Clean As You Go

Slogans move design principles forward. Doug Sutton, owner of San Juan Mountain Nursery in Durango, Colorado regularly reminded me, Clean as you go. As often as not, I'd look behind me and see mud or dirt ground into the sidewalk I had been using all day. Life is messy. I cannot always clean as I go. However, as with many good ideas, I find myself applying this useful principle in all areas of my life, not only planning and designing sustainable landscape.

Packing boxes, preparing to move into a different place, the clean as you go principle is to time management. Rather than dropping pieces of tape, cardboard and the like on this hardwood floor they go into a discard pile or the waste/recycle bin avoiding a future time-consuming chore of scraping tape and picking-up later. By investing wisely in time as we go, time accumulates in a virtual account immediately available when it is time to relax.

Clean as you go also reminds us to apologize when wrong.

To err is human, to forgive divine

Alexander Pope

We all make mistakes, especially interacting with the natural world. Traveling around Asia can reveal how Westerners overvalue and defend our small self. There have been innumerable times when I refused to admit fault nor failure. Rather, I ran and hid or fought back with the vigor of a crusader - knowing I had made a mistake. And wanting secretly to correct, set things right. In such events I would only apologize if caught. Now I find abundant freedom in regularly cleaning up relationships, personal and business, with honest and prompt communication. 

A stitch in time saves nine. If I am running late on an appointment I always feel embarrassed calling on the road, letting them know an estimated time of arrival, eta. However, I know I appreciate being allowed the dignity of such a call so I can decide what to do with the additional time before the meeting. It takes courage to admit fault, to apologize, to set things right and clean as you go.

Design is Driven by Constraint

One of our last sessions, forever memorable, an Ex-Con stood breathless and dumbfounded in disbelief. No slogans? It was, after all, Don Walker's first year running The Conway School without founder Walt Cudnohufsky pitching his infamous design slogans. After a brief pause to collect and compose, timeless design idioms began pouring out one after another into our sponging minds. From that chilly Spring morning in the Conway sugarhouse, a seeming lifetime of sustainable landscape planning and designing ago, these principles and innumerable others continue to prove useful tools for living, as well as for planning and designing sustainably. 

One, design is driven by constraint, reminds me when life is difficult an opportunity to innovate using other design tools beckons. Say that my friend wants to go to a movie and I need exercise. Hmm, if design is driven by constraint then inherent in the problem is a solution. By parking some distance away or walking from home/work to the theater we both get our needs met.

The most difficult design is done in thin air on a blank slate. Even before site analysis begins, every landscape plan and design begins with a base map drawn to scale with: a scale, contour lines, a north arrow, significant existing natural and built features, and context.

 

Now digital layers or thin sheets of trace paper can overlay the base map to analyze the site's constraints. Constraints - winter and summer sun/shade, views in/out, vehicular and pedestrian circulation, vegetation and wildlife, drainage, microclimate, wildfire, summer/winter wind, snow - drive design.