The Fields (Click here to see the final design plan), completed in spring of 2013, is Portland’s newest Park in the north end of the Pearl District. While I was still with Parks I did the horticultural review during the design process and was an on site inspector, periodically, during construction. New Parks like this one require a huge time commitment by Parks. Selection of designers, outreach to all of the stakeholders and many other meetings involving more technical aspects of such a project all in an effort to deliver to residents a Park that is beautiful, serves the needs of residents and is affordable in terms of long term maintenance. Before the project is offered to the design community functional goals are set for the Park and a general design theme is chosen. Various firms offer proposals. Concepts are bandied about. Eventually, one is chosen. In this case, the Office of Cheryl Barton, a San Francisco firm, was awarded the design contract (To see what they have to say about it). Continue reading
Tag Archives: The Fields Park
Adaptive Management and the Dynamic Maintenance of Sustainable Landscapes
We, all of us, are part of the landscape. Just as individual plants belong to a local native plant community, and its place, so do we. That we live in highly disturbed and contrived landscapes does not change the fact that we live in relationship with it, that we are a functioning part of it. Deny this as we may, many of us as a group likely admit to very little connection to our ‘place’. It’s just where we live, for now. Our understanding of it and any involvement with our landscape, other than as a simple stage for our lives, is minimal, a condition which has become pervasive in modern society. Some professionals, who work with children have come to refer to this state as NDD, or Nature Deficit Disorder, a dissociative relationship now that was once basic to human survival. Today this condition is pervasive and our landscapes, as a result, severely disturbed, damaged and compromised, lack the capacity to return to their former state. There is a general ignorance amongst the public and our leaders of the severity of the problem and our necessary role and responsibility to correct it. We are locked into a strategy that views landscape as incidental, the natural world as backdrop for our activities, not central to our well-being. Today landscapes, as long as they meet our grossly simplified idea of our needs, a modern minimalist aesthetic, that does not over tax our ‘pocketbook’, are forgettable. From a horticultural viewpoint this is becoming an increasingly deteriorating disaster, something that not only we can do something about, but one that is imperative that we do so. Adaptive Management describes a responsive relationship between people and the place in which they live. It is centered on a positive and workable strategy we can adopt that addresses this situation and turns it around, reengaging us with our landscape. Continue reading