Size There are several guidelines for graphically portraying plants in a preliminary design. First, all plant materials should be drawn in the plan as mature or near-mature plants. This is especially true of shrubs and small trees. Large trees can be drawn at 50 percent to 100 percent mature size because they take many years to reach full growth. This requires the designer to be familiar with plants and their mature sizes. If this guideline is followed, the installation of immature nursery-stock plant materials will at first appear spotty because there will be space between individual plants. However, with time and growth, the plants will fill in to create a continuous mass (Figure 11—55). When presenting preliminary plans to clients, it is important to tell them that the plant arrangement portrayed may take several years or more to achieve.
Shrub Masses On preliminary designs, it is typical to represent shrubs as masses without distinguishing the individual plants within these masses. The drawing of individual plants within a mass is usually reserved for the master plan. Figure 11—80 shows the graphic differences for showing plant materials in a functional diagram, preliminary design, and master plan of a selected portion of a site. The diagram is the most generalized, and the master plan is the most detailed. The detail in the preliminary design is between these other two types of drawings.
