In-person Classes!
I enjoyed not one but two in-person classes in Spring 2021, a privilege many fellow students did not enjoy. The field I am in, ecological design, is well-suited to outdoor classes. I had a field trip in L ARCH 423: Plant Identification and Management and an in-person lab for ESRM 412: Native Plant Production every week. The experience was exhilarating after a year of mostly online events and a good transition from online to mostly in-person classes in Fall 2021. I had to learn to schedule time for the about twenty minute trip to the Douglas Research Conservancy (DRC) for ESRM 412 every day, and arrived just on time and breathless from a rushed longboard ride many days. However, the time spent traveling was well worth it, as it provided me with pretty sights and exercise to break up the monotony of work on the computer.
Landscape architecture design begins: L ARCH 300
L ARCH 300: Introduction to Planting Design was a fun, easygoing 3-credit class, and my first Landscape Architecture course to include a design project. Since I spent much of 2020 learning about landscape design and working on design for my parents' property, I came into the class with a solid background that made the class mostly superfluous. However, I did see some inspiring landscapes and was given another design opportunity in the final project - a redesign of Gould Hall's courtyard.
The class involved weekly outdoor sketching projects, which helped me to deepen my drawing and observation skills.
The class involved weekly outdoor sketching projects, which helped me to deepen my drawing and observation skills.
We moved from introductory field assignments and discussions into landscape design assignments that built up to the final assignment, a planting design for the courtyard at Gould Hall. We began with analysis of the existing landscape. The courtyard, to the north of Gould Hall, is flanked by a walkway on either side, large strawberry trees beyond. Its elevation is significantly lower than the street above. These factors make the site quite shady, although one can look up out of the courtyard to the sunny street ahead. The site is quite uncared for and dominated in many areas by invasive ivy, an ironic fact given that Gould Hall is the home of the Landscape Architecture department. This incongruity led me to question the gap between theory and practice at UW more, which I grew into a project for L ARCH 423.
Site analysis led to the beginning stages of design, where I imagined a site which would serve as a space for relaxation and community for the College of Built Environments (CBE) community. I created a schematic design that determined uses for different areas and decided to incorporate a rain garden that catches water from Northeast 40th Street to the north of Gould Hall. The final design was dominated by native plants, since that is among my specialties in design and I had learned many native plants from another of my classes, L ARCH 423.
I feel like my sketches are still very rough, but I am learning skills to produce professional final designs. I felt reassured about my design skills by the work of Piet Oudoulf, an acclaimed landscape architect who specializes in diverse meadow plantings. I learned of his work from the documentary Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudoulf, an inspiring look at his practice. While his final gardens are stunning, his plans are sketchy and emphasize communicating a variety of plants and speed over creating a realistic render. Although I don't plan to create similar renders, I am reassured that I don't need to have amazing drawing skills to be a good landscape designer.
I spent an absurd amount of money on Copic markers and other drawing supplies for my final rendering in the class (above), but I feel more confident with marker rendering now and am excited to keep working on my renders! I received positive feedback on this project from other classmates and the professor and look forward to future work in this field.
DEEPENING MY ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
This quarter was a plants quarter (and I assume many future ones will be too), to my glee! I took a native plant production class and plant recognition class as well as the planting design class detailed above. The native plant production class allowed me to gain more hands-on skills working with plants, and I also saw some cool plants during the class! I regret that the class did not feature growing a plant from seed like earlier classes did, as I still lack confidence in growing plants. I've planted some native plants and managed others in work parties, but haven't taken care of many plants from seed onward. Native plants often do better with less management, and those plants that need more care in our native plants garden are suffering - showing a need for more plant experience.
The native plant recognition class L ARCH 423 was an absolute joy! The instructor Brooke Sullivan is bold and strongly values Indigenous land management practices. They incorporated education about Indigenous land management into the class and facilitated discussion on the impacts of colonization and what is needed for decolonization. I was glad to see these conversations centered in land management, where they are especially needed. Historical land management practices in what is now called the United States of America have intentionally harmed Indigenous peoples, such as the mass slaughter of buffalo and laws which criminalized traditional harvesting of Indigenous foods. These practices increase(d) dependence on the US state and destabilized Indigenous communities.
