“This thoughtful, intelligent book is all about connectivity, addressing a natural world in which we are the primary influence.” —The New York Times Books Review Many gardeners today want a home landscape that nourishes and fosters wildlife, but they also want beauty, a space for the kids to play, privacy, and maybe even a vegetable patch. Sure, it’s a tall order, but The Living Landscape shows you how to do it. You’ll learn the strategies for making and maintaining a diverse, layered landscape—one that offers beauty on many levels, provides outdoor rooms and turf areas for children and pets, incorporates fragrance and edible plants, and provides cover, shelter, and sustenance for wildlife. Richly illustrated and informed by both a keen eye for design and an understanding of how healthy ecologies work, The Living Landscape will enable you to create a garden that fulfills both human needs and the needs of wildlife communities.
The Living Landscape is a manifesto, resource, and textbook for architects, landscape architects, environmental planners, students, and others involved in creating human communities. Since its first edition, published in 1990, it has taught its readers how to develop new built environments while conserving natural resources. No other book presents such a comprehensive approach to planning that is rooted in ecology and design. And no other book offers a similar step-by-step method for planning with an emphasis on sustainable development. This second edition of The Living Landscape offers Frederick Steiner’s design-oriented ecological methods to a new generation of students and professionals. The Living Landscape offers • a systematic, highly practical approach to landscape planning that maximizes ecological objectives, community service, and citizen participation • more than 20 challenging case studies that demonstrate how problems were met and overcome, from rural America to large cities • scores of checklists and step-by-step guides • hands-on help with practical zoning, land use, and regulatory issues • coverage of major advances in GIS technology and global sustainability standards • more than 150 illustrations. As Steiner emphasizes throughout this book, all of us have a responsibility to the Earth and to our fellow residents on this planet to plan with vision. We are merely visiting this planet, he notes; we should leave good impressions.
"Being able to 'read' the landscape whilst on a walk makes a huge difference. It is like suddenly seeing the world in colour after being used to a lifetime of black and white. The Living Landscape looks in detail at landscape formation: from rocks, through soil to vegetation and the intricate web of interactions between plants, animals, climate and the people that makes the landscape around us. Each chapter is interspersed with diagrams, sketches and notes that Patrick has taken over two decades of living and working in the countryside. Patrick will inspire you to reconnect with the land as a living entity, not a collection of different scenery, and develop an active relationship with nature and the countryside. This book invites you to actively engage with nature and experience it first hand. Understanding how landscapes evolve is a useful skill for landscape designers, farmers, gardeners and smallholders but it is also a life-enhancing skill all of us can enjoy. Patrick offers us the enduring pleasure that costs nothing and yet offers everything." -- Publisher's description
This volume takes readers on a tour through the latest concepts in landscaping ideas. Editors have included 600 full-color photos for inspiration, plus a 100-page gallery of Southern gardens and a section of step-by-step garden projects and innovative
A critically acclaimed photographic and literary celebration of Ireland now in trade paperback. The book features 120 color photographs of the Irish landscape by Tom Kelly, "the David Muench of Ireland", and poetry by Seamus Heaney. Author Somerville-Large also wrote The Coast of West Cork and Irish Eccentrics.
Today, half the Netherlands is below sea level. Because of this, water-management is of key importance when it comes to maintaining present-day habitation of the Dutch low-lands. In prehistory, however, large parts of the Dutch landscape were highly dynamic due to ongoing fluvial sedimentation. Vast deltaic areas with ceaseless river activity formed the backdrop against which prehistoric occupation took place. Although such landscapes may seem inhospitable, the often excellently preserved archaeological evidence indicates that people lived in these lowlands throughout prehistory. This book describes why Bronze Age farmers were keen to settle here and how these prehistoric communities structured the landscape around their house-sites at various scales. Using a vast body of evidence from several large-scale excavations in the Dutch river area, the author reconstructs the changes in the cultural landscape over time. Starting from the Middle Neolithic, changing preferences for settlement site locations and changes in domestic architecture are traced in detail to the Iron Age. However, for proper understanding of the cultural landscape, not only settlements but also graves and patterns of object deposition - and their landscape characteristics - are discussed. By using evidence from over 50 major excavations, yielding over 300 house plans, this book contains by far the richest data-set on Dutch Bronze Age settlements. Most of these results have not previously been published in English, making this book of over 500 pages a true academic treasure for an international audience. The in-depth presentation of Bronze Age settlement sites, as well as the critical discussion of models and premises current in later prehistoric settlement archaeology, have an important relevance stretching beyond the Dutch lowland areas on which it is based. The wealth of high-quality Dutch data is presented as a synthesized (yet well-annotated) narrative, that rises above mere site interpretation, even more so due to its landscape-scale focus. Therefore this book is a must-have for those interested in later prehistoric cultural landscapes and settlement archaeology.
The use of innovative new materials is an important trend in landscape architecture today. These materials include biodegradable geotextiles, super-absorbent polymers, and plants that react to changing soil conditions. This book presents the available materials and technologies in the context of practical applications.
The gardens in Living Land are growing on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, in the valleys of the California coastal hills, in tight urban lots, and on spacious residential estates. Each one demonstrates Eric and Silvina Blasens' ability to intensely intuit and beautifully forge a relevant, contemporary dynamic between architecture and land.
Lifelong landscape design means thinking about more than your garden. It involves encouraging your community to be a well-rooted environment consisting of friends who share home-grown produce, walk in the neighborhood, recycle, water harvest, compost and are watchful of each other’s well-being. Lifelong landscape designs create environments that connect with nature, encompass a home, and promote healthy living by providing mobility, social interaction, and places to sustain the body and soul. Learn easy steps to design your own lifelong landscape through more than 200 landscape patterns and activities that illustrate components of healthy living. Enhance the quality of your life at any stage with practical advice from this inspirational landscape architect with more than 30 years experience.
