Landscape Architecture Resources

Published by the American Society of Landscape Architects, "The Dirt TM blog covers the latest news on the built and natural environments and features stories on landscape architecture."

The National Center for Appropriate Technology program that provides "information and technical assistance to farmers, ranchers, Extension agents, educators, and others involved in sustainable agriculture in the United States." Includes urban

The Buckminster Fuller Institute is dedicated to accelerating the development and deployment of solutions which radically advance human well being and the health of our planet's ecosystems. We aim to deeply influence the ascendance of a new generation of design-science pioneers who are leading the creation of an abundant and restorative world economy that benefits all humanity.

BuildingGreen brings the best research, thinking, and writing to you through many publications, including Environmental Building News, the GreenSpec directory of green products, and the BuildingGreen Suite of online tools.

The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, established in 1975, is a non-profit education, research, and demonstration organization specializing in life cycle planning and design. We undertake projects based on their potential contribution to site, regional and global sustainability and human health, and actively pursue collaborations with associate organizations, businesses and professional firms.

CSS advances concepts of sustainability through interdisciplinary research and education. CSS collaborates with diverse stakeholders to develop and apply life cycle based models and sustainability metrics for systems that meet societal needs. CSS promotes tools and knowledge that support the design, evaluation, and improvement of complex systems.

ESRA's "purpose is to advance and disseminate research, teaching, and practice toward improving an understanding of the relationships among people, their built environments, and natural eco-systems."

GSSD is a multi-dimensional knowledge networking system of public & private networks, based on an integrated framework and an evolving quality controlled, cross-referenced knowledge base. Designed in response to the increasing complexity of global realities, it supports knowledge management and meta-networking functions dedicated to improved decision-making and policy in the domain of “sustainable development” – at all levels and in all contexts. Powered by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)..

University of Washington's College of Forest Resources website "featuring research on perceptions and behaviors regarding nature in cities," including Urban Forestry and Human Benefits, Civics Ecology, and Green Cities: Good Health.

The Open Architecture Network is an online, open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design.

A sub-site of http://www.sustainable.org, this site explores issues concerning the growth of cities and urban sprawl.

Provided by the University of Minnesota, SULIS provides sustainable landscape information to the public and to the horticulture/landscape industry. By utilizing SULIS concepts, homeowners, business owners and related industry personnel will be able to create outdoor spaces that are functional, maintainable, environmentally sound, cost effective and aesthetically pleasing.

Administered by Green Business Certification, Inc., "SITES is is the most comprehensive system for developing sustainable landscapes. It is used by landscape architects, designers, engineers, architects, developers, policy-makers and others to align land development and management with innovative sustainable design."

Urban Ecology "is dedicated to developing harmony with urban planning and nature. ... It believes that cities should serve both people and nature. From the beginning, Urban Ecology has used urban planning, ecology, and public participation to help design and build healthier cities."

The USGBC mission is to "to transform the way buildings and communities are designed, built and operated, enabling an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy, and prosperous environment that improves the quality of life."

The United States Environmental Protection Agency's guide to sustainability programs based on region.

The American Community Gardening Association (ACGA) is a bi-national nonprofit membership organization of professionals, volunteers and supporters of community greening in urban and rural communities whose mission is to build community by increasing and enhancing community gardening and greening across the United States and Canada.

AmericanHort (formerly the American Nursery & Landscape Association and OFA—The Association of Horticultural Professionals) aspires to be "leading and unifying organization for the horticulture industry in order to cultivate successful businesses, and for our industry to enhance lives through the benefits of plants. ... Represents the entire horticulture industry, including breeders, greenhouse and nursery growers, retailers, distributors, interior and exterior landscapers, florists, students, educators, researchers, manufacturers, and all of those who are part of the industry market chain. It is the leading national association for the industry, and our size and scope makes AmericanHort the largest association for garden retailers in the world."

The American Public Gardens Association "is the leading professional organization for the field of public horticulture. We advance the field by encouraging best practices, offering educational and networking opportunities, and advocating on behalf of our members, our programs and public gardens worldwide. We work together with our members and others to strengthen and shape public horticulture, providing the tools and support industry professionals need to better serve the public while preserving and celebrating plants creatively and sustainably."

The Garden Conservancy's mission "is to save and share outstanding American gardens for the education and inspiration of the public."

