5 REASONS TO HIRE A LANDSCAPE DESIGNER

When tackling a new design project many people want to save money and do it themselves. This may be just fine in some cases but more often than not, the expertise and knowledge of a professional designer will benefit the homeowner.

Here is a list of reasons a professional designer may be helpful and save you stress and time.

1. Clear the confusion.

Sometimes homeowners will have great ideas of how they want a space to look but will only have individual concepts laid out for each area. A professional designer has the experience and ability to see the larger picture of the design plan and can create a space that is complete.

2. Choose the right materials

There are tons of styles, colors, patterns and application methods that have to be understood when selecting furniture, accessories and hardscape materials for your outdoor space. A landscape designer can help with this process. Not only will a designer know the best materials for a given scenario but they will also select aesthetic combinations that will work well together to create a more unified space.

3. Choose the right plants

There are tons of plants to choose from when creating a new landscape design. Every plant has certain soil, light and water requirements. Many homeowners make mistakes when purchasing and planting their new vegetation because they do not take into account the growth patterns and end up with bare spaces or overcrowding in their plot. A landscape designer has the knowledge and experience with plants to avoid these mistakes. Designers choose plants that are appropriate for each region of the country and also take into account what the plants will look like through the various seasonal transitions.

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4. Facilitate plans

Many factors come into play when creating a new landscape project. Taking precise measurements, calculating material needs, calculating costs, ordering and installing materials can seem overwhelming. A professional designer takes care of all these details and creates a good plan, which helps the client know exactly what they are getting and exactly what they are paying for. This saves the client time, money and stress. In addition, all designers have expert installers they trust- which in many cases can be a make it or break it factor to the final result of the design plan.

5. Provide aftercare

When a landscape project is completed sometimes homeowners are left with questions. A designer is available to the client to communicate about any needs related to the new space.  Any issues related to maintenance, special functions and plant care could be addressed and answered quickly and completely.

These are just a few of the reasons it would benefit homeowners to hire a landscape designer. Ultimately you have the ability to describe a motif or “feel’ you want to achieve and more than likely a designer will be able to achieve this without you having to deal with all the messy details.

Projects, construction, maintenance of green areas and irrigation systems, pools, stone walls, decks, pergolas, wood, terraces, artificial turf, etc…

ECOSSISTEMAS

Projectos, construção, conservação de áreas verdes e sistemas de rega, piscinas, muros de pedra, pavimentos, pérgolas, madeiras, terraços, relva artificial, etc…

Projects, construction, maintenance of green areas and irrigation systems, pools, stone walls, decks, pergolas, wood, terraces, artificial turf, etc…

Projets, la construction, l’entretien des espaces verts et des systèmes dírrigation, piscines, murs de Pierre, des terrasses, pergolas, bois, terrasses, gazon artificial, etc…

Projekte, baú, pflege von grunflachen und bewaserungsanlagen, pools, steinmauern, terrassen, pergolen, terrssen, kunstrasen, usw.

ECOVIVEIROS

Produção, comércio, exportação e importação de plantas, árvores, arbustos, artigos de jardinagem.

Production, trade, import and export of plants, trees, shrubs, gardening articles.

Production, le commerce, l´importation et l´exportation de plantes, arbres, arbustes, des articles de jardinage.

Produktion, handel, import un export von pflanzen, Baumen, strauchern, gartenartikel.

Aconselhamos o relvado artificial para

Graças à diversidade de oferta de relva sintética, terá um jardim com aspecto limpo e arranjado durante todo o ano, mesmo em alturas de seca ou frio extremo, sem necessidades de manutenção constantes, pois não necessita de ser cortada ou de fertilizantes.

