I am a member of the London Parks and Gardens Trust and am a committee member of a local Historic Buildings Group (which includes landscape and open space in its remit), so I am involved as a user, and as an observer and commentator, on the work of landscape architects. The author is a landscape architect and landscape constructor and he has put together this dictionary, I expect, to help clients, students and colleagues understand the terminology.
Christensen lays out eight criteria for inclusion which can be summarised as excluding the very obvious, spelling out abbreviations, identifying synonyms, explaining some terms from the landscape architects position, and including specific landscape terms. He also warns that definitions might change over time. Although the rules are strictly applied they do encompass quite a range of topics: common tools, shapes of plants, garden features, botanical and engineering terms. What it does not include are many of the historical terms used to describe historical gardens like exedra and patte d'oie, although parterre is included. There are two good reasons for this; the book is about current practice and the USA has few eighteenth century or earlier gardens and the designers and owners of these did not have the classical aspirations of European owners. (To those who need a list of historic terms, I would recommend Symes (2000).)
The botanical terms include a lot of shape or appearance terms – awns on grass and lenticular bark, multi‐stemmed and single stemmed trees. These help in visualising the effect of planting. There is an appendix of specific names that is the second part of the Latin name, where these indicate some aspect of appearance or origin of the plant. Thus repens indicates that a plant like Goodyera repans (lady's slipper orchid) creeps. (The Generic name is for John Goodyer a seventeenth century botanist). Both the terms in the dictionary and appendix will help those who come to landscape architecture from architecture. Some who have come by this route tell me that learning the plant names was the hard part. Various aspects of construction are described and illustrated. Here the author's background shows as many of the illustrations are in the style that landscape architects draw. This should help those who come to landscape architecture from garden design or horticulture, as there is more to making a fence or laying a path in a large or public area than doing it in a small garden. The drawings are not intended to instruct, but they do show what is needed. That the author of this book is both a designer and constructor of landscapes is what makes it useful to those who are involved in only one half of the process.
One small point needs to be made. This is an American book including some terms that are different from UK use, for example, Midden for central reservation in highway planting. The author has spade and shovel as the same, whereas in the UK spades have a cutting edge and shovels have upraised sides. Abbreviations for organizations also tend to be American. There are, to be fair, some specific British terms included.
Books that cover the join between disciplines have the problem of completeness and relevance in trying to bridge gaps. But the point of a book like this is that it attempts fusion. One of the things that has long interested me as an information professional is getting information across subject divides and ensuring the quality of information from other disciplines. As a user of public parks and open space I have seen mounds that are beyond the heap stability of soil, water features that do not drain as they should, paths cracking because the slope is too great, paths laid insensitively across a landscape, and planting that is too sparse or too dense for purpose. These occur in new designs and in old designs that have been repaired only to deteriorate again. I am not saying this book would solve these, but at least it introduces one to the fact that there are experts with solutions on the other side of the business.
This a useful book for individuals and organizations (including customers) involved in landscape design and construction.
