17 Jan

Top 5 reasons to hire a Landscape Architect

There are many good reasons to hire a landscape architect, especially if you are planning a significant landscape project. Some of the top reasons to hire a landscape architect include:

Expertise: Landscape architects have the training and expertise to design and plan landscapes that are functional, aesthetically pleasing, and well-suited to the local climate and environment. They can also help you navigate local zoning and building codes, ensuring that your project is compliant with all regulations.
Time-saving: Hiring a landscape architect can save you a significant amount of time and effort. They will handle all aspects of the design and planning process, allowing you to focus on other tasks.
Cost-effective: While it may seem like an added expense upfront, hiring a landscape architect can actually save you money in the long run. They can help you avoid costly mistakes and ensure that your project stays within budget.
Professional quality: Landscape architects have access to professional-grade tools and resources that can help to ensure the highest quality results. They can also help you choose the best materials and plants for your project, ensuring that they are long-lasting and well-suited to your location.
Creativity: Landscape architects have a unique creative vision that can help to bring your landscaping ideas to life. They can help you transform your outdoor space into a beautiful and functional oasis that meets all of your needs and preferences.

Overall, hiring a landscape architect can provide a wide range of benefits, from expertise and time-saving to cost-effectiveness and creative vision. If you are planning a significant landscape project, it may be worth considering hiring a professional to help you achieve your goals.

04 Jan

Backyard Landscape Design Ideas

Creating a backyard landscape design that is both functional and visually pleasing can be a challenging task. However, with a little bit of planning and creativity, it is possible to transform even the most mundane backyard into a beautiful and enjoyable outdoor space.

The first step in designing a backyard landscape is to assess the space and consider how it will be used. Do you want a space for entertaining, a place for children to play, or a tranquil retreat? Once you have a clear idea of how you want to use the space, you can begin to plan out your design.

Next, consider the layout of your backyard. Think about the location of your house, the direction the yard faces, and the existing features such as trees, shrubs, and other plants. You should also take into account the sun and shade patterns in your yard, as this will help you determine the best location for certain plants and features.

Another important aspect to consider is the overall style and theme of your backyard landscape. Do you prefer a formal look, with straight lines and symmetrical designs? Or do you prefer a more natural, relaxed style? Choose elements that reflect your personal style and will be in keeping with the style of your home.

Backyard landscape design by landscape architect Acorn Landscapes in St. Louis Missouri that includes hillside meadow garden and shade garden for wildlife habitat

Once you have a basic plan in place, it’s time to start adding plants and other features to your backyard landscape. Consider using a combination of annuals, perennials, trees, and shrubs to create a diverse and interesting landscape. It’s also a good idea to incorporate water features such as fountains, ponds, or waterfalls, as these can add a calming and soothing element to your backyard.

In addition to plants and water features, there are many other elements you can include in your backyard landscape design. Outdoor furniture, such as tables, chairs, and benches, can provide a comfortable and inviting place to sit and relax. Outdoor lighting can create a warm and welcoming atmosphere in the evening, while a fire pit or fireplace can be a great gathering place on cooler nights.

Finally, don’t forget about the practical aspects of backyard landscaping. Make sure to incorporate pathways and walkways to help you move around the yard, and consider adding a storage shed or other functional elements to keep your yard organized and tidy.

With a little bit of planning and creativity, you can design a backyard landscape that is both functional and beautiful. Whether you want a space for entertaining, a place for children to play, or a tranquil retreat, there are endless possibilities for creating the perfect backyard oasis.

