Thomas Church
The discipline of landscape architecture is based on a single process, says Mike Farley, that can be applied to a variety of design types. Here's how you can pick up this systematic approach without having to go to college.
'Gardens truly are for people. While that's manifestly an obvious statement,' wrote Bruce Zaretsky at the top of his On the Level column in May 2011, 'it seems to be a concept that insufficient numbers of today's watershape and landscape designers fully grasp.' 'That's nothing new. More than half a century ago, in fact, [Thomas] Church was motivated to
One of the first books about landscape architecture I ever read was Gardens Are for People by Thomas Church, a designer justly famous for changing the way exterior spaces are treated today - especially in the residential environment. This book was first published in 1953, but a second edition (published in 1983 by Reinhold Publishing Corp.) is still widely available in bookstores and on the Internet. The 250-plus-page book traces Church's long career, which started in California in the 1930s and lasted through the late '70s and almost to his death in 1978. His great gift was taking the art of landscape architecture and applying it to the masses. Before him, landscape architecture was