The Gardens Trust (a merger of the former Garden History Society and Association of Gardens Trusts) is a U.K. charity that "brings together people from many backgrounds united by a love and concern for historic parks, gardens and designed landscapes and an interest in the factors that shaped them: the history of our garden heritage, the discovery and introduction of plants, garden archaeology and the relation of park and garden design to architecture, art, literature and society." ... Based in the United Kingdom, but has an international scope contains bibliographies, book reviews and a register of research in garden history.

From the United States Environmental Protection Agency, a guide to green landscaping, specifically with the use of native plants.

Japanese Gardening Organization "is a multinational, non-profit group with the goal of spreading the benefits of Japanese gardening for individuals, groups, communities, and society. Currently, this is addressed by the maintenance and development of educational resources for “japanesegardening.org” in fostering the knowledge, appreciation and application of Japanese gardening."

Bowdoin College website "is dedicated to the gardens of Japan, and primarily to the historic gardens of Kyoto and its environs, including Nara."
Though last updated in 2008, it remains a useful site.

Webpage of the first museum dedicated to garden history. Located in London, England the page has information on the museum's collection and information on garden history. ... "The Museum was set up in 1977 in order to rescue from demolition the abandoned ancient church of St Mary’s. The churchis the burial place of John Tradescant (c1570 – 1638), the first great gardener and plant-hunter in British history. His magnificent and enigmatic tomb is the centrepiece of a knot garden planted with the flowers which grew in his London garden four centuries ago."

A blog from award-wining garden and landscape history author, researcher, Edwinna von Baeyer.

WaverHill is "a 28-acre public garden and cultural center in the Bronx overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. Its mission is to celebrate the artistry and legacy of its gardens and landscapes, to preserve its magnificent views, and to explore human connections to the natural world through programs in horticulture, education and the arts."

Provided by the University of Minnesota, SULIS provides sustainable landscape information to the public and to the horticulture/landscape industry. By utilizing SULIS concepts, homeowners, business owners and related industry personnel will be able to create outdoor spaces that are functional, maintainable, environmentally sound, cost effective and aesthetically pleasing.

Rain gardens, green roofs, light pollution, and more!

ASHS are researchers, teachers, and extension educators from universities, government, and industries around world that promote and encourage "national and international interest in scientific research and education in all branches of horticulture."

The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is the oldest public arboretum in North America and one of the world's leading centers for the study of plants. This site provides and supports world-class research, horticulture, and education programs that foster the understanding, appreciation, and preservation of trees. ... LOTS of good things here - plant inventory database, plant image database, visual archives, and more.

Botanicus is a freely accessible portal to historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library.

The Conifer Society "promotes the use of conifers in the garden and landscape and educates the public about their care and preservation."

EUCARPIA is a non profit organization aiming at the promotion of scientific and technical co-operation in all fields of plant breeding in order to foster its further development.

HRI "directs, funds, promotes and communicates horticultural research, which increases the quality and value of plants, improves the productivity and profitability of the horticulture industry, and protects and enhances the environment.... It supports scientific research and students for the advancement of the horticultural industry. HRI was established by industry leaders on the premise that no one could better direct needed research to advance horticulture than the very people who work in it, day in and day out."

The International Society of Arboriculture "promotes the professional practice of arboriculture and fosters a greater worldwide awareness of the benefits of trees." The ISA Certified Arborists certification is voluntary program with six different credentials to certify criteria in training, knowledge, and experience.

Since 1955 the Lawn Institute has been the authority on turfgrass and latest research. Find here reports and articles, grant and scholarship information, and more.

SEB "is about people exploring the uses of, and our relationship with plants, cultures and our environment—plants and humane affairs. You might well call our research and educational efforts, the science of survival."

Rain gardens, green roofs, light pollution, and more!

"The PLANTS Database provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories."

Beyond Pesticides works "to lead the transition to a world free of toxic pesticides."

About pesticides, protecting health and the environment, pest control, pesticide regulation, pesticide ingredients and products, tools such as A-Z Index, Pesticide Chemical Search, Pesticide Product Label System, analytical methods, National Pesticide Information Center, and more!

NPIC provides objective, science-based information about pesticides and pesticide-related topics to enable people to make informed decisions about pesticides and their use. NPIC is a cooperative agreement between Oregon State University and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

NCAP "works to protect community and environmental health and inspire the use of ecologically sound solutions to reduce the use of pesticides."

