Florida Landscape Aesthetics

12/5/2020

2 Comments

I don’t know what a Florida landscape should look like.

This idea has been bothering me. I can't shake it.

Is “should” even a useful way of thinking about a region’s landscape aesthetics?

Says who?

What’s the challenge? The challenge is that Florida (especially South Florida) has been sold as a tropical paradise. People come here expecting lush foliage, big flowers, bright colors - all year round.

Like any place that’s marketed mostly to tourists, it’s posited as an escape. A place where the rules are different, where you can discard reality and live out a fantasy. "Whatever you want, sir."

Landscape doesn’t work that way.

Southwest Florida isn’t a dream. Intervening with landscape is intervening with reality. And reality always offers resistance. Aesthetic decisions have physical consequences. Here are a few images that show our region’s evolved plant communities.

Maybe they offer a starting point for how we can design landscape better.

2 Comments

Bob Cook link

12/6/2020 01:49:24 am

Thank you Caleb for your observations.
In 1492,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue...
In 1514
Ponce deLeon found Florida Green.
Depending on the season and the climactic zone Florida native landscapes can be dormant, drab or lively but still mostly green. In the height of growing season the Everglades consist of just pines, cypress, cabbage and royal palms and grass as far as the eye can see. And, as some of your photos show, we don't have much topography but water is a major natural element.
And I think you are leading up to the fact that we have a fantastic growing environment for plants...wherever they come from. Isn't it strange that our state flower is the orange blossom, native to China?

Carole

3/11/2021 07:14:58 pm

Living in north FL I am so tired of new residents plants palm trees, which aren't native to the area but are now popping up in every sidewalk crack. The former Gov even planted them at every rest stop on the Interstate and at all the borders with other states.

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