Editor’s note:
This essay was originally published in 2012. I’ve lightly edited it for clarity, but the argument stands. Questions about who gets to claim authority, how professions police their borders, and whether credentialing actually serves the public haven’t gone away. If anything, they’ve become more urgent. I’m republishing this piece because the conversation it calls for still isn’t finished.
Do you follow The Dirt (the ASLA blog)? I stop in from time to time, but a recent visit got under my skin pretty quickly.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts on a post titled “Frederick Law Olmstead is Holding US Back (there I said it)”. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend doing so—leave a comment there if you feel moved, then come back and we can talk.
Editor’s note: The original ASLA blog post referenced here is no longer available online. The response below stands on its own and reflects concerns that continue to surface across design professions.
I shared my opinion in the comments, but I want to clarify a few things here.
I think it’s entirely fair to respect the training someone has. It’s even better when that training is applied thoughtfully and well. But to act as though one type of training is inherently superior to all others is absurd.
Is it somehow harder—or more worthy—to become a world-class landscape architect than a world-class horticulturist, gardener, groundskeeper, or landscape designer?
No.
Under the ASLA model, becoming a landscape architect requires passing a test. Fine. Then let anyone take the test. If they pass, give them the credential. What’s the fear? Why restrict access based on attendance at a specific set of schools?
Do you follow the ? (the blog of the ASLA) I stop in from time to time but this morning’s visit quickly got under my skin. I am curious to know your opinions about a recent post titled “Frederick Law Olmstead is Holding US Back (there I said it)” (please go read it, leave a comment there and then come back and we can discuss here too)
This wouldn’t feel quite so distasteful if the licensing push stopped there. But it doesn’t. There’s also a sustained effort to make it illegal to work in exterior design without that license.
I have no love for the ASLA’s constant drumbeat for mandatory licensure for anyone working in an exterior design role. In theory, licensure is about public protection. In practice, it often isn’t.
I understand licensure for medical professionals, architects, structural engineers—fields where failure can literally kill people. In those cases, regulation makes sense.
Landscape work rarely carries that level of life-and-death consequence. For the few cases where it does, fine—require licensure. Offer licenses to those who want them. Make them rigorous if you must. But don’t attempt to criminalize professionals who opt out of a self-serving system simply because they don’t carry your credential.
I’ve also had direct experience with professional organizations closing ranks in ways that do not serve the public.
In one case, a structural engineer’s design failed immediately, spectacularly, and expensively. The professional organization responsible for oversight did nothing to help me as the client. Their primary concern was protecting the engineer—who, not coincidentally, paid membership dues.
All I asked for was a note to be associated with the firm’s name so future clients might be informed. That request went nowhere. Later, I learned—through legal channels and colleagues—that multiple clients had experienced similar failures. In every case, the firm was found negligent in court.
And yet the licensing board continued to defend, protect, and even recommend them.
I don’t mean to sound jaded, but experiences like this make it difficult to believe that professional organizations— even when licensure is appropriate—are achieving what they claim to set out to do.
In my view, the ASLA would serve the profession far better by educating the public about what landscape architects actually do, how they improve the world, how to hire them well, and how to recognize good work. They should be helping practitioners get better at their craft—not lobbying to control who is allowed to practice it.
If regulation is truly necessary, it should be handled by an independent body whose sole responsibility is the public interest—not by a membership organization whose primary loyalty is to its dues-paying members.
For reference, here’s the comment I left on The Dirt:
There are two lines here that really irritated me:
“We lament that laypeople confuse us with landscape designers and horticulturists…”
and later, “The garden was designed by Dan Kiley.” Period.
This wouldn’t be such an issue if the landscape architecture side of the profession didn’t see itself as the rightful heir to the top of some imaginary hierarchy.
There is no heap.
Horticulturists cultivate the plants people connect with. Landscape designers shape the residential spaces people live in every day. Gardeners make those places last for generations.
These are not lesser roles. They are essential ones.
If landscape architects embraced these professionals as collaborators rather than treating them as second-class, they’d gain allies—and credibility. Instead, attitudes like this continue to alienate the very people who could help strengthen the field.
Stop being so hung up on credentials. We all have them. None are inherently better than anyone else’s.
– Rochelle
Thanks for sharing this very informative article… from this overall great blog!
