Oh yes, I remember it well. I ain't doin' that no mo'.

Well, golly gee......I hardly know how to respond to this. Maybe the guy was just having a bad day. Or venting a few bad experiences. Legitimate cases can be made in either direction. You don't want me to even start on major malfunctions created by a few installation contractors I've had the misfortune to work with. The more hands in the pie, the stickier the situation becomes.

It is always a pleasant surprise to have a project team that has the client's satisfaction in mind, and where the team works smoothly together to make the design and installation as good as it can be. It doesn't always happen, but I like doing continued work with a team that does work well together.

I think we have all run into landscape designers (include LA's as a sub set of LD's) who spec'd plants that were very difficult to get or "border line" as for survivability. Just as we have run into installers who unload plants by tipping up the bed on the dump truck, we run into engineers who will force you to deal with a grade that you can't change because it was more convenient to run a drainage pipe across the middle of the site, and architects who design the side entry garage 24' from the property line.

One of the projects that we did in my senior year at the U of Idaho was to critique an existing landscape. I chose a plaza area adjacent to the library on campus that had recently been completed. It was not an "I like this" and "I don't like that" qualitative opinion type critique. It was more of an investigation. The best thing was that I had access to everyone involved.

I met with the Capital Improvements manager of the U, and gues what his degree was and where he got it (LA, U Idaho). He spent a good hour or more with me after he put together the history of the project and gave me lots of copies of plans, memos from meetings, etc,...

One of the LAs who worked on the design went to school with me about 12 years before, so I had access to another perspective there. Then another frieng of mine worked for the U of I as a project manager and took photo documentation throughout the entire project.

To make an even longer story short, there were so many twists and turns in the funding, design, physical discoveries during construction, .... that the project was so degraded from its original intent that it looked like a concrete parking with very odd grade changes by the time it was done. At the beginning you asked yourself "who's the moron who designed this" and in the end you found out that in a project such as this, with so many different agendas, some political - some practical - some changing as the project moved forward, that a lot of the time the design is really owned by no one once it is complete.

It started as a beautiful concept campus plaza by a Portland LA firm. It had a lot of ammenities and it was beautiful. They did not have the funding to do that particular project. They hired a local LA who did a much more affordable design which was also quite nice. The project did not go forward because funding got reduced. The university put together its own team to adjust the second LAs plan to make it more affordable. Then the fire department kicked in that they needed certain apparatus to be able to enter the site and turn around in it, so they adjusted the plan to take that into consideration. Meanwhile the reconstruction of the library is complete and they need to finish the plaza up to keep the campus functioning. Then they find that the very recent and very expensive fiber optic cluster ran through the site very close to the surface limiting excavation after the first half of it was constructed with the belief that the whole thing could be at a similar grade. But, they had to finish it off. Finish it they did and it was not pretty.

So do we blame LA #1, LA #2, the funding, the poor records or research that left out the fiber optic cables, the fire department, the slowness of campus administration that made it a last minute project, or whom?

My opinion is that the mistake was to continue to water down the original plan rather than starting over with all of the new criteria that needed to be met.

Its no different in smaller planting projects. Someone does not want to pay for design details and then someone else thinks the designer is not thorough. Someone deletes the bed around the rock cluster and the designer does not understand maintenance. Someone begs the designer to plant some funky variety he saw in Maui, so the designer does not know plants.

We all have our prejudices. Mine is building architects.

Good grief. Another doofus taking his own (selective) anecdotal experiences and generalizing them to an entire population. It's called "prejudice."

Criminitly.

Good thing I wasn't there. I'd have called him on it. But then, I've gotten cranky and intolerant of such nonsense since "the change."

Maybe they should cut his "gadget budget". Since they don't want to have things to trim around, they won't need the double reciprocating super extension string trimmer with turbo two-stroke and chrome exhaust stack.

Truthfully, no matter which one of these roles you play there is validity every where. There are designers who are great with site layout and bad with plant choices or just the oposite. There are maintenance people who can not see the value of some of the things that require a little more effort to maintain and designers who recklessly introduce high maintenance items that might not out weigh the value of the extra maintenance. There are designers who dismiss functionality in favor of an artistic statement and those who are so bent on function that there is little aesthetic pleasure to be gained from it.

The real measure is not what each who is looking from his own perspective, but what the stated goals and objectives of the project. If the design is to get a fire truck to fit through a plaza and the fire truck fits, it is a success. If the goal has other objectives such as a place for students to mix and mingle between classes, to be aesthetically pleasing, control pedestrian circulation, and fit into the greater spce that it is within in a manner that lives up to the history and tradition of that space, it might be a complete flop.

Adding another layer to Laag's comments- politics. On a large project, politics are huge. My former job put me in a position to dictate design changes and requirements or I would have to stall the project. Municipal ordinances can sometimes be more harmful than helpful. Our City required a mix of 60/40 on the trees (60% deciduous and 40% evergreen). By trying to regulate design through ordinances- it created some real problems. I was constantly bombarded with designs that had evergreen trees in a 10' space between a block wall and a commercial building or other narrow landscape strips. Since designers/ LA's had to meet the ratio set by the ordinance, it created a lot of huge design errors that others might look at and say 'what was that person thinking?'

I was usually able to require them to change out the 'Colorado Blue Spruce' to a 'Iseli Fastigiata' Blue Spruce or in most cases change the location of the tree. This did not make a lot of people happy, esp. those concerned with budget since the more specialized plant materials are more expensive and harder to come by. In a commercial landscape, they really don't care what it will look like and how it will function long term. The goal is to have it look good right out of the gate. If stuff dies or has to be removed over time- most often that's seen as a bonus because it will require less maintenance. They rarely replace anything unless forced to by the city or a tenant (and most tenants don't want a tree blocking their signs). Most developers are unconcerned about the long term impact so long as the short term goal is met.

So, in this little game of 'confess your bias' I will say that mine is against developers and real estate people- the 'get rich quick no matter what it takes' types.

You've all given us some great in depth insight into the complexities of design and build work. I suppose everyone in the business has a war story or two to relate.

laag - you have great points about how the complicated building process can screw up the original design intent and how things may get lost in translation. I agree that if things get so out of hand the whole project must get a new assessment but this never seems to happen due to money.

I can just picture that "double reciprocating super extension string trimmer with turbo two-stroke and chrome exhaust stack" Hey - anyone would LOVE one of those! LOL.

gardengal - yeah, installers are capable of major malfunctions too - which calls for competent supervision on site and coordination of schedules so the designer can be onsite when the material is delivered and planted. A sticky pie indeed.

bahia - you are fortunate to have a team you trust to work with so the process can be as seamless as you imagined it to be in the design phase.

bindersbee - you are so right about politics in municipal projects. I forgot my original post referred to a municipal project which I suppose is the most difficult of all to coordinate between all parties involved. When I started this thread I never meant to pit one party against another - or to have a bias - because like many of you have said, there are problems that arise on a major project and complications are expected.

mjsee - believe me, I was annoyed with this guy. The title of his speech was "You design it, I'll refine it and make it work." How pretentious is that??? When he said that LA programs do not teach Plant Materials classes I was burning up. I guess it was too early in the morning for me to burst out with a diatribe but it was bulls--t. Oh yeah girl, cranky and intolerant is my MO - change or not!