Maintenance Reimagined

Abstract

Landscape maintenance plays a vital role in how designed landscapes perform over time. The current approach is to suppress landscapes by repeating the same techniques through the seasons and years. The dynamic living qualities are constantly hidden and results are static landscapes. By acknowledging the living qualities of the landscape and how they change through time landscape architects can engage in how those processes evolve and unfold. The potentials of how a site changes through time are endless, and it is time that landscape architects have a bigger role in the management of designed landscapes. Walking away from a site without a plan to how it responds to time surrenders too much of the design decisions to be made by the management team. Great opportunities exists for designers to create a plan for how the space functions and the aesthetics of the place through the use of maintenance. Maintenance today has lost its meaning in making a place great and having value. Past examples of landscape craft are helpful in understanding how we can bring back pride and lost practices to landscape maintenance. High-quality landscapes can be established when thinking about the care of them after they are built. When maintenance and care are placed as a high importance, the idea of craft is woven into the landscape. It is human nature to value things that are made great, and maintenance is the potential key to establishing that concept within designed landscapes.