Aconselhamos o relvado artificial para:

Zonas e Espaços de Lazer

Jardins junto a Piscinas

Canteiros de Plantas

Jardins de Moradias

Campos de Futebol 

Paixão, Profissionalismo e Dedicação

Ecossistemas

Paixão, Profissionalismo e Dedicação

Com mais de 20 anos de experiência na nossa área prestamos serviços desde uma floreira ou vaso a jardim privado e público. Com vasta capacidade em meios e equipamento, associados a uma boa qualidade de trabalhos já realizados nunca desprezamos a manutenção das áreas verdes. Possibilidade de apresentar soluções económicas e ecológicas, com aconselhamento técnico permanentemente e grátis na nossa seleção de serviços principais abaixo descritos.

 

Ecossistemas

Passion, Professionalism and Dedication

With over 25 years of experience in our field, we provide services from planters or flower pots to private and public gardens. With a vast competence in working with resources and equipment, associated with a good quality of already undertaken work, we never ignore the maintenance of green areas. We can offer economic and ecological solutions, with permanent and free technical advice within our selection of main services described below.

 

Ecossistemas

Leidenschaft, Professionalität und Hingabe

Mit mehr als 25 Jahren Erfahrung in der Branche bieten wir Service und  Ausstattung  vom Blumentopf oder Pflanzkübel bis hin zu privaten Gärten oder öffentlichen Parkanlagen. Mit unserem umfangreichen Equipment, gepaart mit erstklassiger Arbeitsqualität, haben wir schon oft unter Beweis gestellt, dass uns die Pflege von Grünanlagen am Herzen liegt.  Wir bieten ökonomische und ökologische Lösungen und dauerhaft kostenlose technische Beratung bei Ihrer Auswahl aus folgenden Dienstleistungen:

 

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www.ecossistemas.com

Sustainable Roundabout Manages Stormwater and Traffic

In Uptown Normal, Illinois, Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects completed work on The Circle, a multi-functional, sustainable roundabout that cleanses and re-circulates stormwater into a public fountain, improves traffic circulation at a busy five-street intersection, and provides community green space. The site’s stormwater management system features innovative elements like filtration bogs, ultra violet sanitizers, and a ”structural cell system.” The Circle plaza sits adjacent to the town’s planned multi-modal transportation center, which will connect residents to bus, train, or bike routes. The plaza and center received a U.S. Department of Transportation TIGER grant.

Peter Schaudt, partner of Hoerr Schaudt, said: “The heart of Normal’s new downtown is a model of environmental awareness that addresses two key challenges in American urbanism today: responsible use of water and a reduced dependence on automobiles. We will see the need for spaces that combine creative infrastructure with public space increase dramatically in the next decade.”

The new roundabout features a stormwater management system that uses bog plants and ultra violet sanitizers to cleanse and recycle water. Hoerr Schaudt explains the process:

• “Water goes through a filter that traps excess debris.
• The water is filtered, then travels through an ultra violet sanitizer.
• Ultra violet light energy helps destroy micro organisms without using harmful chemicals that create a “dead zone” which can be toxic to humans and animals.
• The water is pumped up through the “bog” plants that will also help to clean the water by filtering excess sediments and absorb remaining toxins in the water.
• Like ancient Roman aquaducts, the water then uses gravity to move through four bog pools where it eventually terminates into the fountain turbulance pool, creating a water feature for the community to enjoy.”

While the water isn’t drinkable, park visitors can dip their feet in the fountain.

Excess runoff not captured by this sytem is funneled to a 76,000 gallon underground cistern, created from abandoned underground storm sewer infrastructure. Water in the cistern will be used to irrigate the surrounding street trees.

The new roundabout should reduce traffic accidents. According to Federal Highway Administration (FHA), installing roundabouts results in: 90 percent reduction in fatalities; 76 percent reduction in injury accidents; 75 percent fewer pedestrian and vehicular conflict points; and reduction in overall pedestrian injury. Hoerr Schmidt says roundabouts also help reduce idling, which in turn helps lower local air pollution.

The new green space offered in the middle of the roundabout also adds valuable community space. The center lawn is somewhat insulated from car noise. “The natural sounds of the flowing water help to mitigate the sounds of ongoing traffic.”

See more images. Also, check out a review from The Architect’s Newspaper.

