NURTURE
DESIGNING INTERACTIONS
in the Landscape
I
Landscape architects and planting designers are the fundamentals of most design projects.
Planting takes architecture to a different level, through their varying characteristics in size, shape, texture and colour. The inevitable result of nature being incorporated into man-made hard structures, results in the birth of an ecology. This is vital to both mankind and to the construction project – where ecology makes various building materials possible.
My attention was drawn to planting design in 2015. I was a qualified horticulturist working for a landscape architecture office. I found that within the industry and office, the same plants were used, which made up what we called, the ‘winning recipes’. These recipes consisted generally out of plants which are well known in the South African landscape context – Agapanthus, Dietes., Plectranthus, Tecoma etc. Furthermore, these plants were used in a ‘traditional planting design’ method with bubble diagrams. An example of this consisted out of groupings of 36 Plectranthus sp. (six packs)
n South Africa, landscape architects and even more so, planting designers are members of an unknown profession to much of society. I, like many in these professions, believe that planting design can and does add value to design projects in the built environment.
Dirk Smit INTER -Action studios 60
prolandscaper.co.za