Backyard Garden Entrance Landscape by Landscape Architect Acorn Landscapes St Louis Missouri

28 Jan

Remembering Luther Ely Smith Park – Arch Grounds – St. Louis Missouri

Design by Mary Francois Deweese – Landscape Architect, Acorn Landscapes. Initial planting day volunteers from The East Central District Garden Clubs of Missouri, May 2003

Last week I found out that Luther Ely Smith Park was removed in preparation for the new Arch-grounds redevelopment project in downtown St. Louis. I’ve known for some time that this garden was to be destroyed to make way for the new pedestrian connection to the Arch, but knowing that it is actually now just a part of history has motivated me to publish this account of when it was designed and installed. This project was awarded an ALSA design award, and will always be a project that I am very proud of. I hope you visited it during its time, I know there are many pictures that include the garden, including wedding shoots and family vacation photos. What follows is the original submission I used for the ASLA award, along with several photos from 2003 and 2004.

Ely Luther Smith Square National Parks Garden
Located in front of the Old Courthouse on 4th Street, adjacent to the Gateway Arch.
Installed Spring 2003

Garden Design by Mary Francois Deweese – Landscape Architect, Acorn Landscapes. View from the Observation Deck of the Arch August 2003

Overall Project Summary – This project is located on National Park Service
Grounds as part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, and consisted of a planting and border design for 5 existing planting beds. The intention of this project was to create a relatively low maintenance garden with low continuing costs (perennials vs. annuals), while creating a highly dramatic and colorful urban garden to act as a centerpiece greenspace complimenting the importance of the Gateway Arch and historic St. Louis Riverfront.

Luther Ely Smith Garden Design by Mary Francois Deweese – Landscape Architect, Acorn Landscapes. View from the Observation Deck of the Arch Spring 2004

Special Factors and Significance – This is a highly visible and prominent garden area adjacent to the Gateway Arch, which is seen by almost 4 million visitors to our city each year, and is very significant to the visual appeal and perception of the City by visitors and residents alike. In the past, the St. Louis City Government partially funded the popular yearly planting of Tulips and Cannas in the garden, but, do to budget constraints, they were no longer able to participate in funding or maintenance of the garden. The responsibility then fell solely to the National Park Service. With budgets tight, the National Park Service was interested in finding a solution that was both cost-effective, and beautiful. The park service had an initial budget to buy plant materials, which they received in part from a special grant titled “The 2003 National Parks Volunteerism Enhancement Program” sponsored by Allegra and the National Parks Foundation. The answer to the rest of the garden’s expenses was to involve the community in a volunteer effort to minimize cost. The park was designed, planted, and is maintained by volunteers from Acorn Landscapes, The East Central District of the Garden Clubs of Missouri and the National Park Service. Another special factor was the desire to use mainly perennials in order to reduce the ongoing yearly cost of the garden. The challenge was to make a perennial garden as colorful and eye-catching as the more costly annuals had been in the past.

Luther Ely Smith Garden – Mary Francois Deweese Landscape Architect, St. Louis, Missouri. View of the garden towards the Old Courthouse, September 2003

Role of the Landscape Architect – As a member of one of the volunteer organizations, Mary Francois Deweese was asked to volunteer as both the Landscape Architect and co-leader of the volunteer effort. Over 40 individual volunteers have participated in the project to date. The LA not only designed the project, but also participated in the coordination of the volunteers and supervised the initial planting and installation of the beds, in addition to taking part in numerous maintenance efforts as well.

Historic view of the garden designed by Mary Francois Deweese – Acorn Landscape Architecture – View towards the St. Louis Arch, September 2003

Project Concept – The LA’s concept for the design was to apply a bold modern approach to historical French gardens, which would respect the heritage of the site (originally a sunken French garden constructed in the 1920′s), while incorporating the modern geometry of the Arch and a contemporary plant selection with a creative flair. With this approach, the garden itself becomes a piece of contemporary living art. The geometry of the Gateway Arch is reflected in the beds as asymmetrical intersecting arched bed edges, creating patterns on the ground that can be seen from the surrounding buildings and from the observation deck of the Arch as well. From the street level, the gardens assert a vivid color scheme, largely reliant on foliage, for three-season vegetative appeal.

View from atop the Adam’s Mark Hotel, May 2003 – Design of Luther Ely Smith National Park Garden by Mary Deweese – Landscape Architect, Acorn Landscapes. Winner of an Award of Merit ASLA St. Louis Chapter.

