Here one will find a list of common/ popularized terms and definitions likely to be encountered during studies in Landscape Design.
A
AFFORDANCE
The possibilities for action that a landscape or object appears to offer a person. A bench, for example, may invite sitting, while a path may invite movement.
AGROECOLOGY
An approach to agriculture that applies ecological principles to the design and management of food-producing systems.
ADAPTIVE DESIGN
Design that anticipates changing environmental, social, or climatic conditions and allows landscapes to adjust over time.
ADAPTIVE REUSE
The transformation of an existing building, structure, or site for a new use, while retaining and adapting existing materials, structures, or character.
ALLÉE
A formal avenue or pathway defined by a repeated row or rows of trees. A famous historical example of this technique is in the Garden of Versailles by André Le Nôtre.
ANTHROPOCENTRISM
A worldview that places human interests, experiences, or needs at the centre of how the non-human world is understood and valued.
ASSEMBLAGE
A collection of human and non-human elements whose interactions produce a particular landscape condition. Plants, soil, water, infrastructure, animals, people, and materials can all participate.
B
BALLED AND BURLAPPED
Plants established in the ground that have been harvested by digging with a soil ball so that the soil within the ball remains undisturbed. As part of the harvesting process, the soil ball is bound in burlap or similar mesh material.
BARE ROOT
Plants harvested while dormant without a ball of soil or from which the growing medium has been removed.
BIODIVERSITY
The variety of living organisms and ecological relationships within a particular place or across larger scales.
BIOCENTRISM
An ethical perspective that gives value to living beings beyond their usefulness to humans.
BIOPHILIA
The idea that humans have an inherent tendency to seek connections with living systems and the natural world.
BIOPHILIC DESIGN
Design that intentionally incorporates qualities and experiences associated with living systems and nature into built environments.
BIOSWALE
A planted or vegetated drainage feature designed to slow, convey, filter, and sometimes infiltrate stormwater.
BIOTIC
Relating to living organisms or the biological components of an ecosystem.
BERM
A raised area of soil or other material used to modify grade, direct water, provide separation, or create spatial definition.
BGC / BIOGEOCLIMATIC CLASSIFICATION
A system used in British Columbia to classify ecosystems according to relationships among climate, vegetation, and ecological conditions.
BROWNFIELD
Previously developed or used land where redevelopment or reuse may be complicated by actual or suspected contamination from hazardous substances, pollutants, or other contaminants.
C
CALIPER
The above ground diameter of a distinct part of a nursery stock stem, measured in accordance with this Standard. The location of measurement depends on the type and size of plant. Measurement height begins at the ground level, soil line or root flare, as appropriate. The word may be abbreviated as cal.
CARBON SEQUESTRATION
The capture and storage of carbon in places such as vegetation, soils, sediments, or other carbon reservoirs.
CHARRETTE
An intensive, collaborative design process in which participants work together over a concentrated period to develop and evaluate design ideas.
CLIMATE ADAPTATION
Adjusting landscapes, systems, or management practices in response to current or anticipated climate conditions.
CLIMATE MITIGATION
Actions intended to reduce the causes of climate change, particularly greenhouse gas emissions or the loss of carbon stores.
CO-DESIGN
A design process in which people affected by a project participate as contributors to the design rather than simply being consulted afterward.
CONTAINER
The pot in which nursery stock is grown or sold. Containers are manufactured of different materials such as plastic, wood, paper, cloth, natural fiber, etc. and may vary greatly in size, shape, and quality. However, in the context of nursery stock, containers are not used as a final installation for growing, as for example, in a landscape planter.
COMMONS
Resources, spaces, or systems managed through shared practices and collective responsibility rather than exclusively through individual ownership. According to Karl Linn, it is a “gathering space – indoor or outdoor – that people have personalized to meet the needs of the community.”
COMMONS
According to Karl Linn, it is a “gathering space – indoor or outdoor – that people have personalized to meet the needs of the community.”
COMMUNITY GARDEN
A collectively managed growing space in which multiple people or households participate in food production, gardening, or stewardship.
CONNECTIVITY
The degree to which habitats, ecological systems, or landscape elements are physically or functionally connected.
CUES TO CARE
Visible signs of intentional maintenance or design that can make ecologically functioning landscapes appear cared for and socially acceptable.
CULTIVAR
Cultivated plants that are specifically named, whose unique characteristics are retained during propagation, and populations are maintained by human efforts. They are distinguished from botanical varieties which also are distinct populations of plants in a species, but are naturally occurring.
