There is a large body of evidence suggesting that contact with nature in various different forms has a beneficial effect on human beings, physically, psychologically and socially. Most of this research is outside the scope of this chapter, as it does not relate exclusively to ecological plantings: in most cases it would be impossible to […]
Category: The Dynamic Landscape
Gender
Lyons’ study (1983) did not find gender to be significant. However, gender has been found to be very significant in studies of perception of safety in urban landscapes, with women being far more fearful than men (Valentine 1989; Madge 1997; Jorgensen et al. 2002). Given the connection between landscape preference and perception of safety referred […]
Familiarity
Research has also confirmed that residence or familiarity can have a significant affect on landscape preference. ‘Residence’ is really just another way of evaluating familiarity because living in a particular environment means that we become familiar with it. Broadly speaking, the findings suggest that familiarity increases preference (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989; Herzog et al. 2000). […]
The impact of personal factors
Education, income and occupation Although in the early 1970s research reported that environmental agendas were primarily supported by the middle or upper-middle class, this notion was rebutted by Buttel and Flinn (1978) who found that age and place of residence were better predictors of awareness of environmental problems and support for environmental programmes than education, […]
The impact of cultural factors
Rohde and Kendle (1994) describe the different views of human relationships with nature held by Dutch, French and Japanese people. The French view of nature is said to be characterised by a desire for order and control, whereas the Japanese are said to view humankind and nature as part of an integrated whole. Clearly, these […]
Cultural and personal responses to landscape
The existence of other factors differentiating landscape preference has been acknowledged for some time: factors relating to the individual as opposed to the landscape. Lyons (1983), for example, found that age, gender, place of residence and familiarity affected landscape preference. Further, she concluded that if variables such as age, place of residence and familiarity influence […]
Innate responses to landscape
The innate theories propose that we derive our aesthetic responses to landscape from an earlier evolutionary phase of Homo sapiens. It is argued that evolution favoured individuals who had the ability to evaluate their environment successfully in terms of its capacity to fulfil their need for shelter, safety and nourishment. Because human civilisations have been […]
Theories of landscape perception
There are two basic explanations for the way in which we react to different landscapes: (i) we have an innate or biological response to landscape; and (ii) responses to landscape are acquired through cultural background and personal development, to a greater or lesser degree. Historically, many of the proponents of the innate explanation have concentrated […]
Plantings
Anna Jorgensen What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. (Manley Hopkins, 1948) Introduction At the beginning of the twenty-first century many urban-dwellers’ experience of naturalistic or wildlooking vegetation in towns […]
Professional skills of staff and managers
The development of vegetations within a heempark must be considered as a sliding scale, from simple to complex, and from young to old. In the same way daily maintenance is, in many respects, done on a sliding scale. As such, we work within the laws of nature. Natural processes are not only cyclic but also […]