The garden is themed in vibrant monochromatic beds of yellow, red and blue/purple. During the winter, the bed edges themselves hold visual interest. In addition, linear beds along 4th street were planted with ever blooming roses to add both aroma and bright color. The plant materials were chosen to completely fill each border layout to out-compete weeds and lower the maintenance chores. The borders were designed to be poured-in-place concrete, which will keep the plant materials from spreading into adjacent areas. At this time, the borders are concrete stepping stones, and the proposed second phase was to install the permanent concrete will commence when funds permit.

So, back to today…I’ll miss seeing this garden and feeling the connection to this park that I had when the garden was there. I have fond memories of going down there on Saturday mornings with my garden club friends and weeding and caring for that garden. We not only grew plants in that garden, we grew friendships. Sometimes, when we make room for progress, we lose a little of what we once had. Farewell Luther Ely Smith Garden!

13 May

Part III Ebenezer Howard – A Working Man w/ Dreams

I don’t intend for this blog post to cite all of Ebenezer Howards ideas for a utopian society, there are plenty of authors with a lot more credentials than I who have written extensively about Howard, but I do want to describe the building of the first garden city and how similar Howards’ experience of trying to build a dream in the real world is to my (and others) experiences trying to build a dream in the real world.

Howard had this great plan, a plan he had spend many many unpaid hours creating because he really thought that he had ideas that would be of untold value to the world. So there is our first similarity…I have known a few very dedicated designers, myself included, that have dedicated huge amounts of uncompensated time towards projects that are meant to be “gifts” to humanity…or at the very least, improvements that would help move us in the right directions, socially and environmentally. So at this point in reading Howard’s story, I feel an understanding of the man that I didn’t have when I was younger because I have been, and have close colleagues who have been, in this situation…high hopes, intense dedication, and no meaningful client or financing. Sound familiar?

After years of painstakingly putting his soul into his plans he had to go out and find the people who could actually finance the building of the first Garden City. Time to make this plan a reality!!!!!

Howard was a man who was not very well connected, but did believe he had a lead on an organization that would certainly be interested, if not downright thrilled, with the idea of backing his project….the organized Victorian Radicals, or the “Cooperative” Movement as they were also known. They would certainly be interested, Howard thought, because he was, after all, designing a City to fit all their ideals. (I’m not going to go into their ideals, let’s just say, the cooperative movement and Howards’ plans could not have been more suited to each other)

Surely they would jump at the chance to get on board…and they didn’t even have to pay him for all the pre design concept work (yes, another designer giving up his intellectual property for free…but that’s for another blog post)…he had already done that part.

But guess what…although the people at the head of their organization were convinced by Howards Plans and formally behind him, they could not get the support of the rest of the cooperative movement because the individual chapters of the movement didn’t want to focus on one unified project. They all had their own little projects, chapter by chapter, that they were working on. Now remember, these are people who fundamentally are espousing the importance of COOPERATION!! It makes me think that they were asking themselves “who is this Ebenezer guy think he is anyway? He’s just some guy who has some plans and ideas, we don’t need him, we are doing our own thing. ” Which is not very cooperative of them is it? But, very typical from my experience. It does seem that “cooperation” is an idea that everyone agrees on abstractly, but then the reality so often is more like…sure, cooperation sounds great, as long as everyone cooperates to help me do exactly what I want to do…am I right?

Looking back it makes you want to say…hey…this “Ebenezer guy” is going to be written about for centuries for his ground breaking ideas…don’t you wish you would have gotten on board? But it also reminds me of the fragmented idealists of today, who all have their eyes on their own sub interest, their own backyard, their own small project. It just seems to be human nature, and I’ve struggled with the ramifications of both the pro’s and con’s of this arrangement. It is disheartening though that in 100 years, cooperation still hasn’t found a way to cooperate a large improvement in the foundations of society. When the times get tough I find that the idea of every man for himself is still an overriding force, which of course, goes to the most basic of our essential motivations…fear.

