IMPORTANCE OF PLANTS AS LANDSCAPE ELEMENTS

Before you finish planning your building landscape, you need to read this; the importance of plants in your building, plants are not just planted because you want the building to look gracefully beautiful but because a building is incomplete until plants are added as landscape elements due to their natural




roles played in creating a well and suitable built environment. Here are some uses of plants in building that make plants integral part of building landscape.

1.       Space articulation

2.       Screening

3.       Privacy control

4.       Progressive realization of an object, activities or events.

1.       Space Articulation

This deal with the use of plants in room making, plants are not only meant for adorning buildings alone, they can also be used in making room or demarcating a space. When they are planted in an orderly and well organized manner, they can be used to articulate spaces both externally and internally. Examples of plants commonly used for these purposes are hedges, shrubs e.t.c

2.       Screening.

Screening can be defined as the techniques of visually locking out unsightly views with something graceful and harmonious or at least less offensive. It is a technique of providing visual control in the landscape through view direction and negation of ugliness by a simple means of hiding it e.g. hiding a dustbin or junk area. In screening, plants are seen as very effective landscape elements. Using plants for screening connotes isolation of unappealing areas from appealing and useful areas and confinement and concealment of the unwanted while at the same time allow free access to the remainder of the landscape.

There are 2 main types of screening plants are used for,

A.      Positive screening, that involves enhancing the environment and

B.      Negative screening used to block ugly and unwanted surroundings from pleasing and wanted view.

Essentially, our contemporary environment consists of areas, activities and objects we would rather not see. The technique of screening hides this part of the environment to make them less objectionable and make the total environment more acceptable. Area we commonly need plants to screen includes construction activities, storage areas, parking lots, industrial facilities, junk yard, service areas, and cemeteries, outdoor air conditioning units, electrical transformer yards, power facilities e.t.c.

3.       Privacy control as the name implies mean the use of plants in creating enclosure in order to define a private area from a public area

4.       Progressive realization of an object

These involves the use of plants for the following purposes

A.      Aesthetics - This has to do with using plants for adornment, decoration and beautification of buildings and to complement other landscape elements in blending with the environment graciously

B.      Tantalization - this is an art of using plants as attractive and captivating elements in the landscape. This makes use of the aromatic odor of plants. Any plant with nice scents can be used for purpose of adornment.

C.      Dust filtration - plants can be used to prevent the spread of dust in a place where stones are been grinded or dusty industrial area. Flowers, shrubs and trees with broad leaves are very effective for this purpose

D.      Acoustic Control - this is the process of using plants in controlling noise or in reducing noise.

E.       Erosion control - Plants can also be used to control erosion when they are planted in a well organized way. Tree planting is of immense importance in erosion control.

F.       Buffer zone - Plants can be used to separate hazardous zone from comfort zone. The buffer zone is usually made-up of greenbelt. Buffer zone is created as a zone between one activity and other e.g. industrial activities from residential activities.

All these aforementioned purposes of plants in the building are what make it an integral part of building landscape and an element that makes the landscape of any particular building harmonious and pleasing to the eyes.

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Categories: ARCHITECTURE, Green Architecture, Landscape architecture, Sustainability