Importance of plants as a landscape material

Plants perform a variety of functions in the design of the environment. They are used as landscape materials, which define space, provide attractive foliage, flower, fruit, and or bark, and serve functional purposes. Properly used plants are one of the most important landscape materials used for the organization and definition of the outdoor space for human use and enjoyment.

Spatial definition with plants means to create an interesting, functional and solid mass and void composition. The plants are the mass and the empty spaces are the void- Both planned for people. For example plants may define space in the landscape by serving as a canopy, an enclosure, a baffle a surface mass, or as a single specimen. Overhead branches providing an open space below create a plant canopy. An enclosure may be a shrub border, a high or low hedge, and a mass of shrubs or a baffle. A baffle is arrow of trees through which pedestrian circulation may flow, but yet the row serves as a partial enclosure or a screen.

The space created by the use of plants and other materials in the landscape is as important as the plants and objects occupying the space. Basically the formation of these spaces is what landscape Architecture is all about. The creation and design of out door space for people. This is not to say that the use of plants in the landscape is all of landscape Architecture. It is important to remember that in a mass or void planting composition the voids (spaces) areas important as the masses (plants) (Colvin 1997).