CULTURAL LANDSCAPE
A landscape shaped by the long-term interaction of people, culture, and ecological processes.
D
DAYLIGHTING
The practice of exposing a previously buried, covered, or enclosed watercourse or ecological process to the surface.
DECOMPOSITION
The biological and chemical breakdown of organic material, returning nutrients and carbon to soil, water, and the atmosphere.
DECOLONIZATION
The process of questioning and transforming systems of knowledge, land relationships, governance, and representation shaped by colonial power.
DESIGN FOR DISASSEMBLY
Designing buildings, landscapes, or assemblies so their components can later be separated, reused, repaired, or recycled.
DISTURBANCE
An event or process that changes ecological conditions, such as fire, flooding, construction, harvesting, or disease.
E
ECOLOGICAL AESTHETICS
An approach to landscape appearance that considers ecological processes and function as part of what makes a landscape visually and experientially valuable.
ECOLOGICAL DESIGN
Design that works with ecological processes rather than treating them as separate from the designed environment.
ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION
The practice of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.
ECOLOGICAL SUCCESSION
The gradual change in the composition and structure of an ecological community over time.
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
The benefits people receive from ecological systems, such as water regulation, pollination, cooling, food production, and recreation.
EMBODIED CARBON
The greenhouse gas emissions associated with extracting, manufacturing, transporting, installing, maintaining, and disposing of materials.
ENCHANTMENT
A heightened sense of wonder, attentiveness, or openness to the vitality and significance of ordinary things, including non-human entities.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
The principle that environmental benefits, risks, decision-making power, and access to healthy environments should be distributed fairly.
ETHNOBOTANY
The study of how particular cultures understand, use, manage, and relate to plants.
EVAPOTRANSPIRATION
The combined movement of water into the atmosphere through evaporation from surfaces and transpiration from plants.
F
FIRE-ADAPTED LANDSCAPE
A landscape in which vegetation, ecological processes, and management practices have developed in relation to recurring fire.
FIRE-SMART PLANTING
Plant selection and landscape management intended to reduce the likelihood that vegetation will contribute to the spread or intensity of wildfire.
FOOD FOREST
A planted landscape organized around edible perennial plants that occupy different ecological layers, resembling some structural characteristics of a forest.
FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
The principle that communities should have meaningful control over how their food is produced, distributed, and accessed.
G
GRAFT
A product of asexual propagation where two plants or plant parts are joined together so that they will unite and continue their growth as one.
GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE
Landscape systems that use vegetation, soils, water, and ecological processes to provide functions traditionally supplied by engineered infrastructure.
GREEN RAINWATER INFRASTRUCTURE (GRI)
A rainwater management approach that combines engineered systems with natural processes to capture, slow, filter, infiltrate, and reuse rainwater using elements such as soil, plants, trees, and constructed features.
GREEN ROOF
A roof designed to support vegetation and a growing medium above a building’s conventional roof structure.
GREEN WALL
A vegetated vertical building system in which plants are integrated with a wall, facade, or supporting structure.
GREENWASHING
The presentation of an environmentally responsible image that is stronger than the actual environmental performance of a product, project, or organization.
GREY INFRASTRUCTURE
Conventional engineered infrastructure, such as pipes, concrete channels, roads, and drainage systems, primarily designed to perform specific technical functions.
H
HABITAT CORRIDOR
A connected strip or sequence of habitat that allows organisms to move between otherwise separated ecological areas.
HARDSCAPE
The non-living constructed components of a landscape, including paving, walls, structures, and other built surfaces.
HYDROLOGY
The study and movement of water through landscapes, including rainfall, runoff, infiltration, groundwater, evaporation, and storage.
I
INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge developed through Indigenous peoples’ long-term relationships with lands, waters, plants, animals, and cultural practices.
INFILTRATION
The movement of water from the surface into soil or other porous ground materials.
INVASIVE SPECIES
A non-native organism that establishes and spreads in a new environment and can cause ecological, economic, or social harm.
L
LAND BACK
A movement concerned with restoring Indigenous relationships, jurisdiction, stewardship, and control over Indigenous lands.
LANDSCAPE AGENCY
The capacity of landscapes, materials, plants, animals, water, and other non-human processes to influence how environments develop and are experienced.
LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY
The study of spatial relationships among ecological systems and how patterns across a landscape influence ecological processes.
