Preserve your community's landscapes
15 May, 2009 By: Jamie J. Gooch LDB SolutionsMay is National Preservation Month, which is sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Places. The theme of this year's celebration is "This Place Matters!" It's a broad theme that can be applied equally well to historic homesteads and new green spaces. It's also great opportunity for you to share the value of landscaping with your community.
Helping your community realize how important professional landscaping is to its environment, aesthetics and culture helps raise awareness of your company and the valuable services you provide. From maintaining significant trees and plants to creating period-accurate landscapes that match the architecture of homes, landscape design-build professionals are a critical part of the cultural landscape preservation picture.
Cultural landscapes aren't always centered around a 19th century manor house or a historic courthouse. Many types of landscapes qualify. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): "Cultural landscapes represent the combined works of nature and of man and are illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment of successive social, economic and cultural forces, both external and internal."
Here are just a few ways to use National Preservation Month to promote your landscaping services:
- Call attention to the historic value of native plants, and the benefits many of them have to modern society. Because native plants have adapted to local conditions over centuries, they often require fewer inputs and less maintenance.
- Tell your story by explaining how your company can preserve, rehabilitate, restore or reconstruct period-specific landscapes to match your clients' homes, or historic homes they'd like to imitate.
- Show how your company can work around existing landscape features that should be preserved, such as mature specimen trees or rare period design elements, and how advanced planning can create landscape designs that never have that "just installed" look.
- Point out significant landscapes that are at risk in your community and explain how your company can work with owners to save them.
- Explain how landscaping materials, such as old stones and walls, can be reused in new landscape designs for an instant classic look.
- Market maintenance services that keep your community's landscapes in good repair.
There are a number of organizations dedicated to preserving our nation's significant landscapes. Use the expertise, marketing materials and inspiration they provide to enhance your community and your business:
Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation
The Cultural Landscape Foundation
National Trust for Historic Places
National Preservation Institute
National Center for Preservation Technology and Training
California Garden & Landscape History Society
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