So anyway, I digress…on back to Howard. It was a huge disappointment I imagine, that he now had to solely rely on the investments of the business sector, which, with no balance of support from the cooperative movement, inevitably ended up steering the design away from his ideas of a balance of cooperation and the free market, and towards an end where the financial gains of the few outweigh the needs of the many…the exact situation the Garden City was supposed to correct (and that many of us are still trying to correct).

But what choice did Ebenezer have? He could give up, or he could try to go forward with the project so that the basic ideas of the Garden City could get some mainstream exposure, and he believed that would cause a huge surge of support form the masses. Maybe, he probably thought, maybe the next one, the 2nd garden city will be more attractive to the cooperative movement because he would have by then, he hoped, an example City that, although not a perfect representation of his ideal plan, would have enough of the essence as to create momentum and a progressively better and better Garden City in the real world.

Again, at this point, I have to say, this sounds totally familiar. I can hear my own voice telling a client… realistically, if you can’t do absolutely everything you want to in this fantastic plan, if you at least get it built with one major advance, and if the project is a success financially with that one great environmental benefit, then the next developer that comes along will look at your project as a positive example of what can be done and maybe build on that with something similar because of all the great publicity your project will get, and with something even one step closer to your ideals. If you try to undertake everything in your plan, and you don’t succeed financially, other developers will look at your project and use it as an example of what not to do and will be put off of trying ANY new environmental design integration. One successful step at a time is necessary to help the movement forward, I have been known to say.

How did Howards first Garden City get started then? He did end up having to depend financially mostly on a few wealthy businessmen who dominated the actual construction of the city towards the interests of their own and other business interests. So after getting financial backing, the next thing to do was to hire an architectural firm.

Hope this 3 part series got you interested in Ebenezer Howard and sparks your interest to learn more about his story.

06 May

Part II – Ebenezer Howard – Still an Inspiration

See part I of this series for a little more background about Ebenezer Howard, the inventor of the Garden City circa 1900.

So if you aren’t familiar with Howard, (and I am by no means an expert) he was a man who looked around him and saw a great disparity between the people who had much power and money, (the corporate and business moguls), and the rest of the working class (the 99%), at the turn of the previous century. He wanted to help solve both the social and urban decay crisis of his time.

Now remember, this was a man who was middle aged, and did not have a formal education in architecture, planning or any related field. This little piece of information sank into my brain with a much larger impact than it had at 22 as well, because, well, I’m on the cusp of the dreaded ‘middle age’ myself, and the thought that a total reinvention of who you are, your field, and your posterity is both intriguing and inspiring.

At some point in the future there will need to be a clarifier on exactly which turn of the century we are talking about, the year 1900 or the year 2000, because that sounds a lot like the concerns many of my colleagues have now. We are still trying to solve the same basic problems of social inequality, affordable housing, urban decay, and general positive societal fulfillment over one hundred years later!

He did not support concentrated power in the hands of a few by governmental intervention, but also did not support a union movement. He DID support a strong community of people who were mutually benefitted by strong relationships between commerce and the individual, by interwoven supply and demand dynamics, and strong social cooperation ethics.

People who held similar beliefs in his time and place were categorized as “the radical movement of Victorian England”. Hmmm, it might as well be called something very similar in today’s world. The term radical always has confused me when applied to those who want to help find a solution to poverty and suffering, whether by architectural design or cooperation. Is it really “radical” to want to see people get along and respect each other’s humanity?

So it seems that Howard wanted to balance the need for individual freedoms and the need for rules and order in a quest for the perfect conditions to foster a society in which all people had a satisfactory life…something that we as a collective society struggle with even today.

Again, I don’t know why I was surprised at the similarities between then and now, but for some reason I really was…more than a hundred years later and we are still trying to balance the need for freedom with the need for regulation.

Part III coming soon….

