What is the Job Description of a Landscape Designer?
A landscape designer is someone who enjoys and understands the merging of art and science into a display of beauty that relates to the buildings and technology with nature. The landscape designer works on designing the location of buildings, roads, walkways, arrangement of flowers, shrubs, and trees. They also plan the restoration of natural places disturbed by humans such as wetlands, stream corridors, mined areas and forested land.
The designer uses his creativity and the nature of the beauty to create a harmonious and aesthetically peaceful area, includes personnel lawns, park, highway, walkways etc. overseeing the design of a variety of projects, including urban regeneration schemes, pedestrian schemes, road or retail schemes, and maintaining the character of sites of natural beauty.
Landscape architects work for many types of organizations such as the Government, private sector such as Universities, Colleges, Hospitals, and Housing Developers. They plan and design land areas for such projects as parks and other recreational facilities, airports, highways, hospitals, schools, land subdivisions, and commercial, industrial, and residential sites. The scope for a single landscape project can be huge and diversified, which positively make this career a promising one.
Working with architects, surveyors, and engineers, landscape designer get the best arrangement of designing what he needs to. They also collaborate with environmental scientists, foresters, and other professionals to find the best way to conserve or restore natural resources. Landscape architects create detailed plans indicating new topography, vegetation, walkways, and other landscaping details, such as fountains and decorative features.
The landscape designer will study the project holistically, inclusive the purpose of the project and the available funds. They analyze the natural elements of the site, such as the climate, soil, slope of the land, drainage, and vegetation; observe where sunlight falls on the site at different times of the day; and assess the effect of existing buildings, roads, walkways, and utilities as far as the new architectural design of the new neighborhood, should there are new ones.
They also take into account any local, State, or Federal regulations, such as those protecting wetlands or historic resources. The Landscape designer does not work independently but rather they work as a team of engineers and architect throughout the project, to better facilitate the progress of any given projects with outstanding outcome and results as these team of people each carry with them different skill set to assist one another.
After the initial draft of review and analysis, he will prepare a proposal for the client such as a detail plan of the site, including written reports, sketches, models, photographs, land-use studies, and cost estimates, and submit them for approval by the client and by regulatory agencies.
He has to deal with the negotiating of any required amendments to finalize the design; most importantly, he needs to match the client’s wishes with his best knowledge of what will work best for the landscape design. Equally important is his commitment to meet the given timeline under any possible constraints.
Some landscape designers work on a variety of projects. Some work for government agencies, for site and landscape design for government buildings, parks, as well as park and recreation planning in national parks and forests. In addition, they prepare environmental impact statements and studies on environmental issues such as public land-use planning.
Next: Ten Reasons Why You Should Become a Landscape Designer