Landscaping Architects to design gardens

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has announced the call for presentations

for the 2013 Annual Meeting and EXPO in Boston.

 

The 2013 event will take place November 15 – 18 at the Boston Convention and Exposition Center.

 

More than 6,000 attendees are expected, and the meeting will feature a diverse spectrum of industry experts speaking on a wide range of subjects, from sustainable design to active living to best practices and new technologies.

 

More than 130 education sessions and field sessions will be presented during the meeting, providing attendees with the opportunity to earn up to 21 professional development hours under the Landscape Architecture Continuing Education System (LA CES) Many of the sessions will also qualify for continuing education credit with the Green Building Certification Institute (toward LEED AP credential maintenance), the American Institute of Architects, the American Institute of Certified Planners, and other allied professional organizations and state registration boards.

All aspects of landscaping services .

This past year shows us all that the publishing world isn’t dead yet.



A number of must-have books on landscape architecture, urban design, and ecology came past our desks this year. All would make great presents for your favorite landscape architect or designer.

Here are our top ten books of 2012:
 

Architecture Now! Landscape by Philip Jodidio (Taschen, 2012). Landscape architecture finally gets the world-famous Taschen book treatment in this 416-pager filled with tons of color photographs. Jodidio, who has written on starchitects for Taschen for years, features many of the big-name landscape architects practicing around the world today, along with a few architects who have crossed over to the landscape side. And it’s nice to note that this book’s scope truly is global: everyone from Ken Smith, FASLA, to Vladimir Djurovic, International ASLA, to Adriaan Gueze, International ASLA, at Dutch firm West 8 is included. Check out the book and then let Taschen know your thoughts for the next edition.
 

The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water by Charles Fishman (Free Press, 2012). Keynote speaker at the ASLA 2012 Annual Meeting in Phoenix Fishman takes readers on a journey around the world — but all focused on water, its history and use, and, increasingly, on how it’s being wasted. Still, despite all the discussion of a global water crisis, Fishman is optimistic that “smart water use” can help solve the challenges facing many communities. Landscape architects, who he calls “water revolutionaries,” are also seen as playing a key role in educating the public about how to more intelligently use water.

 

Carrot City: Creating Spaces for Urban Agriculture by Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, and Joe Nasr (Monacelli Press, 2012). Written by a group of Ryerson University professors, this full-color, photo-rich text book presents nearly 50 case studies that examine food production, processing, distribution, and marketing. These proposals, some visionary and others built or underway, explore how food production works — from the small components for growing, like raised beds and greenhouses, to city-scale systems of urban agriculture. The authors show how urban agriculture can re-integrate food production into the urban fabric in meaningful ways, eventually becoming, as the authors argue, as central to a city’s functioning as public sanitation utilities. Read the full review in The Dirt

 

Designed Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu by William Saunders (Birkhauser Architecture, 2012). To many, Kongjian Yu, FASLA, is the Frederick Law Olmsted of China. Winner of innumerable ASLA professional design awards, Yu and his Beijing-based firm, Turenscape, which has a staff of more than 500, gets an in-depth review by William Saunders, former editor of Harvard Design Magazine and now the books editor for Landscape Architecture Magazine. This book offers up 18 case studies and 10 essays by both leading landscape architecture practitioners and thinkers like Peter Walker, FASLA, and John Beardsley, Dumbarton Oaks. Read an ASLA interview with Yu, and learn more about his innovative ecological design approach

 

Lawrence Halprin’s Skyline Park by Ann Komara, ASLA, with a forward by Charles Birnbaum, FASLA, and contribution by Laurie Olin, FASLA (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012). Lawrence Halprin’s now defunct Skyline Park in Denver gets the full treatment in this brand-new book by Komara, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Colorado, Denver. In more than 140 pages filled with beautiful drawings and photographs, Komara delves into the economic and social trends that spurred the creation of Halprin’s park and led to its eventual decline. Read the full review on The Dirt

 

