a dozen shrubs/tress as well as about a dozen mammals. I took good notes the first day, kept looking things up the first week, then just remembered them because I had repeated it all several times a day. Now that I haven't used that information for a few years it is all forgotten and I would have to go back to my notes to remember. Same with doing vegetation surveys in Norway. The first couple of days I had to look up things in my notes, but after a couple of days of repeating the same species I'd have them all memorized. Only the rare ones, I'd have to look up again on occasion. The list of species was around 30 plants. Each summer, I'd have to refresh my memory the first few days and now that I haven't been in the field for a while I can only remember the most common ones. And I would usually only remember either the latin name, or the common name and then have to look up the other.

[tulip]

Among landscape architects that I've met &/or whose work I've studied, depth & breadth of plant knowledge varies greatly.

Yep. It's important to work with people who have complementary skills. Larger firms like the one I used to work for had a variety of LAs on each team, some were plant specialists, some had expertise in stormwater, some were well-versed in site engineering, and some were visionary designers. Most of us fell somewhere in the middle.

I once had a project in Mali and had to do alot of basic research on very unfamiliar plants.

And yes, I do dream in conceptual spaces, colors and plants. I can't imagine doing anything else. One of my bigger projects since leaving the corporate support system is going to be planted this fall (construction of the building is almost complete). So far, it looks like the budget is holding and that the landscape will actually be planted at least mostly as designed. I'm quite curious to see how it will turn out.

[mimitabby]

we humans have a real healthy piece of brain for naming stuff. I find that i remember the names of an incredible number of plants... because I'm interested in it. I hired Arthur Lee Jacobsen to give me a consultation on my yard a few weeks ago, and it was fun to see him at work trying to figure out my weeds and my planted stuff. He's a walking encyclopedia!