Michael van valkenburgh biography of christopher

Unlike architecture, landscape architecture evolves and almost always improves through time. Its parks and gardens are never complete. Or rather the finished landscape of today is not the finished landscape of many years from now. Landscape architects must more deliberately include in their work predictions of how it will change.

Yet few landscape professionals continue being involved in their built works beyond a year or two after opening day. What happens? The site is taken over by natural processes and unplanned human impacts or by its caretakers, who, at least partially, become its new designers, typically with little direction from the original designer. The growth of plants is not particularly easy to predict in detail.

Plants may thrive or decline or die or, almost always, not grow just as you thought they would. Water, soil conditions, insects, surrounding plants, amounts of sunlight, weather, and a lot more affect them. An arrangement of plants that is great when they are small may be poor when they are large. Plants may need to be pruned, added, replaced, or removed.

Every gardener knows how much constant care is necessary.

Chris received a Master of

This park was a gift to the city from a private donor. An important element of our redesign of Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House was planting new elm trees that we could find only at small caliper and with limbs that were too low. The Park Service learned from this initial oversight and now has a program to raise the lower branches regularly.

Such ambiguity often contributes to neglect.