Learning by Doing

In my capacity as landscape consultant to a town near where I live, I was approached recently by a landscape architect who was just starting her career after graduating from a prestigious, five-year landscape architecture program in my home state of New York.

She was designing a butterfly garden, she said, and wanted to know what plants to use. As I ran down the list, she asked me to stop at one name in particular and spell it. The plant in question was Clethra alnifolia, commonly known as “Summersweet” – a New York native widely known for attracting butterflies and hummingbirds.

I bring this up because, frankly, I was flabbergasted that after five years of education, this newly minted landscape architect seemed to have no knowledge of local fauna. I’m the first to acknowledge that there are far too many plants out there for any of us to know all of them, but I was left to wonder if they’d taught her anything at all about plants as part of her studies.

This wasn’t the first time I’d had such an experience. In fact, I’ve been taken aback by the lack of practical knowledge landscape architects bring to the process more times than I care to consider – and can’t say I’m surprised that it’s especially a problem among those just coming out of school.

POINT OF CONSENSUS

The episode with the butterfly garden brought back to mind a dialogue started several years back by Bill Thompson, editor of Landscape Architecture (the official publication of the American Society of Landscape Architects): In his column, he’d asked if students of landscape architecture should be trained in the field as well as in the classroom.

I felt compelled to respond with a long letter in which I asserted that, absolutely, all students of landscape architecture should be required to spend time in the field learning about the implementation (and the ramifications) of their design work. They should know, I wrote, exactly what it’s like to dig holes, set bricks, carry large stones, prepare soils for planting, shoot grades, install drainage systems and witness the effects of their hydraulic designs – among myriad other experiences.

It was strongly put, and I fully expected some blowback from landscape architects – but was delighted instead when every other letter the magazine published fell in with my line of thinking. Here were schooled, experienced landscape architects saying they would have benefited greatly from in-the-field training: I was amazed – and agreed wholeheartedly.

What I learned through this exchange is that most (if not all) landscape architecture programs at major universities place little emphasis (or none at all) on providing or encouraging students to obtain field experience. I see this (and I’m far from alone, I believe) as a major deficiency in the training of these young professionals.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a landscape architect. Some 30 years ago, after just finishing my first year of college in pursuit of a career in chemistry, I stopped in at a Long Island landscape company’s office and asked for a job. That same day, I was driven out to a hot, dusty construction site and was handed a shovel to use in leveling off soil that had been dumped onto a parking-lot island by a huge loader. I did the same thing the next day, and then the next.

Through that summer and those that followed, I kept at it with that same company and along the way learned how to build retaining walls, run planting jobs ranging from small and residential to huge and commercial, bend steel for gunite pools and install complex drainage systems.

After graduating from college with the degree I’d sought in chemistry, I went right back to the landscape company and began the career I’ve pursued to this day.

Even then, I recognized that my four years of education at a very good school had basically prepared me for an entry level job in the vast field of chemistry – but that my summers had prepared me for success as a landscaper. As I saw it, the time I’d spent actually doing the work had been a far better sort of “education.”

PRACTICAL LESSONS

I started my own business in 1989, certain I was ready to landscape the world. I made lots of mistakes, of course, and still find new ones to indulge in from time to time, but I make certain I learn from every one of them as part of my own growth process.

I will freely acknowledge that a university education in landscape architecture might have helped me immensely, but at no time have I ever felt that it could have replaced those many years of field experience. Indeed, I think everyone should get both – that is, large doses of classroom study balanced by time on job sites.

Through the years, I’ve worked with lots of university-trained, fully licensed landscape architects on a number of different levels. One, for example, was an immensely talented designer who generated terrific ideas that worked beautifully – until, that is, you tried to implement his plans.

Academic Water How is it possible that schools of landscape architecture seem so universally to have turned their backs on education related to watershapes and watershaping? So far as I know, the only landscape architecture program in the country that takes water seriously (other than as irrigation or drainage) is the one at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, where my fellow WaterShapes columnist Mark Holden has been busy pressing his department to include watershapes-oriented course material in the curriculum. As any of us who have worked with water know well, the design and construction of pools, spas, fountains and more is a discipline that can only truly be learned by doing, but classroom-based information offers a tremendous foundation, while continuing education has benefits that reach out to us throughout our careers. In reading Mark’s columns on his work at Cal Poly, I know he does all he can to get his students involved in real-world projects and situations, and I applaud his efforts. My hope is that others involved in curriculum development will see the value in what he’s doing and will develop coursework that will follow his lead and the classroom/real-world balances he shoots for in blazing the trail. B.Z.

