Reply To: Municipal landscape requirements

[Jason T. Radice]

I think many places are coming to realize that the code really doesn’t help things. You cannot really quantify your way to good design. You can get ‘nicer’ landscape often with fewer trees and shrubs if they are placed correctly. Spacing a tree ever 25′ doesn’t mean that much, and even total vegetaitive cover (while allowing more flexibility) still does not guarantee a nice landscape, because the developer will buy the absolute cheapest and smallest plants they can to meet the code, rather than invest in larger or more expensive varieties of plants and better design. Remember who usually ends up designing many commercial landscapes…civil engineers, because landscape designs are submitted with the initial site design in many jurisdictions. The same 5 plants end up going in everywhere, appropriately or not.

 

Thankfully, that trend is starting to change around here, and the landscape is only reviewed when the building footprint and site engineering are set and the LS is adjusted accordingly.

 

Quality of quanity.