Great post! I’m “just a landscape designer” and the LA/LD thing is… something else. I have zero problem with title acts. I need my MLA, internship time, and to sit the LARE to call myself a landscape architect? That’s cool, you can have it. I have a portfolio that gets more interesting with every project and that’s what lands me work, not a title. I can live without the added stress and debt.
What does aggravate me are practice acts, LAs influencing government to say that only they can do what I do. There are things that LAs can do that I don’t, like large scale site development and stamped grading and drainage plans. And, I recently spoke with an LA (who does gorgeous urban planning work) who was jealous that I can do plant selection and construction drawings. At the end of the day, we’re tools to get a job done. Professionally, we should help our clients pick the right tools, but a title isn’t the answer.
And a funny side note is that if I pay the ASLA three hundred bucks, I can join AND put their letters after my name. So I can LOOK like an LA, but I don’t need to bother with all that book learnin’. Awesome.
Shared this on the Garden Bloggers Facebook page because it is an interesting read and sounds like the ones I’ve seen had about whether being part of a garden writing association gives you more credibility.
Kudos Rochelle, I completely agree. It has always rubbed me wrong and gets under my skin that we are not unified as an industry and the supposed leader the ASLA does nothing to help. I have a BSLA degree and over 20 years of experience but by choice and due to complications and financial constraints no license so i can’t call myself a ‘Landscape Architect’ – big deal. 95% of my work is residential and has never been an issue with my clients. I do landscape design plain and simple. If i need an engineer, horticulturalist or wetland specialist i call one in. The ASLA has made the practice laws and licensing a divisive issue and the system and process is archaic and comes across as elitist. I paid my money for the ‘ASLA’ after my name and for what? I’ve never gotten a job from it. I love what i do but i think the ASLA has adopted a very narrow view and need to remove the blinders.
Interesting that The Dirt mentions Dan Kiley and then puts down groundskeepers. Kiley’s Tampa garden was almost lost (after only 16 years) from inexpert maintenance and, arguably, poor plant selection in the first place. During design and installation, he had failed to value the knowledge and experience of good horticulturalists and groundskeepers. (He, and his clients, also failed to consider the features of good urban plazas that “Holly” Whyte — a journalist — demonstrated in the 1970s. See http://www.asla.org/lamag/lam04/April/feature3.html.)
I remember taking a class at GW’s landscape design program in which the landscape architecture professor admitted that he’d only had one semester on plants. I took 5 semesters to get my certificate — from an amazing urban forester (horticulturalist).
This is not to trade tit for tat. The skills of many kinds of professionals are necessary to design and build gardens that really serve the public or the private client. Thanks for this thoughtful essay.
While I’m not keen on the current LARE process, to say that landscape architects are/can perform the same functions of a “world class horticulturist, gardener, groundskeeper or garden designer”, is underselling the profession.
Contemporary landscape architecture is constructing infrastructure, artificial ecosystems, wasteland reclamation, so certainly a minimal level of competence in these complex systems is and should be required.
This by no means belittles other professions that experience some parallels to landscape architecture, but they are not the same, so why compare them? A gardener gardens, a groundskeeper keeps the ground. Walter Hood is not a licensed landscape architect, but his work has clearly earned respect from the profession, and ASLA.
I will agree, that there should be no prerequisites for taking the exam.
Adam — I think you might have misunderstood my point….the impression that I got from that article that this is in response to is that many LA’s think that the training and practice that is required to become great at the LA profession is somehow more important/ more difficult/ or generally superior than that of other related professions. I wasn’t in any way diminishing (in fact, quite the opposite) and I don’t think that LA’s can necessarily perform the functions of horticulturists, gardeners, groundskeepers, or garden designers….which is precisely the reason I wrote this — it is because the original article (which was written by an LA) was diminishing these professions and displaying a belief that somehow the practice of Landscape Architecture is above all others. My point is merely that one set of credentials is not inherently better an another — it is a team that often makes great exterior design.
