The best landscape designs begin not with a spade but with paper, pencil and a survey of the site's environmental conditions or factors. Over the years, I have sorted out five environmental factors that should be major considerations in planning designs. All of these factors interconnect and also connect with plant selection and ultimately with maintenance of an executed design. Considering environmental factors helps you to become confident with the subtleties of any site.
Here is my selection of environmental factors: 1. Climate;
2. Sun / Shade Cycles;
3. Soil;
4. Water Availability; and
5. Plant Hardiness Zones.
Project size - perennial bed, small urban lot, or suburban location - dictates how much leisure time you use listing and describing environmental factors. Diagramming these factors on your site plan - a rough, but accurate copy of the site's boundaries and elements within its bounds - is time well spent. This is an important first step in Composing the Picture: Getting Your Plan on Paper.
Begin with climate. At first glance, this factor appears to be something very familiar. We listen to weather forecasts each day that broadcast regional changes in temperature, precipitation, and sunshine. In addition, most of us understand without needing to question that oceans, landmasses, pressure systems and established wind patterns influence both regional and daily climate. This is climate of the big picture and is important to gardeners on a seasonal basis.
However, landscape designers and gardeners alike need, for successful results, to accommodate or manipulate the numerous microclimates - small climates -present in neighborhoods or on sites. Clever use of microclimates expands and enhances finished landscape designs. However, ignoring these small climates usually leads to awkward and unpleasant spaces and struggling or dead plants.
Listed and discussed in the second part of this article are six factors that more often than not cause or affect microclimates.
©
Text and photographs by Georgene A. Bramlage, [March, 2006]]. Reproduction without permission prohibited.
