From October1, 1977 to June 30, 1986, Edward Harrison Able witnessed great changes in both the association he worked for and the industry it supports. Landscape Architect & Specifier News recently spoke with the American Society of Landscape Architect’s most recent executive vice president.

LASN: How is the landscape architecture different now compared to when you were first involved with the industry nine years ago?

ABLE: For one thing, the size has been increasing by 50 percent every decade in terms of the number of practicing professionals. And most of this can be attributed to the graduates from the accredited programs. One of the most significant changes was the number of architecture, engineering, planning and multi-disciplinary firms that began their own landscape architecture divisions, sizable in house staff divisions. Firms have found it profitable to do this. This in turn has produced a tremendous demand for landscape architecture. As a consequence, at this point in time, there’s full employment in landscape architecture and, in fact, there’s a shortage of landscape architects in most parts of the country.

There’s a shortage in enrollment of students, which parallels a drop in available students in the general population. Ours has not been as marked as some of the other college divisions, but we do need to be graduating a great deal more students than we are. There needs to be more college degree granting programs offered. There’s about 50-60 accredited by ASLA, which is the specialized accrediting agency operating under the authority of the Department of Education.

LASN: That’s a challenge. How has the ASLA changed to meet some of these industry demands?

ABLE: For one thing, it became an organization with enough resources to really do what needed to be done for the profession, or to begin to do it. Between 1978 and 1986, our membership went from 3,000 to 8,500, the budget grew from $430,000 a year to $3.8 million a year and the staff grew from six to 36. It became a very effective organization in terms of the programs and services that it provides directly to the profession.

LASN: How were you involved in the programs and services? What did you do?

ABLE: Oh, you don’t have a magazine big enough! I was the first professional association manager that they ever had and my role was to help the leadership understand the business realities and the management strategies available. Also, I needed to show how to produce an organization that would draw the support of the profession. The ASLA back in those days did have some bad press out on the streets, people just didn’t think very highly of the organization.

I did everything from developing really worth while education programs, expanding the annual meetings, (when I came aboard, only about 600 to 700 people came to the meetings a year, by the time I left, the annual meetings were drawing 2,000 to 2,500) to producing activities and programs that really met the need. First, we had to find out what those needs were and then develop the programs that met those needs. Obviously there’s a lot of formalized surveying that you can do, but the key that I found for both myself in making those recommendations, and the leadership in acting on those recommendations, was really getting out of Washington and out of listening to just the Board. We needed to get out and listen to the broad based membership, spending a lot of time on the road, visiting local meetings, or meeting with them individually on any and every opportunity.

Coming from out of the industry, (Able has been a professional manager of a non-profit organization since 1971) I did not have any preconceived ideas of what landscape architects wanted, and I think that was an asset. You need to really be able to know what the constituency needs and wants so that you can make hard, objective business decisions for the good of the organization, not based on emotions, whim or fancy.

LASN: How do you view the future for the industry?

ABLE: I view the future as extremely bright. My view of the profession is that it has skills, knowledge and information that can be very important in addressing so many of the issues that face society today. The key to whether or not landscape architects achieve that potential role is dependent on their individual initiative to get off their drawing boards and involve themselves in the world around them. They sometimes tend to become too isolated from the world and it’s understandable because of the nature of the day-to-day business pressures upon them. But a certain percentage of the business is very extroverted and they’re the ones who tend to excel in being influential in the world around them, whether it’s on a local, state or national level. But they need to get out and be involved in more than just the business life, get out into the community and develop political, social and human skills that will help them to interact effectively with people out of the business.

Take the licensing issue with the AIA. Now there’s a wonderful example of what landscape architects can do collectively when they set their mind to it. I’m very proud of the outcome of that situation. I mean here was little ASLA battling the Goliath – AIA has a membership of almost 50,000 and they have a budget that’s six times that of ASLA. What happened here was that landscape architects around the country got out and wrote letters, talked to their colleagues and got those people to write letters, putting a tremendous amount of pressure from a broad base, nationwide, to force the AIA leadership to change their position.