Landscape Design 101: "Where on Earth am I?"

In the article "The Wrong Place to Start", we discussed the starting point of ideas and the importance of 'scale'.  Other connections are needed to form design concepts on the grand scale.  Two terms of importance in this discussion are 'The Built Environment' and 'The Major Native Landscape'.  The built environment is described as an area of living that is created for man's use by man:  Parks, gardens, courtyards, campuses, back yards, etc.  Essentially, it is anything built and planted by us that has not been fully created and maintained by nature.  Landscape Design as we know it, is the Orchestration of the Built Environment.  It is my contention that all built environments are to relate at least in some way to the broader native environment in which it lies.  This area is called 'The Major Native Landscape'  The scale of the Major Native Landscape is huge and it of course has smaller subdivisions which I will describe in writings to follow.  In terms of Landscape Design, the question "Where on earth am I?" can be restated as "In which major native landscape do I reside?"  If you live in State College, PA  your MNL is called 'The Ridges and Valleys'. In Lancaster it is called 'The Piedmont'.  The names of these regions follow the names of the major geographic regions of the state.  Topography is responsible for the descriptions initially but of course the native flora of PA is closely linked to it's Topography.  As one would imagine the Major Native Landscape changes with the changes in topography.  The following link is to the DCNR map of these regions in our great commonwealth: http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/topogeo/map13/map13.aspx.  You can see the many subsections of the 6 major physio graphic  regions and you can easily find the one in which you reside. "Where on earth are you?"
Why do we care?  If a landscape design is to be of world class quality it must in some way reflect its major native landscape.  If you drive from the coast of New Jersey to Pittsburg you would see the topography and the landscape change quite often as you moved.  Perhaps you get to the Pittsburg area and you observe an amazing old home that is surrounded by a collection of Ornamental Grasses.  They are OK in themselves but something isn't quite right.  The feeling is all wrong and the Architecture looks out of place.  It is landscaped more relative to the NJ coast you left six hours ago!  The Outer Coastal Plain region has native sea grasses all over the place and it would be wise to replicate some of that in a sea side villa, but the Appalachian Plateaus Region has none of that 'feel'.  So it is not the Architecture that is out of place it is its Built Environment!  Much easier to change that.  We should use our surrounding Major Native Landscape as a starting point for our Landscape Design ideas.  That's not to say we should try to replicate it exactly in our built environment: that is not practical.  But we can use it's feel and some of it's plants to bring the Architecture into it the fold of our surroundings.  Even if the building is in a neighborhood miles away from the nearest Natural representation of the native landscape, one can sense it's overall feel and connection to it.  If we first consider where in the world we are, we can then begin to connect the building to the neighborhood and beautify our Built Environment.
By Cristian Beaulieu  Pres.  EO Landscape Masterworks.
http://www.landscapemasterworks.com/