Plant & Soil Science 429: Advanced Landscape Design II

Today Plant and Soil Science Professor Karen Midden brought her PLSS 429 class to our house. Karen recently asked Clare if her landscape design class could use our yard as their “canvas” to come up with a landscape design plan to fulfill a project requirement for the class. We agreed and yesterday they came and took lots of measurements and lots of photographs. Each of the 11 students will come up with a plan, which they will present to us. (We will go to class for this part of the process.)
Not a creative *photograph*, but the *story* is kind of cool and comes from being in a uni-town!

[Grace Mitchell]

so will the winning design plan be used???

[Thom Mitchell]

These are just proposals. We don't have to use any component from any proposal. Our yard simply gives the students a real-world situation to work from and the professor will grade their proposals. Mom & I will probably implement elements from several of the proposals and we might try to hire out the students to do the work. :)

[cohare]

oh fun! Great idea.

[Heidi]

Free proposals are nice. Good ideas can be difficult to imagine. I watch P.Allen Smith and a couple other garden shows. It looks so obvious when you see them do it, but like staring at a blank canvas trying to come up with our own ideas. We end up buying this one we like and that one we like and hope there's a place for them and they look ok with one another.

BTW: I checked out your bio and in a strange coincidence, I'm halfway through William Poundstone's book, Priceless. Seems like the economic house of cards is finally building a foundation. ;o) I'm not an economist, so I hope that doesn't seem insulting. I just remember taking a few entry level economics courses and thinking, "Wow, this is all pretty impressive, mathematical, and elegant, but does the world really work this way?" Me? I didn't really have a clue. Still don't. But this book is interesting and kind of frightening at the same time. ;o)

[Thom Mitchell]

@heidi Does the world really work this way? The correct answer is probably "yes and no" (as economists are famous or infamous for saying). We may not always predict the exact sizes of changes, but we're often "in the ballpark." We're often "in the ballpark" because human nature is generally quite predictable (especially "on average"). But we don't hit the numbers exactly because we *are* talking about human behavior and even the sciences of biology and physiology (think medicine and MDs here!) isn't exactly predictable!

[Heidi]

@rhoing Ah yes, but then there's the perpetually recurring, so-called, black swan event.that always surprises. ;o) Like the avid runner who has a heart attack or the vegan with clogged arteries I suppose. It's always been hard to predict rare future events. Well, except for those few who always get statistically lucky. Too bad those are the ones that usually alter history. ;o)

[Thom Mitchell]

@heidi Malcolm Gladwell's _Outliers_ is an interesting read…

[Heidi]

@rhoing Thanks for the book reco. I'll check it out after I finish Priceless. I'm a slow reader, so it will be a bit. I'll check back, likely in a few weeks. I suspect it will twist my head around in some other direction. My lay outsider opinion is easily blown in different directions. I'll put Outlier ahead of The Great Reflation on my reading list. I'm trying to decide if I should build and stock a large, underground bunker in the back yard or invest heavily in the world economy. ;o)