In landscape design, one must first learn to see, before drawing, planting or building. Before such tangible objects can take form, the land itself must be understood as an evolving landscape shaped over time by climate and human intervention. Often, students of landscape design seek the immediate gratification of making things. But in order to design landscapes, they must first learn to perceive the land in three dimensions, including the passage of time and natural and human movement. This move from doing to seeing is often the most challenging, but it is what separates a landscape from a decoration.
This act of seeing allows one to identify those systems and patterns not immediately visible to the eye. The shape of the land indicates the flow of water. The open area indicates the location of pedestrian traffic. The existing plantings indicate long-term ecological conditions the site has already decided for itself. As the student of landscape design slows down to observe, the landscape will begin to articulate its own needs and desires without prompting. This will build a designer’s intuition, but not in the way that they may anticipate. It will not simply come from readings or discussions in the classroom, but from experience in the real world, and reflection upon that experience.
Therefore, one of the greatest challenges a student of landscape design faces is simply to be patient with the process. In the initial stages, they will likely feel as though they are accomplishing very little, since their designs do not yet have a physical manifestation. However, this “holding pattern” is also a period of growth. They will learn about editing, about restraint, about phasing, and about working within a context. They will learn to negotiate with a site, rather than dictate to it. And as they continue to do so, the number of subjective decisions they must make will continue to diminish, as the design will become more and more obvious.
Such a program would facilitate this process by focusing on principles rather than products. Rather than emulating a certain style, students of landscape design would learn about the physics of spatial relationships, the properties of various materials, the dynamics of pedestrian movement through space, and the ecology of various systems and organisms. They would revisit the same concepts repeatedly throughout the process, in order to build their understanding of them in a cumulative way. One must master many aspects of landscape design in order to fully understand it, and such mastery comes from the layering of new knowledge on top of old. No project is ever finished. Each new one is simply the next phase in a continuous learning process.
In the end, students of landscape design who learn to see will produce better landscapes. Their work will be more confident, because it will be based on a more solid understanding of the existing conditions. Their landscapes will endure longer, because they will be less prone to “decorating” and more likely to be an enhancement or continuation of the existing site. By learning to see, students of landscape design will learn a lifelong skill. They will learn how to approach the world in a new way.