Plant Technology – a useful concept in teaching Plant Design

Teaching landscape students how to design with plants has had either a plant ecology perspective or an aesthetic perspective, focusing on either habitat or on colours, textures and other architectural values. In this paper we introduce a third concept: plant technology in which we emphasize the sustainable plant design: design for fairly easy maintenance, and design that can last over time. We believe that a cautious use of all three concepts (plant ecology, aesthetic values and plant technology) during teaching courses will give the students a better understanding of what their future roles as plant designers will be and of the context they will be working in. According to the results of the course evaluations, our students believe that plant technology is a useful concept in learning plant design.