TO CUT OR TO KEEP
There is a garden on the corner of my street that I walk by almost every day. Every day there is something new to discover. It is one of those spaces where the gardener takes great care. A new piece was added - a sign - that read, "Please do not pick the flowers so everyone can enjoy them. Thanks."
At the beginning of his new book, Jay Shetty recounts a question the Buddha was asked about love. A student asked about the difference between like and love, and the Buddha replied, “When you like a flower, you pluck it. When you love a flower, you water it daily.” He goes on to talk about the fate of the cut flower versus the watered flower. The cut flower will wither away and die, while the watered flower will come back again and again. (Shetty, 2023)
Landscape Architecture as Process, Not Practice
Landscape Architects are uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between natural and human systems. With a foot in each world, it creates the potential to become the translators the planet desperately needs. Unfortunately, Landscape Architects have many qualities from the Architecture side of the profession and less of the gardening qualities that people like Clément, Franch, Bargmann, and Kandjee have learned.
Architecture would fall under a static masculine agenda outlined by Hill. It makes sense since a building has to be structurally sound and predictable to be safe for people to inhabit. It is a profession that has to lean on masculine qualities to function correctly, but too many of those attitudes bleed into landscape projects.
In The Language of Landscape, Anne Whiston Spirn outlines the removal of the designer from the ground by saying, “...most landscape authors today do not build the landscapes they design…they work out ideas through drawings and models and direct others’ labor through drawings and text.” She goes on to state, “In large firms, designers may not even make their own construction, or “working”, drawings, and landscapes may be translated by intermediaries from drawings to reality with little or no dialogue between designer and laborer.” (Spirn, 1998)
Teresa Moller’s project, Punta Pite, shows a striking balance between design intervention and the natural terrain. The staircases have been carefully set amongst the stones as if to melt together with the existing landscape. (Humphreys & Moller, 2016)
Again, this approach leans on the masculine - predictable, data-driven, and safe. When the more feminine approach would follow the designers mentioned in the Design by Management section getting their hands dirty, unearthing unpredictability, and observing deeply before making a move - if they make a move at all. A designer cannot listen to the garden from the comfort of an office through a computer screen. Clément says, “One can only speak correctly about a site after going there.” (Clément, 2017)
Since there must be a balance of the masculine and feminine to create a well-rounded consciousness, projects may need more flexible phasing structures. The Royal Institute of British Architect’s Plan of Work dictates landscape projects in the UK and comes directly from the Architecture world. What if those stages were reformatted to align with an approach centred around longer listening stages where time is spent in the feminine domain? The masculine energies would need to support moving the project along and the final detailing, but what if the feminine attributes were woven throughout the process? If that is the case, there would be more checking in with the site, more testing, less directing, and extensive observation.
This way of working is almost impossible in the current arrangement of project management. There is not enough time to get to know a place deep enough in the conventional phases, and there is no follow-up after a project is ‘completed’ to continue to watch, shift, and change if need be. These flexible systems would be difficult to track on a timesheet but could lead to more intensive, thoughtful landscape projects.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Plan of Work is displayed as a rigid spreadsheet. RIBA’s website describes this process as “definitive” and “organises the process of briefing, designing, constructing and operating building projects.” (RIBA, 2020)
