Participatory Process

Naturally, we felt it necessary to do something fun with Kevin before getting too far into work. We went on a bike ride to nearby neighborhoods to look at people’s yards in person. This resulted in conversations about plants, low walls, front yards, and allowed Kevin to gain a sense of scale in relation to the street, levels of intimacy, and topographical transitions. Several of our design concepts - the concrete wall, the smoke tree, and the engagement with the street - came from this engagement. We ended our bike ride with a beer in Atlanta’s Olmsted Linear Park. 

Kevin chose the colors of his house: dark teal and lighter teal. Riffing off of his deep and moody selection we intentionally chose plants with extraordinary burgundy, green, and white features. Green flowers, evergreen, edibles, and burgundy foliage were a plus.

Learning from Natural Systems

The Little Landscape design was informed by the theory behind Travis Beck’s Ecological Landscape Design Principles. An ecological landscape design is rooted in the science of ecology, recognizes that it is of human creation, and aspires to restore degraded ecosystems (often destroyed at the hands of capitalistic productions). There is no going back to whatever “natural” is (as if we would know?), but we believe there is value in doing what we can to improve our ecological systems, especially in the verdant South.

It is so easy to design with ecology in mind, like insanely easy. For this project we were certain to consider biodiversity in plant choices, we predominantly chose native plants (because they are most adapted to the local environment, thus lowest maintenance), and we consider the greater watershed by using pervious surfaces only.