I was trained by experience and got a lot of theory from my friend GardenerGuru. She taught me that the landscaping's purpose is to soften the impact of the building to its surroundings. And this means different things in the rural setting than it does in the urban setting.
There are three aspects of landscaping. Hardscaping, Softscaping and infrastructure (lighting, electrical and irrigation). The infrastructure is the easy one. Lights that provide night guidance and let you see features at night. Electrical for sound and yes televisions. Irrigation, to keep your softscaping alive in dry times. Infrastructure also includes heating of hardscape so that it is free of ice in winter.
Hardscaping is rocks and patio stones. It is the inorganic features that every landscaped area has. It is the grading that everything sits on it is the woodden porch and the deck or the gazebo. It is the accent rocks.
Softscaping are the living plants that are added. The trees, shrubs and flowers. GardenerGuru told me that there are tree parts to this part. The bones, the parts that hold the plants together, the big plants like trees and larger shrubs. There are the muscles, the smaller shrubs that hang off the bones and flesh out the spaces. There are more muscles than bones. Lastly there the skin plants, annuals and ground covers that fill up the spaces and provide constant colour or coverage. They knit the entire softscaping together and make it whole; organic.
Most landscaping is a mix of the two. Some landscaping is only softscaping, some is only hardscaping.
Rural landscaping is about softening the human structures into the landscape around them. Taking the hard edged, ordered structure and softening it into the surroundings. The woods, the lake, the rocks, the farms, the other properties. In the wilds this can just be plants and that is it. It can be infrastructure too. It is about making the cottage disappear or about hiding the cottage from the other cottages or the roads. It is about hiding the cottage from other eyes or it is about drawing their envious gazes. In all cases it is about the people that it is for, it is their expression about themselves.
Urban landscaping is different. Sometimes very different. Sometimes it is all hardscaping, but when it involves plants it is about imposing order on the plants. Straight rows of plants at even heights packed closer together than nature would normally allow. I mean pressed together. Trees that in nature would be tall giants twenty or more feet apart are pressed tight in hedge rows sometimes the trunks are a foot apart, their branches and leaves intertwining. Plants in these situations need two things lots of fertilizer and water to survive. They need lots of light too, but varieties are chosen that are tall and thin that can be pressed closer together, but often the client demands things of the plants that they should not be asking them to do. But then, there are a lot of things that urban situations demand of the world, factory meat farms, cattle on antibiotics and eating meat to increase their size faster, drugs. Puppy mills to produce companion animals faster, why not yards with no space for the plants that are planted? Sometimes the urban softscaping is all bones or all muscle. Sometimes it is all skin. An accent tree and a lawn is great. A bank of shrubs and lawn is great. A lawn is okay. A small grouping of skin flowers is fine. A tiny postage stamp yard pressed with one hundred shrubs and trees is scary. Two hundred trees and shrubs pressed into descrete lines planted in sand or gravel or clay all without organic matter. It has irrigation, but no one thinks about fertilizing. I stare at it like a massive car accident playing out before my eyes. I see customers that change plants like they are clothes that need to be discarded. If I were to say, this sheep dog is not working for me, get rid of it and get me a poodle, but then after a few weeks the poodle gets exchanged for a beagle, people would get upset. Not so with plants, that often require a decade or more to get to size and can only be moved a few times in a short space of time before they expire. Who when they were moved the first time had half their roots cut off, or more. Who desperately need more water than they are given.
I guess what I object to is the overwhelming ignorance of landscapers towards plants who force plants into situations that they did not evolve for or were not modified for. Who are not given the resources they need to reach stability with their surroundings. The hardscaping is paramount in urban landscaping. Pools surrounded by patios that abutt the houses. Barbecues that are built into countertops and outdoor bars for entertainment purposes, out buildings for change rooms and TVs, all in backyards half the size of the house's footprint. Sometimes all that in equal proportion to twice the size of the house footprint. Sometimes with pools bigger than most people's living spaces, much bigger. Tasteful landscaping abutted against tacky in rows. Three or four pools with high fences between. Portuguese lawns (concrete) beside interlock beside treeless, shrubless lawns.
They are so different. I bet an urban landscaper would be as equally mystified by rural landscaping as I am by the urban experience.
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