The American Memory Project from the Library of Congress collections of images on Landscape and Architecture.

Artstor is a digital library of more than one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes. Includes classification Garden and Landscape.

Sponsored by the Bard Graduate Center through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Catena, the Digital Archive of Historic Gardens and Landscapes and its companion website, is envisioned as part of a larger, typologically organized archive of digital images with accompanying educational materials. The initial component of Catena is built around the villa, an important landscape type in garden history.

From UIUC, a collection of online images in several different collections has many maps and images of Illinois.

Over 200 large albumen prints from the 1860s and 1870s of American Western landscape. The locations and photographers include mammoth views of Yosemite Valley by Carleton E. Watkins and Charles L. Weed, the route of the Union Pacific Railroad through the Rocky Mountains by A.J. Russell, the Geographical surveys west of the one hundredth meridian (the Wheeler survey) by Timothy O'Sullivan and William Bell, and a collection of mammoth views by William Henry Jackson. [From Online Visual Resources for the Fine and Applied Arts LibGuide]

Consisting of approximately 11,000 images that document the architecture, landscape and urban planning of sites across the United States—with a particular emphasis on Chicago and its suburbs—and, to a lesser extent, internationally, The Historic Architecture and Landscape Image collection, or HALIC, contains mounted photographic prints, lantern slides (both black and white and hand-colored), and postcards dating from the 1860s to the 1970s. [From Online Visual Resources for the Fine and Applied Arts LibGuide]

A comprehensive guide to image resources from the UC Berkeley Library.

Images of art, history and culture.

A gallery of links to images of plants from around the world.

"Administered since 1933 through cooperative agreements with the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and the private sector, ongoing programs of the National Park Service have recorded America's built environment in multiformat surveys comprising more than 581,000 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 43,000 historic structures and sites dating from Pre-Columbian times to the twentieth century."

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

"The National Park Service Historic Photograph Collection is comprised of more than two million images which cover a wide variety of subjects: Park architecture, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Native American heritage, NPS personnel, roads and transportation, scenic views, and much more.There are nearly 2000 images from the Collection available online. The collections of several eminent National Park Service photographers, including Jack Boucher, Arno B. Cammerer, George A. Grant, and Abbie Rowe, are also included in the Collection." Images are searchable and browsable through a number of fields, and are very high quality. [From Online Visual Resources for the Fine and Applied Arts LibGuide]

From the Library of Congress, online collections of prints and photographs including landscape architecture areas.

A nonprofit organization that provides technical assistance, education, and research through programs in parks, plazas and central squares; buildings and civic architecture; transportation; and public markets. It has extensive photos and examples of successful projects and design criteria.

Images from the collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the world’s most extensive visual archive devoted to architecture.

A link to the home page of the Ricker Library at the University of Illinois and their suggested resources.

Digital image collections from the MIT Libraries.

The Archives contains "a collection of approximately 65,000 photographic images and records that document historic and contemporary gardens throughout the United States."

"This Library of Congress American Memory site features more than 2800 lantern slides representing the work of American landscape and architectural designers from 1850 to 1920."

"A partnership between the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT Libraries. ... Archnet is a globally-accessible, intellectual resource focused on architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation issues related to the Muslim world."

"Library of American Landscape History is the leading publisher of books that advance the study and practice of American landscape architecture–from gardens and parks to city plans. LALH books educate the public, motivating stewardship of significant places and the environment, and they inspire new designs that connect people with nature."

"The National Park Service is one of the United States' leading agencies for history and culture. In addition to preserving important historic sites within national park boundaries, the National Park Service works beyond those boundaries to ensure that everyone's history is saved. Whether you want to visit an iconic historical park, discover American stories, or find assistance to preserve the places that matter to you, we hope you discover something new about history during your visit."

"Library, Archives and Research Catalogs. ... Search over 9.2 million records, with 1,346,300 images, video and sound files from Smithsonian museums, archives, and libraries."

Urban Land Institute is "the oldest and largest network of cross-disciplinary real estate and land use experts in the world. ULI is its members. Through our members' dedication to the mission and their shared expertise, the Institute has been able to set standards of excellence in development practice."

Urban Parks Online is "dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities. Our pioneering Placemaking approach helps citizens transform their public spaces into vital places that highlight local assets, spur rejuvenation and serve common needs."