02 Apr

Part I – Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City 1898

Part I Thoughts on Ebenezer Howard – the inventor of the Garden City 1890′s and how nothing has changed for dreamers in over 100 years.

Recently I’ve been re-familiarizing myself with some of the Landscape Architecture and City Planning pioneers. At this point in my life and career I have a new respect and understanding of the designers in our history books. They are much more real to me now as actual relatable people just like you and I, which is both liberating and slightly disillusioning. Let me explain what I mean.

Ebenezer Howard was the inventor of the Iconic “Garden City” in 1898. Every Landscape Architecture and City Planning student has been exposed to his ideas as a matter of course. I remember hearing this name, Ebenezer…even his name sounded like something from a time so long ago as to render it irrelevant. When you are 22 years old the understanding of time is very skewed…for some reason the year 1900 seemed farther away when I was 22 than it does now. It is funny how that works isn’t it? Yet, his name was in a history book, so this man is famous, a preeminently successful human being…right? Well that is how the 22 year old me related to him…the older me now sees a man who struggled, worked hard, and didn’t get everything right the first time, or have anything work out simple and easy. I’m sure there were plenty of times when he probably questioned what he was doing, or felt discouraged or impatient, nervous or unsure, tired and stressed, just like you and me. He was a regular guy.

This time around, when I was re-reading about his “Garden City” ideas, I have to admit that I was startled by how real this person has become to me, because I now KNOW him. I don’t mean I know the actual Ebenezer Howard, I mean I know people exactly like him, thinking very similar things to him, struggling against the financial hurdles of funding projects that todays designers believe will help improve society.

I started seeing many similarities between this man and his world, from over 100 year ago, and the people and world I know today. Ebenezer Howard, far from being some abstract historical character, might as well be “enter colleagues name here”. Hey! I KNOW THIS GUY! I’VE WORKED WITH THIS GUY! It is quite a revelation and has really changed my perspective on both the past and the future. This new perspective has inspired me to write this multi part blog post so that I can share with you my observations about the way old problems are todays problems, how designers now are the same as designers 100 years ago, and that if you feel disheartened or discouraged about your own projects, remembering Howard and his journey to becoming the “inventor of the Garden City” will give you hope, inspiration and a connection to both the past, and the future.

31 Jan

Why I’m Re-Reading My College Textbooks

Why am I reading my old Landscape Architecture college text books?

It is the beginning of a new year, and I’m delving back into a book I first read when I was in Graduate School studying to be a Landscape Architect and Planner entitled “Readings in Planning Theory” Edited By Scott Cambell and Susan Fainstein 1st Ed 1996. I had this book in a pile of old books I was getting ready to throw out.

As they sat in the corner of my room, waiting to be recycled, I would periodically walk by them and have a pang of remorse that I didn’t need them anymore. I hadn’t read them in years. As the new year came along and I flipped my calendar over to January 2014, I decided that instead of throwing these books out, I would read them….and then throw them out…just to get my money’s worth out of them…ha!

Then a couple funny things happened. First, I actually started reading one of the books…I kind of thought this would just be one of those things I thought I should do, but don’t actually do. I’m sure you know what I mean.

The second thing I thought was funny was that I really didn’t remember reading this particular book. I know I did, I got A’s in all my classes, and there is much highlighted with a yellow highlighter, and I remember the main ideas, or generally remember the ideas, but there were so many interesting ideas, people, and projects that I had forgotten about. I’m sure the information is there deep in my subconscious, somewhere, but reading it again made it seem new, exciting, and like I had found a long lost friend.

I realized that I still absolutely love the academia of my profession, I love the ideas of planning and design. This time when I was reading, I wanted to absorb the information in a different way than the younger me did. Armed with many tools that were not available to me then, primarily the internet, I can connect with the authors, the projects, and other landscape architecture and planning professionals in fundamentally new ways. It is very exciting.

So if you have books lying around from college that need to be recycled…I want to encourage you to pick one up and commit to reading it, you might find a connection to that spark that made you first want to become a professional in your field.