He’d never shot a grade (and, it turns out, had no idea how to do so); as a result, we almost always had to redesign things on site as we moved along. (We nicknamed him “Escher,” because he would indicate changes in elevation that made no sense whatsoever – including steps would drop down elevations only to match the elevation from which they’d just descended.)

I once worked with another college-fresh landscape architect on a group project: He spent the best part of four hours drawing a small elevation graphic while the rest of us designed and engineered the entire project. His drawing was utterly flawless – worthy of a frame, in fact – and I’ve always been a believer in the value of great presentations. But in this case at least, great graphic skills didn’t translate to the great design or installation skills we needed at that time to get on with the project.

In another instance, I’d agreed to install a landscape according to a local landscape architect’s plan. I liked what I’d seen of his work and the plan looked good, but when I met with the client on site, I saw that the designer had left out a key bit of information: He’d never shot the grades, so we ended up having to build a four-foot retaining wall to support the pool he’d placed within ten feet of the property line.

It’s not all landscape architects, either – not by a long shot. I’ve had vast amounts of experience working alongside self-styled landscape designers who are clueless when it comes to design technique, history, plant choice, engineering or lighting design and basically go with what “looks good.” I wasn’t far from this when I first started out, so I won’t cast big stones here. Suffice it to say that a lack of education paired with an absence of in-the-field experience is the worst-case scenario.

Allow me to repeat: I’m not knocking classroom education; rather, I’m saying that landscape architects need a roughly equal amount of field experience to go along with all that classroom education.

GIVING AND TAKING

Before any landscape architects who might be reading this call for my head, please let me point out that the four biggest influences on my work through the years have been (in no particular order) James van Sweden, Topher Delaney, Frederick Law Olmsted and Steve Martino – landscape architects one and all.

What’s interesting about this group is all are more than university-trained landscape architects: They are true visionaries who understand environments and clients and embody immense artistic talent. Non-university-trained designers can have those same qualities as well: It’s all a matter of taking those positive qualities and translating them to the real world by designing things properly and building them with integrity.

As I see it, there’s a two-way street here: University-trained landscape architecture students should be required to work in the field – dig holes, carry bricks, roll wheelbarrows and do what they’ll soon be asking others to do in implementing their designs. They should gain firsthand knowledge of the ramifications of their designs and see things not only as polished presentations but as products that appear in the real world where people have to build and move through them.

Conversely, landscape designers who learn their craft in the field should be required to seek out classrooms where they can learn top-flight graphic skills and amass knowledge on engineering, hydraulics and the environment as well as information on plants and their specific needs. Most local landscape associations (and all of the national ones including PLANET and APLD) have good and sometimes great local education programs to go along with one big conference per year.

For landscape architects as well as designers, I would suggest that specific technical training in watershaping is of tremendous value. Personally, I’ve spent about 30 hours in the past few years in seminars organized by the Genesis 3 Design Group in which I’ve worked on my graphic skills and taken other classes that have advanced my water-related knowledge base.

Through the years, I’ve also attended numerous seminars at trade events – far too many to count at this point – and I’m also big on books, although when I read about engineering at night before I fall asleep, my daughter thinks I’m even more of a geek than she’d care to admit.

Personally, I’ve spent all the years of my lengthening career seeking to strike a balance between the classroom and the field. I am constantly trying to pick up new ideas, techniques and design treatments, and even when I travel to conferences to present seminars, I spend the rest of my time in other instructors’ seminars, cramming as much into my head as possible.

It doesn’t matter to me that none of this is required of my by any agency or licensing authority: I believe we should all be continually and continuously educating ourselves in order that we may achieve our ultimate goal of providing our clients with dramatic, fulfilling, safe and usable exterior environments.

Bruce Zaretsky is president of Zaretsky and Associates, a landscape design/construction/consultation company in Rochester, N.Y. Nationally recognized for creative and inspiring residential landscapes, he also works with healthcare facilities, nursing homes and local municipalities in conceiving and installing healing and meditation gardens. You can reach him at [email protected].