This week I attended a two day workshop on measuring landscape performance by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. The workshop was focused on methods to quantify the benefits of a landscape. Our society is very focused on the cost of things so we might forget about the other values such as bird habitat, clean water, or having a peaceful place to spend time.
Even though this workshop was focused on larger landscapes like city parks we can use these same concepts in our backyards. When we plan landscape improvements instead of just thinking of features, like a pond, we need to think about benefits, like frog habitat and the sound of water. When we focus on the benefits of a landscape it's value is easier to understand.
The presenter, Barbara Deutsch, shared a website with us, landscapeperformance.org, with many useful tools to measure the value of a landscape. In the benefits toolkit there are many links to calculators to measure all sorts of things like how much stormwater your tree can absorb or the value of reusing landscape waste. There is also a case study section with a bunch of examples of amazing landscapes that have been installed and evaluated for their true benefit and value.
I hope we can use this information to design landscapes that are not just a collection of features or plants but landscapes with true value that make our lives and the world enriched.
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