On the Shelf: Book Reviews

LASN Editor Stephen Kelly

Author: Heather Venhaus, BLA, Landscape Architecture, Texas A&M University. Foreword by Herbert Dreiseitl, founder of the multidisciplinary firm Atelier Dreiseitl

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2012, 160 pages, paperback

“Going green" is certainly de rigueur today. This book advocates for a regenerative design in which built landscapes sustain and restore ecological functions. But, as the author points out, design alone cannot ensure a sustainable site. Even though a project team works diligently to minimize resource consumption, applies stormwater management practices, amends soils and addresses other sustainable practices, after some time their sustainable site may no longer function as intended. This is often because of a lack of performance monitoring, or misguided or omitted operations and maintenance procedures, says the author.

Other reasons sustainably designed sites go awry are budget restraints; a belief that such landscapes can take care of themselves; lack of individuals taking ownership of the site or seeing themselves as stewards of the land; or just general ignorance or apathy toward the concept of sustainability.

This book aims at assisting designers in identifying and incorporating sustainable practices that have the greatest positive impact on a project and the community. It uses photographs, sketches and case studies to comprehensively look at successful green landscapes. It illustrates how sustainable practices are relevant and applicable to projects of any size or budget; demonstrates how built environments can protect and restore ecosystems; explains the multiple and far-reaching benefits that sustainable design solutions provide; and assists project teams in fulfilling credit requirements of green building assessment tools (LEED, BREEAM, or SITES).

With attention to air pollution, urban flooding and water pollution, water shortages, invasive species and loss of biodiversity and guidance on how to meet these challenges, this book is a practical design manual for sustainable alternatives to small-scale site and residential landscape design.

The World of Trees

by Hugh Johnson, 400 pages, hardbound

University of California Press, 2010 edition, first published in Great Britain (1973) by Octopus Publishing Group. Preface by Thomas Pakenham

At the LASN offices in Tustin, Calif., I was noticing the incredible amount of seedpod debris littering the sidewalk on both sides of the street that curves around our business park. The fallen seedpods were trifurcated, brown, and quite hard. The red capsule-like seeds, previously housed inside the pods, were strewn and smashed into the sidewalks. What a mess! Why would the city plant rows of these trees on the sidewalks? Did the city want to keep maintenance crews busy?

Not knowing this tree variety, I began a web search, expecting to easily identify the tree within a few moments because of its distinctive seedpods and the curious shape of its leaves. Failing to find the tree’s identity after what seemed a protracted time, I had to turn to more urgent work. On occasion, though, after a deadline was met, I would start to look again, figuring it just couldn’t be that hard to find. But it was. I even looked at exhaustive lists of tree species, clicking on link after link of families of trees that I thought might include our street trees. No luck.

Then I remembered a handsome tree tome that had been mailed to us about a year ago. I recalled leafing through it and finding it quite thorough, a kind of “everything you ever wanted to know about trees but were to embarrassed to ask.” I found the weighty book, The World of Trees by Hugh Johnson, on a nearby table and began flipping through the 55 tree species listed under???(R)???AE'?N????e'?N,A+ “Broadleaves.”

Eureka! It only took a few minutes of skimming the images to find the distinctive leaf shape of “our” tree: variegated Pittosporum tenuifolium, “one of the prettiest and most popular "?(R)? of the evergreen relations of the witch hazel family,” I read.

Thank you, The World of Trees! You are a noble and useful compilation, or as author Hugh Johnson quotes Charles Darwin in his introduction: “A traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.” This tree has certainly “embellished” our sidewalks.

The publisher doesn’t exaggerate when it asserts this book is “an unparalleled guide to more than 600 of the world's major forest and garden trees.” The author’s purpose is much more personal: “My aim was to bring trees into focus for everybody "?(R)? [a] personal account of a writer who found in trees a new point of contact with creation, a source of wonder and satisfaction which has the inestimable advantage of growing almost everywhere.”

Thank you, Hugh Johnson, for this beautiful and resourceful book.