According to Wikipedia, the idiom "God is in the details" expresses the idea that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; i.e. details are important. And with this phrase, I couldn't agree more.
Patterns fascinate me; whether
naturally occurring, mathematically based, or both. In professional
practice I’ve had to come up with patterns to show the relationship between
different landscape elements such as different varieties in a rose garden
planting, or different sizes of stone in a hardscape design. A successful
pattern creates beauty and balance, with a degree of randomness.
Recently, I worked on a large-scale screen planting, made up
of three different varieties of Pine trees; Loblolly (Pinus taeda), Virginia (Pinus
virginiana), and Shortleaf Pines (Pinus
echinata). The three varieties were chosen for visual interest as well as
insurance against environmental problems (e.g. a pine beetle that prefers Pinus x).
The nearly thousand pine tree saplings were obtained from
the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry. With a 30% expected
mortality rate, the area forester recommended a plant spacing of no less than
6’ on center and a planting ratio of 2:1:1 Loblolly, Virginia, and Shortleaf,
respectively.
This adds up to a lovely grid of trees reminiscent of a
Christmas tree farm. However, the client wanted a more natural and less
industrial-looking screen planting. The solution: a pattern that could be
replicated throughout the specified area to create variable spacing and
arrangement of the three species.
The design began with 6’, 7’, and 8’ diameter circles drawn
randomly, overlapping ever-so slightly. Then 7’ circles were drawn over each
center point creating an arbitrary plan of overlapping circles and voids. A
30’x30’ section was extracted and developed into a color-coded plan that would
be easy to flag, rotate, and replicate in the field.
As with a lot of planting plans, some adjustments had to be made on site due to topography, existing trees, and with care to avoid any spacing closer than the 6’ minimum. Thus exemplifies either how complicated a simple tree planting can be made by a Landscape Architect or as I believe the true importance of detail.
