LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

ADA compliance outdoors gets treated as a checklist, ramps here, a curb cut there, but real accessibility is a design problem that starts with how a site is graded and ends with the plants along the path. An accessible route needs a stable, firm, slip-resistant surface, a running slope generally no steeper than one in twenty unless it's a formal ramp, and a cross slope shallow enough that a wheelchair doesn't drift toward the low side. None of that happens by accident. It's s

Of the four services involved in a typical development project, landscape architecture is the one people have the vaguest idea about. It's not just plant selection, and it's not the same job as the building architect or the civil engineer, even though it overlaps with both. A landscape architect designs everything about a site that isn't the building itself but still shapes how people experience it: walkways and circulation, outdoor gathering spaces, plantings, lighting, se

Stormwater compliance is usually thought of as a civil engineering problem, but landscape architecture plays a real role in meeting it. Rain gardens, bioretention areas, and permeable planting beds can handle water quality treatment and, in some cases, volume control, while also functioning as an intentional part of the site's design rather than a fenced-off retention pond. The difference matters most on tighter urban and infill sites, where there isn't room for a large tra