Waller Creek – Landscape Architecture DB

 (neatly ordered flowers)

When I think of landscape architecture, I think of beautiful rows of flowers and plants, giving color to the buildings they surround - and there's nothing wrong with that.  But it seems to me that the kind of natural beauty and power that Joseph Jones found in Waller Creek cannot be perfectly captured in the created nature of landscape architecture.

To Jones, Waller Creek represents history itself, "returning us to our half-forgotten origins" (Jones 751).  The fossils embedded in its banks and the unique blend of wildlife that gradually came to compose its ecosystem - you can't re create that.  That's why Jones views the Creek as so important, because in the ever-changing and growing city of Austin the creek still tied us to the past, no matter how much we were trying to leap into the future.  We just don't always recognize our need to remember the past in our rush to the future.

Landscape architecture rarely reminds me of this feeling of history, but it does offer some of the same benefits to mind and body.  There is something very peaceful about seeing a lawn of green grass with shady trees to rest under, or colorful bursts of flowers in front of an office building to brighten the atmosphere.  I remember going to Baylor there is this small fountain/stream flowing past a building, right in the middle of a big walkway, totally unexpected, yet it made me smile and want to walk alongside it. 

 (Baylor University, fountain with "stream")

Something in us certainly does draw closer to nature, be it man-made or no, and especially in the bustling metropolises we've made we notice the occassional (or even frequent) longing to find an escape not just from the sights, but the sounds, smells, and feelings, as well.  The only times I have ever felt a "charmed seclusion" (Dougill 636) as Dougill describes about Oxford were times that I found a quiet spot of nature.  There was one such spot in my old townhome complex: a small triangular-shaped grove of tall plants and a tree where as a child I could go hide and pretend I was in another land.  Architects had set the plants there, but it wasn't until years of neglect had re-shaped it that it really became my secluded spot.

I agree that landscape architecture is important, and even needed, as a reminder of the Nature our souls so long for, but I wonder if it shouldn't remain JUST a reminder - we need the actual thing.