Snow fencing - $200. Chain link - $750. Saving another mature tree - priceless.
Mischievousness? Sociopathic lack of conscience? Ignorance? Unbelievable? Perhaps all the above reflect a recurring abuse of direction and care associated with tree protection measures on our building sites. Arguably analogous to storing ones kitchen-ware in a baby's crib, or setting up extending a "slip n' slide" across the neighbours tulip bed, battling the abuses of contractor 'oversight' is a never-ending few of us will ever have to endure.
It is comical in its predictability; at the same time shocking in the apparent and conditioned lack of regard. But, I believe it fair to say that as landscape architects it is all too common for us to reprimand contractors for their flagrant abuse of tree protection measures. Met with raised eyebrows, head scratches, and "who me?" looks, it is never surprising how egregious their mistakes are. Arguably, they are not mistakes but willful acts of disregard for the embodied energy and the incredible value such 'objects' contain. Might we ever escape the human learned cognitive categorization of what landscape is? Perhaps it will be only then that we might find ourselves pausing to question a current lack of understanding of what "living architecture" provides us.
To understand this behaviour and lack of integrity for following legal plans and conditions of permits, we need not look much further than the our own cognitive conditioning of what "landscape" is; more importantly, recognizing an obvious and persistent fallibility in understanding the rationale or purpose behind our intentions, as designers and stewards of the earth, to preserve the inherent value living amongst us and perpetuate its existence and holistic productivity into the future for generations.
Landscape, historically documented and culturally perpetuated through visual art, paintings, and photography may be most profoundly understood and learned as cognitive - 'scape - schemas through the written word. More recently in modern times, it is the "art of gardening", commercialized by the likes of Home Depot, that continues to erode a much broader understanding of what landscape is and has to offer us. Ranging in purpose from nutrition, healing, recreation, and spatial (aesthetic) design, landscape presents a more human function in the global mitigation of climate.
The process of categorization and human cognition is undoubtedly steeped in evolutionary necessity for survival. It is the process in which our experiences are recognised and understood; fundamental in all kinds of interaction with our environment. Environmental psychology presents us with convincing evidence and correlation between commercialization and environmental degradation. As our society becomes more disposable, so too does our lack of respect for the living environment. It is not a far stretch of the imagination that landscape has become as interchangeable as an evening dress - mere "green" drapery.
One need not question the laudable goal of seeking to reduce the immensity of embodied energy within our built environment. Perhaps not fully grasping the significant realities of the components of energy usage - the operating and the embodied - it is understood that it is necessary to comprehensively address the vast amount of energy consumed by buildings. Why then, is it such a challenge to evoke that same sense of necessity with our 'living' built environment? Trees require very little operating energy and present relatively low embodied energy. Specifically mature and established trees provide not only significant aesthetic value, but environmental and human value in their ability to clean and store carbon. Harvested for short duration uses, in the construction of buildings or as temporary 'landscape' aesthetic with a relatively short service life, the carbon dioxide may soon be returned to the atmosphere with less sustained environmental benefit.
So, if reusing materials, or even reusing entire buildings by retrofitting them, reduces the total amount of embodied energy even more than using recycled materials, how can we convince the builders of our environments to apply this same logic and purpose to preserving our existing, living materials?
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