Blog

Susan Cohan, APLD is a certified landscape designer. Her practice specializes in residential landscape design in the NY metropolitan region. Susan’s work has been featured in traditional and digital print as well as other media outlets. Her blog Miss Rumphius’ Rules features work in progress, musings on the creative process and insights on design, she also edits the APLDNJ blog and is passionate about Social Media. A founding member of the NJ chapter of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD), she also serves on its International Board of Directors as Membership Chair. Susan, first of all let me commend you for bringing recognition of the APLD (Association of Professional Landscape Designers) to Land8Lounge. I understand that you are the founder of the APLD’s New J...Read More

Cleve West is one of the UK’s leading contemporary landscape designers. A five time Royal Horticulture Society gold medal winner, West has contributed to Gardens Illustrated Magazine, and currently writes a weekly column for the Independent as The Urban Gardener. I had the opportunity to meet Cleve West and the one thing that struck me was, he is a designer who follows his own path throughout all his artistic endeavours. I hope this interview offers insight to West’s contribution, beyond the garden. Christian Barnard – Urban food cultivation is currently experiencing a much deserved surge in popularity and awareness. You have been highly involved in the promotion and pursuit of this movement. Where do you see the practice of urban food cultivation heading in the future? C...Read More

I have to admit my first attempt to read Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature while in school was haphazard to say the least. But there was drinking, tomfoolery to be had, and skirts to chase, what concern did I have with the environment and my impact on it as a designer. Well now that I’m older, wiser, and MUCH more mature (pronounced MU-T-OOR) I’ve been revisiting icons of landscape architecture literature. After reading Design with Nature I felt an immediate connection to McHarg’s belief’s and amazed by his teachings, written in 1969, are the very principles which some landscape architects today hale as “New Trends” in landscape architecture known as sustainable design. Well it’s certainly not new, and isn’t sustainable design synonymous with the practice of landscape architecture? Its unfor...Read More

LESSON LEARNED: A Tree Well Detail I remember when I saw Michael Jordan miss a dunk in game 3 of the semi-finals against the New York Knicks. I was shocked and so was everyone else watching. They did not seem to know what to say. We were used to seeing a high-flying, gravity-defying, basketball god plastered on magazine covers, posters, and cereal boxes. It was an eye-opening experience that taught me a valuable lesson. Even the best players make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes and, usually, we try very hard to make sure nobody notices. Right!? Well, that is not always the case. In Jordan’s case, he could not avoid the millions of spectators. Here is a “slam dunk” (well, maybe not as spectacular) that one of my favorite designers missed on a project of hers in San Franc...Read More

NATURAL ARCHITECTURE by Alessandro Rocca Princeton Architectural Press, New York Where does landscape architecture stop and landscape art begin? The artists and architects in Natural Architecture have transformed the act of building into an art form capable of sparking new relationships with nature, landscape, and the environment. Natural Architecture presents sixty-six site-specific installations that use raw materials such as twigs, pebbles, and straw found on the site to create truly green architecture that is as organic as the materials with which it is created. Projects by Olafur Eliasson, Patrick Dougherty, Nils-Udo, Ex. Studio, Edward Ng, nArchitects, and many others are shown together for the first time. Selected for their commitment to the use of raw materials, manual labor, and n...Read More