Making some changes to the irrigation schedule for one of our garden projects.
After discovering Doug Tallamy research last spring, been learning tons about native plants and only designing native plant gardens. Each plant is a host to specific moths. The next layer of this ecosystem that I’ll add is the types of momma birds that then feed each of these moths to their kids.
Think it should be helpful to visualize it like this for myself. And could be sweet to include in the client presentation, like “look at the life your garden is going to foster and support!"
Pretty intense lighting install day yesterday. Photo above is just mocking up the final position of path lights before staking them in. Didn't leave nearly enough time to make it all happen and the truck seems to have died somehow. In the end, really into how it turned out! Huge thanks to @sloane for saving the day on so many levels including transport help and getting into problem solving mode on-site 💚
Exciting plant delivery at 8am in SF this morning! Design today was not on the computer and it felt so good. Placed all the plants in the space, based on our planting plan which served as an intention. Made some little tweaks and felt it out with the plants there, stepping back to see how everything worked together. Wonder what this will feel like in 2 years.
Tried all the fancy ways to make this curved boardwalk, and none of them were working. Ended up drawing it by hand in Archicad one board at a time, didn’t take that long, more control and more human (not manufactured perfection) feeling. The client is in the process of building this themselves, and the way I’m making on the computer feels like the way in which it will be built IRL, one board at a time.
So much easier to work through problems and jot down ideas on post it notes. Tried on iPad apps and wasn’t working. Explored the inside of the laser printer today and realized it can do larger paper sizes easily. Next, I’d like to try some tracing paper. So can draw on top and layer different concepts together.
Had great 25 minute call with the arborist to discuss ideas for a street tree. Not sure yet if this really counts as design. It was a pretty intentional conversation, so more like problem solving design, less like free flowing creative. Leaning toward fruitless olive, due to some size constraints and client preferences. Slow start growth wise, but then will pick up speed.
Committing even deeper to the practice of landscape design. The past year was working a ton on the business, and now I'm excited to more in the business. This looks like designing more gardens. So grateful for the tool and community of Futureland to hold this space
🗓️ Going to add this journal to my Daily and see what happens. Even if it's not a client project, just designing something garden related. This can often look like drawing, dragging shapes around, forming models, making lists, selecting pottery, and so on.
💻 Shifting the more technical computer program stuff to a new journal for Learning Archicad. This was my first journal here, and before my thinking was this focused just on the digital side as I was looking for a new computer aided design program.
🐛 Including more holistic look at the process here w/ photos from the sites themselves since the design process is super site specific. Design starts happening at the 1st consult all the way through to last minute decisions during the build out.
🕸️ With the upcoming Futureland "webs" feature, should be pretty sweet to explore project specific sub-journals that are part of this main Landscape design journal.
[The photo above is from a site visit last month. The family made this mosaic as an early Covid shelter at home project. I'm so in love with this and hoping that we'll include another one to help transition some other stairs to a different surface.]
Finalized an order with the nursery today for a garden project. Pretty excited about the plant palette, some favorites and new friends, and just realized 100% California Natives, except for a couple citrus trees we added last minute. Should get delivered next week, I’ll place them in the garden, and then the client is going to plant themselves which will be great 🍊
Got all the plants layed out for the front yard! Pretty seamless and really excited to see how the plants work together in the larger garden. Discovered some new minor road bumps in the process and made notes to troubleshoot them later.
Used the standard shapes and colors for now, didn’t have time to get super custom today, but excited to work toward a more unified style. And could’ve spent an hour in the annotations settings panel, but for now just did these little curved arrows.
Getting even more into the plant workflow, spent a couple hours today digging deeper. But have run into four different minor roadblocks that would be nice to sort out. Put together some screenshots to show what they are, and posted on some online forums to see if the Archicad community might be able to help.
Great site-visit with a contractor that might help build out the design for this project. Felt really prepared for the walk through with all the design documentation getting more organized with each project.
Couple blocks from us and pretty small back garden, so I cleared out the space and took a couple loads to the dump this past spring. Much easier to design with more of a blank slate. And we had the planter box built in the late spring so they could start growing veggies this summer as the rest of the project will get built this winter.
Up until now have been sharing mostly the digital side, but since the work of course is all about the natural world IRL going to start sharing some photos as well.
Unlocked a pretty big part of my workflow today! Discovered the Favorites panel which is where I’ll be able to build out the entire plant database. With the Favorites, it saves all of the 2D vectors, 3D images, and data (plant name, size, and so on) that goes with each plant.
This means I can just search for the plant name, and then plop them down all over the place. Essentially painting with the plants on the site map really quickly.
This quick layout here is what was rendered in 3D in the previous journal entry 🍊
Playing around with different 2D graphic styles, eventually will make my own but the pre-loaded options were better than expected, nice suprise. Also, figured out a better way to “paint” with the plants, instead of copying and pasting, using the eyedropper tool, then allows you to plop down more of that same plant quickly.
Phew, big day as it all started to come together. Finished the roof, added front door and steps, and short wall around the front gardens. Now that I've got the "backdrop" for the garden, in other words the house, I can finally add all the plants we've been scheming about for this project. Maybe tomorrow or next week. This was the first time 3D modeling in Archicad that I felt comfortable enough putting on a podcast, which is a good sign, normally too much concentration and tricky problem solving.
Last month came across a sale for some 2D plant imagery. Ended up having a really nice email exchange with the person behind the company and learned a bunch. Up until now, on my old computer I was barely able to open Photoshop and didn't have space to download / unzip the 38 GB of files. Taking a look up close for the first time! These will be imported into Archicad and used within the garden models.
One of the major barriers to getting going with Archicad has been realizing that it's going to be a year long learning process until I'll be at the level that I'd like. Ever since using my parents clone Mac as a kid with Adobe Pagemaker, I've just been able to teach myself design programs pretty quickly. With the complexity of the BIM and CAD programs. I'm organizing my notes to create a guidebook for myself to document everything I'm learning.
Continuing to build out the library of objects, plants, and detailed views. Trying to be patient in the process of getting the software all set up for my process. One of the reasons went with Archicad was that it is so customizable, and can be morphed to fit my needs. Using the program for client projects, but not to it's full potential. Will be much smoother as everything falls into place ✨
So many palettes and toolbars to pick from. Spent some time getting the workspace set up for now, knowing I'll discover and keep tweaking over time.
This is a new backyard project. It's the first time I've done a site visit and measured the space knowing I'd be modeling it fully in 3D in this program.
Collecting examples of architectural representation on Are.na to get a better understanding of how I'd like to create drawings for garden projects.
This program called Vectorworks has 2D and 3D in one program, which makes a lot of sense. Even though this is the main CAD program for landscape designers, I can't wrap my head around it and the interface feels like it was made in the year 2000. Much of the program feels clunky in an indescribable way.