Landscape Architecture Magazine August 2022

KIM O’CONNELL (“Destination Hemp Farm,” page 26) is a writer based in Arlington, Virginia, who covers history, nature, design, and other topics for a range of publications. You can follow her on Twitter @kim_oconnell. “As a Virginian, I’m used to the myriad ways history, culture, and nature intersect—or collide—in this state. What surprised me was how the farm is drawing on classic lessons from agriculture and landscape architecture, while breaking new ground in an industry still striving for legitimacy.” POLLYANNA RHEE (“A Collective Gasp,” page 134) is an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Her book, Natural Attachments, on the development of modern environmentalism in the United States, is in progress. You can reach her at cyrhee@illinois.edu. “The focus on emotional responses in many of the essays in…

Along with the openings of pools and spray parks, the openings of urban cooling centers have become a sign that summer has arrived in many U.S. cities. Our city, Washington, D.C., has a heat emergency plan, website, and interactive map to help residents find designated cooling centers when the temperature rises above 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Most of these are recreation centers, aquatic facilities, and libraries, but they also include shelters and senior centers. Every summer I see people broiling as they walk along the hard shoulders of state roads to wait at unsheltered bus stops, or try to tuck themselves into a sliver of shade cast by a parking meter or utility pole. As I imagine the many ingenious temporary shade structures that might be designed and built by landscape architecture…

Bravo to the former LAM editor Bradford McKee for his unique article about supply chains affecting the landscape industry (“Your Stuff Is Coming [Someday],” LAM, June). However, this is but the tip of an immense iceberg drifting toward a collision with the greater landscape itself. Every industry and every physical land pattern we can think of would change dramatically if the current, highly unsustainable, transoceanic, offshored, lowest-labor-priced, commodity-delivery system collapsed. Globalism depends on fossil fuel, and fossil fuel is wreaking havoc on the biosphere, killing humans and ecosystems alike. Most of us are acutely aware of this from direct personal experience. Somewhere in the distant future, certainly beyond my lifetime, (I predict) humanity will be much more local, less consumptive, and more regionally self-sufficient, and will likely operate primarily on…

Barbara Peterson, ASLA, is a night Bowl. During the 16 years she worked as a part-time landscape architect, she typically spent the hours of 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. sending emails, working on designs, and stamping plans. When her son, Eric, got a little older, she would pack a lunch and leave it in the fridge for him to take on his way to the bus in the morning. She spent much of her day carting him back and forth to sporting events and skateparks. It was a relatively good balance for a professional and mom, she says, but in 2019, when Peterson decided to start working full-time again, she found the job-search process frustrating in new ways. She said a few firms “ghosted” her after the interview process, and at…

On a farm in Loudoun County, Virginia, the first thing you might notice is the smell. Some say it’s citrusy, others say it’s piney, and still others say it’s skunky. Most visitors find it pleasantly earthy. This is the Cannabreeze Hemp Farm, nestled into the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Like the wineries and breweries that have cropped up around the Northern Virginia countryside in recent years, luring patrons from Washington, D.C., and the surrounding suburbs, Cannabreeze hopes to one day become an agritourism destination—and destigmatize cannabis in the process. Kirk Bereuter, ASLA, a landscape architect and the principal of his own firm in Alexandria, Virginia, designed a master plan for Cannabreeze that he says is an example of a promising new practice area for the profession. Bereuter’s portfolio includes…

Sam Van Aken, a multidisciplinary artist long fascinated by the beauty of fruit trees, had a vision of creating an “open orchard” in New York City that would be accessible to the public. He spent years researching the fruit trees that once grew in New York, learning from orchardists on old family farms and collecting heritage varieties from agricultural research stations before they shut down. He read the works of the landscape architect and horticulturist Andrew Jackson Downing, a mentor of Frederick Law Olmsted. “Downing had this idea that apple trees should be these large, sculptural forms and that you should plant peaches or stone fruits between your apples,” Van Aken says. In 2017, Van Aken was invited to visit Governors Island by a then exhibit director who had heard about…