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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AOTEAROA
ABOVE:
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Observations from a landscape architect
and residential garden designer.
Text by Paul Murphy Images by Shafer Design
IS IT A GARDEN OR IS IT A LANDSCAPE?
What is the difference between a landscape architect
who designs private gardens and one who designs
public spaces? Or is there a difference at all?
As a landscape architect I work predominantly in
the field of residential design, which quite possibly
puts me in the minority of Landscape Architects.
Shafer Design is an office of six, consisting of four
Landscape Architects and two Landscape Designers.
This makes us a reasonably sized practice, with the
central focus of our work being residential garden
design. Where the obvious difference seems to be is
working in the public and private realms. As garden
designers our work tends to be wholly private and
we are typically not dealing with issues of public-private interfaces (although this is changing).
Gardens for individual clients is getting into the
realm of the foundations of our industry. The earliest gardens were created for pleasure and excluded
the public, very much what our clients seek from us
now. The fundamentals of the private garden haven’t
really changed. If we look back through the history of
landscape design a significant feature which recurs
is the function of enclosure. It is the enclosure which
largely separates the public from the private.
The context is very much a driver for this response,
our urban gardens have a tendency for more enclosure and removal from the outside world than our
rural or coastal gardens. We all work with the same
contextual elements including topography, aspect,
wind, light and shade and soil.
Perhaps the fundamental difference is that we
work with gardens which include hard and soft landscape elements and deals with issues such as retaining, drainage, lighting and irrigation.
Sounds pretty similar to the work in the public
realm.
At the heart of it we are all dealing with the same
suite of issues. Is the difference that some of us work
with ‘gardens’ and all the imagery associated with