ABSTRACT
Substantive, well thought-out landscape policies have been a recent but still rare innovation in planning practice. For a long time in development and development control, landscaping has been considered merely as an afterthought to be finalized once all other aspects have been decided, and landscape considerations have been regarded merely as the choice of plants or trees. Design control still largely fails to take landscape issues seriously, despite its recent recognition as a key design control consideration in PPG 1 (paras A5, A6). For example, few local planning authorities employ landscape architects directly, and landscape skills in other local authority departments are often difficult to access. Similarly, many developers seek the skills of the landscape architect too late in the design process, and often use token landscaping as an attempt to hide ugly buildings or car parking. It should be emphasized that good landscaping is relatively cheap, and that allocating 2% of total contract costs to landscaping is generally reckoned to be adequate, with the returns in perceived quality invariably much greater than this.
