LJN Blog Posts

Comments

• 

  Pip Howard January 16, 2010 at 2:04pm

  Now there’s a discussion – should a garden designer take into consideration construction implications when producing plans or would that negate the artistic flow?
  
  Good point, as a practitioner not a designer, I have been involved in situations where a design needs to be altered by request from local authority to ensure that a new development complies with BS 5837 . Whilst BS 5837 is to do with existing and retaining trees, some fore sighted planners are using it as a guide for new developments and ensuring that the proposed planting will meet BS 5837 in maturity. Also guidelines adopted by way of compliance with ELC are also being adapted by the more progressive councils in order to use it as a stick to ensure that there is 'demonstrated thought' given to new tree planting, but again this is mainly towards new development. If a designer utilises measurements of BS 5837 to ensure certain buffers are drawn onto the plan prior to creative design, this will surely allow for the eventualities you raise.
  
  On a lighter note, well done on the freecell, my six year old was given a nintendo ds with start wars game, he doesn't seem too bothered, I am well and truly hooked.
• 

  The Perfumed Garden January 16, 2010 at 3:21pm

  Maybe fore sightedness is one of the differences is between good and bad designers.
  
  Ah, the perils of computer games, I try and avoid them as I know what the result will be. I remember my step son getting a Nintendo Gameboy, my sleep pattern was dreadful.
• 

  Pip Howard January 16, 2010 at 4:41pm

  As part of a larger landscaping company my team once set out to commence a huge planting project, (the design was beautiful). Turned up, stuck spade in the ground, 300mm below surface was tarmac over the whole site!!!. prior to our arrival the council planners, then large landscape architecture firm, then the quantity surveyors and managers of the landscaping company had all spent considerable time 'on site'. No one had bothered to either look into recent history or bothered to dig to determine soil conditions!!!. This is a surprisingly common problem and can be catastrophic in terms of the final visual effect let alone the costs. To carry on in this vein the Garden Design unit at a well known University in Cornwall declared that design had nothing to do with the plants and their requirements and subsequently this element disappeared from their syllabus - bizarre. It seems a even a simple bit of foresight will allow for a better basis for designers. Your business model of gardener / designer working together is enviable and surely allows for stronger confidence from clients. For larger companies in the industry the relationship between practitioner and designer / architect is weak at the most and I have seen so many schemes where had the designer brought in the practitioner from the outset, the resulting implementation of the scheme would have been amazing not the lacklustre 'commercial' scheme that usually results - usually with the supplementing of many plants for swaths of Cotoneaster horizontalis or similar due to the underlying soils.
  
  I guess it is better to stick to the LJN, much more therapeutic than a nintendo I find.