Petrochemical America by Kate Orff, ASLA, and Richard Misrach (Aperture, 2012). According to the publishers, this book combines “Richard Misrach’s haunting photographs of Louisiana’s ‘Chemical Corridor’ with landscape architect Orff’s ‘Ecological Atlas’–a series of speculative drawings developed through intensive research and mapping of data from the region. Misrach and Orff’s joint effort depicts and unpacks the complex cultural, physical and economic ecologies of a particular region along 150 miles of the Mississippi River, from Baton Rouge to New Orleans–an area of intense chemical production that became known as ‘Cancer Alley’ when unusually high occurrences of the disease were discovered in the region.” Read more on Orff’s discussion of the book at the University of Virginia 

 

Recycling Spaces: Curating Urban Evolution: The Work of Martha Schwartz Partners by Emily Waugh (ORO Editions, 2012). The iconic landscape architect Martha Schwartz hasn’t been the subject of a major book since the 1990s so this welcome new edition may be the only source for her more recent, international work. This new book by Waugh, a lecturer in landscape architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), uses Schwartz Partner’s work to focus on “four critical urban conditions of the late 20th and early 21st century city: dying city centers, depleted resource landscapes and affiliated towns, non-existent urbanisms, and changing populations.” The book argues that “one of the most important questions facing urban centers today is how to keep people attracted to live in, invest in, and participate in the city.” Read an ASLA interview with Schwartz

 

The Social Conquest of Earth by E.O. Wilson (Liveright, 2012). Famed Harvard University biologist and Pulitizer Prize-winning author Wilson delves into how humans came to take over the planet in this highly readable book (which also includes a fascinating discussion on why humans do landscape architecture in the first place). According to The Atlantic, “[His] new book is not limited to the discussion of evolutionary biology, but ranges provocatively through the humanities. Its impact on the social sciences could be as great as its importance for biology, advancing human self-understanding in ways typically associated with the great philosophers.”

 

Visible | Invisible: Landscape Works of Reed Hilderbrand by Douglas Reed, FASLA, and Gary Hilderbrand, FASLA (Metropolis Books, 2012). While this book won’t officially be available until January, 2013, it’s worth adding because it’s gorgeous. A range of essays by Peter Walker, FASLA; William Saunders; Gary Hilderbrand, FASLA; Niall Kirkwood, FASLA; and others provides a frame for this Massachusetts-based firm, which has won numerous ASLA professional awards. Hundreds of lush black-and-white and color photographs and beautiful master plans show this firm’s elegant projects at their best. As Walker writes in his forward, “this monograph is a wonderfully real and mature contribution to the art of landscape architecture.”

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck, Honorary ASLA (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012). Speck, one of the country’s leading urban planners and a consultant to many of the most-cutting edge mayors, offers up a new book on walkability and how to make it happen. Washington, D.C.’s planning director Harriet Tregoning is obviously a fan: “Companionable and disarmingly candid, Jeff Speck perches on your shoulder and gets you to see your community with fresh eyes. He gradually builds a compelling case for walkability as the essential distillation of a vast trove of knowledge about urbanism and placemaking. The case he makes has you both nodding at the intuitive and seemingly obvious wisdom presented, and shaking your head at why those basic principles of fixing our cities have eluded us for so long.”

 

Also, here are a few notable books for sustainable design educators, students, and practitioners: Designing the Sustainable Site: Integrated Design Strategies for Small-Scale Sites and Residential Landscapes by Heather Venhaus (see The Dirt review); Rethinking a Lot by Eran Ben-Joseph (see The Dirt review); The Sustainable Sites Handbook: A Complete Guide to the Principles, Strategies, and Best Practices for Sustainable Landscapes by Meg Calkins, ASLA (see The Dirt review); and Urban Ecological Design: A Process for Regenerative Spaces by Fritz Steiner, FASLA, and Danilo Palazzo (see The Dirt review).

For more, check out Books by ASLA Members, a hub offering up hundreds of books written over the years (all available via Amazon.com), and the top 10 books from 2011.

Water features,jogo de agua.MPG