Every week in L ARCH 423, we visited a landscape in Seattle. These visits were educational and inspiring, and helped link the plants we were quizzing ourselves on with our computers with real-life plants. We also heard from various speakers, most notably Shannon Nichol (accompanied by Jordan Bell) from Guthrie Gustafson Nichol (GGN), a high-profile landscape arcitecture firm with offices in Seattle and Washington, DC. GGN has designed many of the landscapes at UW, and designed the landscape of the Burke Museum, which features a native plant-dominated camas meadow. This landscape is one of my favorites on campus, and I frequent it often. In fact, it was one of the places on campus I was most excited to see, since I learned about it in Douglasia, the journal of the Washington Native Plants Society, before I came on campus. The talk from Shannon Nichol was very informative, and inspired me to design landscape plans with greater plant density and to keep trying new things!
Beyond classes, I visited different places on and beyond campus on my own. For instance, toward the end of the quarter I joined a work party at YES Farm at Yesler Terrace, a farm for BIPOC founded by the Black Farmers Collective with a friend I met in L ARCH 423. The work party was very refreshing and inspiring, and featured a wonderful view of industrial Seattle beyond. I also volunteered once a week or more for the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) UW at Heron Haven, a native plant project north of Anderson Hall. I tore out ivy (and a few Oregon grapes on accident!) and planted native plants with others. I saw some friends and met a good friend during the work parties.
Although my class and extra-curricular work focused on native plants West of the Cascades (naturally), I kept the Nch'i-Wána Plateau (AKA Columbia Plateau) in mind. I selected plants native to the shrub steppe for plant production protocol assignments in ESRM 412. I also visited home twice to get Covid19 vaccine shots and saw my native plants garden again! Some plants jumped up from their size at planting, while others did not make it - they suffered from late planting, underwatering, or poor planting (one plant was planted too high, so its roots were disconnected from the soil). I will be home for much of the summer and am excited to keep learning and experimenting in the native plants garden.
HONORS 232: Ecology of urban seattle
While I expected Honors 232 to be another plant-focused class, it was instead focused on community organizing. Luckily, this is another of my interests! The class, taught by former city council member Richard Conlin, featured information about various neighborhoods in Seattle followed by panels of involved community members from that neighborhood. The panels were very informative and featured residents doing great work throughout Seattle. However, the class (on the first year of its teaching) spent more time focusing on individual neighborhoods without sufficient background information, in my opinion.
Activism on campus and beyond
ndAlthough I am active in movement work beyond class, my class L ARCH 423 featured a final project that encouraged me to do plant-related activism. Although I already do plant-related activism (broadly defined) by working with SER-UW, I was glad that my professor encouraged me to do more for my class. For my project, I created pamphlets and a website to point out gaps between theory and practice at the university and encourage community members to consider how to align theory and practice at UW. I was inspired to do this project by the landscape of Gould Hall, which is covered in invasive ivy and is undercared for. Gould Hall is the home of the Landscape Architecture department, so this is particularly ironic! I initially intended to remove ivy and plant native plants directly, but was discouraged from doing so since it was too late in the season and the landscape was high-profile enough that I might face backlash from that. The final form of my project was not very plant-focused, but aimed to indirectly change the university's relationships with plants. However, I created a case study document of Gould Hall to use a plant-related gap between theory and practice at UW as the central example.
I spoke to community members and handed out pamphlets at two pop-ups on campus at UW. The first, in the busy Quad, was successful - I spoke to community members most of the time. The second at Gould Hall, however, was the opposite - not one person was interested in talking! A friend provided their insight - the street beside Gould Hall where I tabled was not a destination itself, so those who passed by had a destination in mind and were less willing to stop and talk. However, I hope to engage the College of Built Environments (Gould Hall's college) community more directly in the future to advocate for a landscape re-design.
I spoke to community members and handed out pamphlets at two pop-ups on campus at UW. The first, in the busy Quad, was successful - I spoke to community members most of the time. The second at Gould Hall, however, was the opposite - not one person was interested in talking! A friend provided their insight - the street beside Gould Hall where I tabled was not a destination itself, so those who passed by had a destination in mind and were less willing to stop and talk. However, I hope to engage the College of Built Environments (Gould Hall's college) community more directly in the future to advocate for a landscape re-design.
While I am glad that I was able to educate some people about university issues through this project, the project was not direct or specific enough to encourage a particular action. I think its greatest benefits were the education about university issues and the commitment to take further action to change the landscape at Gould Hall I gained.
