The landscape architect, architect and planner - designing with trees

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The landscape architect, architect and planner -
designing with trees

• Why the current framework is failing to deliver
• Peter Thurman
• The Thurman Consultancy

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High density new build
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• Inappropriate development?
• Or
• Inappropriate tree retention?

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Trenching
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Line clearance
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Landscape degradation
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Cynical tokenism?
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Well meaning but pointless?
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Just a promotional photo opportunity?
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Net gain or net loss?
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Artistic realism or total fiction?
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Strategic tree planting?
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1.4 million project but no trees
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No space for trees
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Bad design
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Plonking
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Bad design can cause us problems
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Bad design can be messy
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Quotation from Henry F. ArnoldLandscape
Architect
The most persistent problem confronting every
designer who works with trees is their seductive
appeal. The remarkable aesthetic power of trees
distracts artists so much that their potential
for building dense organic compositions has been
replaced by an over-refined, precious reverence
for individual trees. Trees are the most
exquisite and the most sparingly apportioned raw
material of urban design. Our cities display a
mere dollop of their sensual colour and form.
There are exceptions to this.but generally we
fail to design with our most humane raw
material Trees in Urban Design, Pub Van
Nostrand Rheinhold, 1980
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What are the problems?

• We are seduced by trees. We love them all and
  want to plant all our favourites too often just
  as individual specimens! Stamp Collection
  Syndrome.
• We get bogged down with practical site factors
  and other technical issues. These take up all
  our thinking time.
• We plonk trees into the landscape haphazardly
  rather than position them strategically and
  purposefully.
• We select trees for their ornamental attributes
  rather than their architectural value and
  ability to provide green- mass - a serious
  lost opportunity.

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Quotation from Sylvia Crowe Landscape Architect

• Through all the variations, due to climate,
  country, history and the natural idiosyncrasy of
  man, which have appeared in the evolution of the
  garden through successive civilisations, certain
  principles remain constant however much their
  application may change
• These are
• UNITY and STRUCTURE
• SCALE, PROPORTION and BALANCE
• TIME
• SPACE DIVISION and SPATIAL DEFINITION
• LIGHT and SHADE
• COLOUR, TEXTURE and FORM
• Garden Design Pub Gibson and Packard, 1981

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UNITY All the parts making a satisfactory whole
and giving a feeling of oneness usually
created by singleness of thought and limitation
of materials.
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In most urban contexts, trees planted in
straight lines, circles and rectangles are
appropriate because they echo the city and fit
comfortably within the man-made geometry of
circulation and structure. Henry F Arnold
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STRUCTURE All great landscapes have good bone
structure often created by the repetitive use
of one or a few species of tree.
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Trees provide green mass an unassuming and
quiet backcloth to other structures and features
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Trees provide framework and perspective to a
picture. framing the painting
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SCALE The relative degree or extent of an object
in relation to its surroundings and/or humans.
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PROPORTION The comparative size, number or
degree of the parts of a landscape in relation to
the whole and to each other.
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BALANCE The distribution of visual weight.
This can be equal symmetrical balance or
unequal asymmetrical balance.
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TIME The 4th dimension
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SPACE DIVISION The fundamental pattern of
landscapes created by the coupling of open space
(e.g. grass and water) and solid mass (e.g. trees
and buildings).
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Trees and shrubs create different degrees of
enclosure.
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LIGHT SHADE
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COLOUR, TEXTURE FORM The ornamental
attributes of trees gives them their distinctive
visual character
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Is the form or habit of a tree more important
than its colour and texture?
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the ascending line
the descending line
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