LANDSCAPE MEMORY
The ways past events, practices, people, and cultural histories remain perceptible or influential within a landscape.
LANDSCAPE PERFORMANCE
The assessment of what a landscape actually accomplishes environmentally, socially, or economically after implementation.
LANDSCAPE URBANISM
An approach to urban design that emphasizes landscape processes, systems, and change as important generators of urban form.
LIVE STAKE
A dormant woody cutting inserted directly into moist soil where it can develop roots and grow into a new plant. Willows (Salix) and red-osier dogwood (Cornus sericea) are commonly used for restoration and bank stabilization.
LIVING INFRASTRUCTURE
Infrastructure that incorporates living systems and ecological processes as active parts of its function.
LOW IMPACT DEVELOPMENT (LID)
A planning and design approach that manages rainfall close to where it falls, using distributed landscape features to reduce runoff and support infiltration.
M
MANAGED SUCCESSION
The deliberate guidance of ecological succession through planting, maintenance, disturbance, or other interventions.
MATERIAL AGENCY
The idea that materials are not merely passive substances but can influence processes, behaviour, and outcomes through their physical properties and interactions.
MESSY ECOSYSTEMS
Landscapes whose ecological richness may involve forms of vegetation, succession, decay, or habitat that appear disorderly according to conventional landscape aesthetics.
MICROCLIMATE
The climate conditions experienced within a relatively small area, influenced by vegetation, buildings, topography, materials, shade, wind, and water.
MULTIFUNCTIONAL LANDSCAPE
A landscape designed or managed to perform several functions simultaneously, such as recreation, habitat, food production, stormwater management, and social gathering.
MYCELIUM
The network of thread-like fungal structures that forms much of a fungus’s body and can spread through soil, wood, and other substrates.
MYCOREMEDIATION
The use of fungi and their biological processes to help break down, transform, immobilize, or remove contaminants from environmental materials.
MYCORRHIZAE
Symbiotic relationships between fungi and plant roots in which both organisms can exchange resources and benefit from the association.
N
NATIVE PLANT
A plant species that occurs naturally within a particular geographic region without having been introduced there by modern human activity.
NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS
Actions that use or strengthen ecological systems to address environmental and societal challenges while also producing benefits for people and biodiversity.
NATURE-INCLUSIVE DESIGN
Design that intentionally accommodates ecological processes and non-human life within built or designed environments.
NEW MATERIALISM
A theoretical approach that emphasizes the active role of matter, materials, bodies, and non-human forces in shaping the world.
NOVEL ECOSYSTEM
An ecological community whose species composition, processes, or environmental conditions differ significantly from historical conditions, often as a result of human influence and environmental change.
P
PALIMPSEST
A landscape understood as containing overlapping traces of different periods, uses, processes, and histories.
PARTICIPATORY DESIGN
A design process that involves people affected by a project in shaping decisions about the environment.
PERMEABILITY
The capacity of a surface or material to allow water to pass through it.
PHYTOREMEDIATION
The use of plants and their associated biological processes to help remove, contain, transform, or reduce environmental contaminants.
PLACE ATTACHMENT
The emotional, social, and experiential bond people develop with particular places.
PLACEKEEPING
The ongoing care, stewardship, and community practices through which the social and cultural qualities of a place are maintained or strengthened.
PLACEMAKING
The process of shaping spaces so they support meaningful social, cultural, ecological, and experiential relationships.
PLANT COMMUNITY
A group of plant species growing together and interacting within a particular environmental context.
PLANTING DESIGN
The deliberate organization of plants in relation to space, ecology, experience, maintenance, and time.
PLANT PALETTE
The selection of plant species and varieties proposed for a particular landscape or design.
PLUG
A cylinder of medium in which a plant is grown. The term is generally used for seedlings and rooted cuttings that have been removed from the container with the medium held intact by the roots.
POSITIVE DRAINAGE
The intentional shaping of land to direct water away from structures and other vulnerable areas toward a designated drainage point.
POSTHUMANISM
A broad field of thought that questions the assumption that humans should be the primary or only centre of value and agency in the world.
POST-INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE
A landscape shaped by former industrial activities and often characterized by abandoned infrastructure, altered soils, contamination, or opportunities for ecological succession.
R
RAIN GARDEN
A planted depression or shallow landscape feature designed to temporarily collect and manage rainfall runoff.
REGENERATIVE DESIGN
Design that aims not simply to reduce environmental harm but to contribute to the renewal of ecological and social systems.
REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE
Agricultural practices intended to improve soil, ecological function, biodiversity, and long-term productivity rather than simply maintaining existing conditions.
RESILIENCE
The capacity of a social, ecological, or physical system to absorb disturbance, adapt to changing conditions, and continue functioning.
RESTORATIVE LANDSCAPE
A landscape designed or managed to support recovery from physical, psychological, social, or environmental stress.
REWILDING
An approach to ecological restoration that emphasizes the recovery of ecological processes, self-sustaining systems, and relationships among species rather than maintaining a fixed designed endpoint.
RIPARIAN
Relating to land directly associated with rivers, streams, wetlands, or other water bodies.
ROOTED CUTTING
A vegetative portion, either hardwood (HWC) or softwood (SWC), removed from a parent plant that has been induced to form roots and eventually new leaves and shoots.
S
SENSE OF PLACE
The collection of physical, social, cultural, emotional, and experiential qualities through which a location becomes meaningful and recognizable.
SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM
A system in which ecological processes and human social activities are understood as interconnected rather than independent.
SOLARPUNK
A cultural and design movement that imagines futures organized around renewable energy, ecological repair, community, and alternative relationships to technology and society.
SPATIAL JUSTICE
The idea that access to space, environmental resources, infrastructure, and the benefits of design should be distributed fairly.
SPONTANEOUS URBAN VEGETATION
Plants and plant communities that establish in cities without being intentionally planted as part of a conventional landscape design.
STEWARDSHIP
The ongoing responsibility of caring for land, ecological systems, resources, and communities.
STORMWATER MANAGEMENT
The planning and design of landscapes and infrastructure to slow, store, infiltrate, filter, convey, or otherwise manage rainfall runoff.
SUSTAINABLE DRAINAGE
Drainage approaches that attempt to manage rainfall through landscape processes such as storage, infiltration, filtration, evaporation, and vegetation.
T
TACTICAL URBANISM
Small-scale, often temporary interventions used to test or improve urban spaces through relatively quick and adaptable actions.
TERRA FLUXUS
A landscape urbanism concept emphasizing landscape as an active, changing process rather than a static background to architecture.
THERAPEUTIC LANDSCAPE
A landscape intentionally designed or understood as supporting physical, psychological, social, or emotional well-being.
TRANSECT
A linear section or sampling route used to observe changes in environmental, ecological, or spatial conditions across a landscape.
U
URBAN AGRICULTURE
The production, processing, distribution, or exchange of food within or around urban areas.
URBAN CANOPY
The combined layer of tree crowns and other vegetation extending over streets, buildings, yards, and other urban surfaces.
URBAN ECOLOGY
The study of ecological processes and relationships within urban environments.
URBAN FOREST
The collection of trees and associated ecological systems within an urban area, including street trees, parks, private yards, and natural areas.
URBAN HEAT ISLAND
The tendency for built-up urban areas to become warmer than surrounding less-developed areas because of factors including hard surfaces, reduced vegetation, and heat storage.
V
VERNACULAR LANDSCAPE
A landscape shaped primarily by local materials, practices, environmental conditions, cultural traditions, and everyday use rather than a universal design model.
VERTICAL GARDEN
A planting system that uses vertical surfaces or structures to support vegetation.
VIEWSHED
The area of landscape visible from a particular observation point or sequence of viewpoints.
W
WATER-SENSITIVE URBAN DESIGN
An approach to urban design that integrates water management into the structure and experience of the city rather than treating water as a waste product to be removed.
WATERSHED
An area of land in which water drains toward a common outlet such as a stream, river, lake, or coastal area.
WETLAND
An ecosystem in which water is present at or near the surface for enough time to influence soils, vegetation, and ecological processes.
WHIP
A young tree without branches; in some species and grades spurs may be present. Typically, whips are 1-2 years old and are not trained or shaped, making them cost effective and easy to produce in bulk.
WILDLIFE CORRIDOR
A connected landscape feature that allows wildlife to move between habitat areas.
WILDING
Allowing vegetation and ecological processes to develop with reduced intensive human control, sometimes as a deliberate management strategy.
X
XERISCAPE
A landscape approach that reduces dependence on supplemental irrigation by selecting plants and designing site conditions around water availability.
Z
ZERO-WASTE DESIGN
An approach that seeks to minimize discarded material through prevention, reuse, repair, recovery, and consideration of material life cycles.