The hypocrisy of administration at UW which I learned about while doing movement work and through this project is frustrating and angering. You can read some of the examples of this hypocrisy at the website linked above.
When I first arrived at UW, I attended more activism events beyond the scope of UW. However, I soon found myself stretched thin and decided to focus on activism at UW, where I feel I have more power as a student. However, I found the issues at UW, a school of over 40,000, overwhelming as well. I think the Frederick Douglass quote 'power concedes nothing without a demand' is an undeniable truth. While UW administration is more than happy to pay lip-service to Black Lives Matter protestors and future generations which are faced with climate catastrophe, action lags behind. I support the movement to divest the UW from fossil fuels, led by UW Institutional Climate Action (ICA). The UW is forcing students through a frustrating bureacratic process to divest from fossil fuels. You would think that people who claim to care about Earth's ecologies, the wondrous diversity it contains, and future generations would jump at an opportunity to be part of the solution! But when money is at stake, and your job is to protect moneyed interests, it takes tremendous courage to do so.
The overwhelm caused by all the issues at the UW (which I doubt are unique to this university) led me to limit my scope of activism even further. I now participate often in only two clubs, and attend some other events as my schedule allows. I also found that almost every event requires about half as much time as the event itself to process afterwards. Music is one of my greatest aids to my ability to process the injustice in the world - the work of Seattle-based artist Hollis has been a particular blessing.
Since my hometown has such a smaller population, I am not constantly reminded of injustice here and it feels more manageable. While the same issues exist (and are often worse here), I am not reminded of them as often. In Seattle, I see encampments of unhoused people dotted throughout the city, a symptom of disgustingly high housing prices and medical systems that serve only those with means, among other social crises. Meanwhile, manicured gardens and giant skyscrapes are other common sights - the injustice of inequity is all about. While I will do what I can to stand in solidarity with those in need in this region as well, I am glad for the respite.
The hypocrisy of administration at UW which I learned about while doing movement work and through this project is frustrating and angering. You can read some of the examples of this hypocrisy at the website linked above.
When I first arrived at UW, I attended more activism events beyond the scope of UW. However, I soon found myself stretched thin and decided to focus on activism at UW, where I feel I have more power as a student. However, I found the issues at UW, a school of over 40,000, overwhelming as well. I think the Frederick Douglass quote 'power concedes nothing without a demand' is an undeniable truth. While UW administration is more than happy to pay lip-service to Black Lives Matter protestors and future generations which are faced with climate catastrophe, action lags behind. I support the movement to divest the UW from fossil fuels, led by UW Institutional Climate Action (ICA). The UW is forcing students through a frustrating bureacratic process to divest from fossil fuels. You would think that people who claim to care about Earth's ecologies, the wondrous diversity it contains, and future generations would jump at an opportunity to be part of the solution! But when money is at stake, and your job is to protect moneyed interests, it takes tremendous courage to do so.
The overwhelm caused by all the issues at the UW (which I doubt are unique to this university) led me to limit my scope of activism even further. I now participate often in only two clubs, and attend some other events as my schedule allows. I also found that almost every event requires about half as much time as the event itself to process afterwards. Music is one of my greatest aids to my ability to process the injustice in the world - the work of Seattle-based artist Hollis has been a particular blessing.
Since my hometown has such a smaller population, I am not constantly reminded of injustice here and it feels more manageable. While the same issues exist (and are often worse here), I am not reminded of them as often. In Seattle, I see encampments of unhoused people dotted throughout the city, a symptom of disgustingly high housing prices and medical systems that serve only those with means, among other social crises. Meanwhile, manicured gardens and giant skyscrapes are other common sights - the injustice of inequity is all about. While I will do what I can to stand in solidarity with those in need in this region as well, I am glad for the respite.
Reflection
Heading into a summer that will be spent at home and in the desert southwest, I have mixed feelings. I am excited to continue my design work at home and learn about design in the desert southwest, a dryland like the Nch'i-Wána Plateau with a flourishing ecological design mindset that the plateau sorely lacks. I feel more calm in my hometown than in the hurried streets of Seattle. However, I will miss the friends I met in college, many whom I feel like I was just starting to form close bonds with as the year wrapped up. I will try to stay in touch with them somewhat, but regret that I will miss out on their gatherings in Seattle. I will also miss many activism-related events which I will wish I could have attended, but I have to make a choice and live with the consequences.