David Cristiani

Hire a good real estate attorney, subdivide the land, and place restrictive covenants on the lots to suit your goals. 

There is a difference between size when planted, mature size, and ultimate full size . Then there is the size range that it is intended to have during the life span of the landscape that is going to be defined by maintenance, like it or not philosophically,. Some plants can be allowed to grow to their ultimate size. Some need to be…[Read more]

I did residential design/build 15 years before I got my degree and 14 years of residential after I got licensed. I draw plants “in between” as Rob wrote. Basically, I draw them at a size that is based on looking good in a plan with the actual spacing that they will be planted at … if that makes sense. A 5′ tall holly would be drafted at a d…[Read more]

I work on residential and small commercial sites – most are less than two acres. I try to keep things as simple for me as possible, but I also try to be easier to work with than some others because it helps with referrals (some other professionals are more concerned with how easy or difficult you make their work and refer their clients based on…[Read more]

Clarification:
There is a big difference between thinking like an owner and acting like an owner. The last thing any principal wants is an inexperienced person trying to tell them how things should be done by acting like they own the place.
Thinking like an owner is to try to understand their perspective and then try to execute your own job in…[Read more]

I can empathize with you as someone who did not have an easy path in landscape architecture. I was unable to get a traditional LA career off the ground – partly due to geography and partly due to “not being a good fit” (I don’t hand draw well), and partly having gone to school in Idaho and living in the shadows of Harvard, RISD, URI, and UMass.…[Read more]

Could not agree more.

I’m a residential landscape architect on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. We have lots of coastal wetland and fresh water wetland resources that are protected. Much of the coast line was developed many years ago with summer homes, but there are sometimes new lots for construction. Years ago, wetlands were not protected, but now they are. One of the…[Read more]

Choice of schools and MLA vs. BLA comes into the cost of school as well. I moved to another state that had a low cost state university, lived and worked there for over a year to become a resident …. even bought my first house there before enrolling. That saved me a ton of money.
I can’t say that there are no consequences based on where you get…[Read more]

It is part of our profession whether you are looking to do it or not. There are firms that specialize in ecological design, but even those that do not often have to do a lot of ecological restoration due to regulation whether they are one person residential design operations like me or large urban planning firms. It is the norm rather than a…[Read more]

I look at it this way. It takes a lot of “stupid pet tricks” to get that license. Going through that process to its completion is a journey that has you doing some things that you might never do without being forced to in order to get that license … that includes the degree, the tedious years of internship (even exploitation), and finally the…[Read more]

They know that there has to be a certain level of experience, accomplishment, and commitment there, but also that the person is not just looking to fill in apprentice time.

Ultimately, the bulk of landscape architecture is design on the land. That come from an artistic and aesthetic driven mind,  or a thought process more centered on how people use space, it can be ecologically driven, …., we can go on and on. One thing that almost always has to be part of the mix is the ability to transform what drives the des…[Read more]

I had another meeting today where the flood zone is changing from contour 10 to contour 12. The slope also gets steeper between those two contours. Currently, there is no Coastal Bank because the slope within the flood zone is less than 10%, but it gets steeper between contour 10 and 12 making a Coastal Bank to elevation 12 and shifting from the…[Read more]

If you have that kind of diversity of projects it is likely that you are sharing files or at least getting files from a lot of different sources to work from. Why would it make sense to use anything other than what is most commonly used by those who you are sharing files with? Chances are that it will be AutoCAD.
Land FX won’t do anything harmful…[Read more]

“I’d do a couple of local trade or professional groups for free to generate and gage interest. Then go from there if I thought that teaching was a good way to make or supplement a living. That is a marketing investment of time rather than doing something for free”
I would assess the value …. just like I do for design fees.

Trace,
I’d do a couple of local trade or professional groups for free to generate and gage interest. Then go from there if I thought that teaching was a good way to make or supplement a living. That is a marketing investment of time rather than doing something for free.
More likely, I would do the same speaking engagements and generate an interest…[Read more]

I don’t know how any of you can project the rates of well recognized and highly sought after teachers to someone who is being asked to teach this for the first time.
Would any of you pay anything close to those rates for an unknown instructor?
High rates come AFTER you build a following whether it is doing design work or teaching a class.
Start…[Read more]

I see a lot of people put on presentations at trade or professional organization meetings that are supposed to be teaching certain skills, but are much more about demonstrating their own ability than actually teaching anything. By the end of the night several people have spoken with them about doing freelance work for them.
In fact, one…[Read more]

Planting design theory has nothing to do with culture or ecology. It is understanding the various visual effects of any planting composition whether it is created by nature or white guys in grey suits. It is about breaking it down for analysis so that you or I can understand what we are looking at. It also empowers us re-create something we have s…[Read more]