I couldn’t agree more….on most of your points. I do agree with A.Anderson’s response. There is a technical level to LA training that is quite rigorous, but university’s often fall short in conveying plant knowledge and irrigation specifications. The metrics necessary to do grading and drainage are daunting as well. That noted, there certainly is a snooty side to ASLA. I know this well, having put together and sponsored a keynote address with the organization in the 90’s and the recent licensure rift doesn’t bode well for our green-industry as a whole. The fact is, there are a lot of hack landscape designers out there – landscape architects as well, truth be told, and licensure is one, imperfect way to separate the levels of professionalism. I have me stunningly talented APLD members and ASLA members that don’t know their Asplenium from a hole-in-the-ground , and vice-versa. All that said, there was a local kerfuffle here (http://classicnursery.blogspot.com/2009/05/walp-vs-wsnla-apld-vs-wasla.html) a few years ago that I blogged about on my website a few years back.
Best wishes to you …and keep up the great webwork. I have you bookmarked!
It has been a tough economy in the landscape world. I personally believe planting design is an art as well as a science. We need more artists and scientists doing what we do to create beauty and sustainable vision for us all. The greatest landscape designers and architects didn’t just create their vision without a plan for exceptional materials and a list of great installers, who can make their visions shine thru and thru. Our forgotten heroes, maintenance teams, as without them, the design was only a just memory, like a painting on a wall.
As a grower, freedom for skilled artisans to practice their talent by using plant materials along with education, schooling or hands-on training, only helps aid the process of creating beauty that is safe, fun, and sustainable. I am so pleased that Monrovia is the Platinum sponsor of APLD, active with various chapters of ASLA as well as being a national corporate member, and we are looking beyond just the landscape community to encourage more developers, government decision makers, resorts, home builders and planners to want to use more plants.
We do need to unite ourselves as as an industry to find more fulfilling work, and I have been fairly successful uniting many landscape groups state-by-state in various ways thanks to input from a Monrovia appointed panel of California landscape designers, design & build, and landscape architects. Your blog was a reminder to how significant it has been for me professionally to share the love of plants with both groups in the same room or a bus for that matter, and then hearing about new collaborative projects, networks, and finally, open communication between professionals, no matter what letters may be at the end of their names.
Thanks for this rant, sometimes I feel the same way. I think the LA profession really suffers by locking out any mid-career professionals seeking licensure–if a designer comes to the profession through any other avenue than the traditional one, the internship requirement effectively slams the door on licensure, even if there is ample equivalent professional experience. LA’s are by nature professionals who cross a lot of boundaries and draw from different backgrounds, it seems very backward not to provide an alternative.
I agree with all of your comments on the politics of landscape design. It’s a mess for residential Landscape Designers and needs to be fixed.
Although I agree with 99 per cent of your counter-rant. I do think safety issues should be more important to landscape designers and feel you are unnecessarily dismissive in your treatment of this important aspect of what any landscape professional does ASLA, APLD, designer, contractor, etc. You say, ‘It is a rare landscape project that carries this kind of life and death ramifications.’ Yes, this is true – safety in your own backyard is often not very dramatic, as your statement implies, but a poorly designed outdoor space can easily become a repeatedly unpleasant experience for homeowners and guests that can quickly ruin a day or an evening.
Something these accredited programs do teach quite sucessfully is the subtle way landscape design can make moving through an outdoor space a seamless immersion in the beauty of the space and less about constantly watching your step due to thoughtless or uneducated ‘design’ decisions.
In just the past year, I have seen a downright dangerous steep, slippery concrete, ramp-like path down a steep hill, stair treads that step up with uneven riser heights, a pool edge just a few feet from a back door, a deck that cut diagonally across at a strange angle with no visual cue that there was a grade change causing even the homeowner to trip over the edge while I watched!
On behalf of our clients who do not often think about these details, Landscape Designers should be concerned with and educated on safety and the psychological aspects of navigating space and that is something these programs you dismiss do quite efficiently. In the program I went to, this was not only my favorite part of the program but also radically changed the way I experience other people landscapes. As Martha would say…it’s a good thing.
Let’s be sure we’re talking apples to apples in regard to the above post. The garden nightmare described was clearly not built to code. Residential construction code is constantly expanding, particularly in regard to earth shaping, water conservation, stormwater management, etc. Even on the tiniest urban lot, the condition described above would be regulated in most municipalities by residential code, regardless of the licensure status of the designer, contractor or even homeowner.
In California, any person can legally design and get permitted for a two-story home of wood-frame construction, including construction details, foundation, basement, garage, and appurtenant structures. But that same person may not design the arbor outside of that home unless they hold a Landscape Architects License, or are exempt as a Licensed Landscape Contractor, Architect, Engineer, or Homeowner.