Mother Nature has given us a clay of land to mold and manipulate. Christine Casanova, a Landscape Architecture graduate student at Texas Tech, studies how we can craft the earth in ways that enrich our ag community. "If as a landscape architect I can design a system that conserves soils, that is conscious of the biotic community in soils, that creates a design that serves mankind in the utility of that area, and there is a benefit to how much water I save, what kind of plants I use, are they invasive or are they none invasive?" Casanova said.
Those are just a few thoughts that go through the mind of a landscape architect. It's their job to plan out deliberate designs for our environment's terrain.
"We study small systems, intimate designs, planting designs, we move to bigger scale," Casanova said.
Larger systems include areas of farmland and acreage, which are pillars in the producing world. Preserving those resources is vital for growers.
"We're always concerned about land use, we're always concerned about conservation," Casanova said.
Casanova said the study of Landscape Architecture is a collaborative discipline, and one of its biggest team members is agriculture.
"If as homeowners we can conserve water and we don't pull that water out of the aquifer, then that actually leaves more water for our crops," Casanova said.
Casanova said an analytical movement exists among landscape architects. After a design is constructed, they're being pro-active by assessing how sustainable the landscape is and how much it minimizes depletions.
