Last week I attended the annual conference of the American Society of Landscape Architects, held in Washington, D.C. Back in 2010, the last time the conference was held in DC, I reported on talks by such luminaries (people even *I* had heard of) as John Greenlee and Peter Del Tredici.
This time, I recognized no names on the speaker list and gardening-related content was almost completely absent. (Just short mentions of lawn replacement and hellstrip plantings.) Clearly this week-long event was NOT for us.
But for landscape architects and wannabees it was the place to be and attracted over 6,500 attendees! (Who can imagine that many at a conference for garden writers?) And the attendees were, in my estimation, MOSTLY young. (Again, nothing like gatherings of garden writers.) The turn-out of young people may be thanks to the free ASLA membership offered to students. (Other memberships ranged from $75 for “emerging professionals” to as much as $2,500 for corporate members.)
So here’s my report – not of talks by the semi-famous but a tour of the Expo, which handily filled the Convention Center.
The vendors above looked familiar enough – we see them at nursery trade shows like MANTS.
And gabion walls, which I love, are plant-related at least.
Those few plant-related booths were dwarfed in number (and physically) by products that look like these:
Playground equipment is very big in the ASLA world!
Some pretty inventive ones, in fact.
I really like this one – outdoor musical instruments from Percussion Play.
And outdoorsy play equipment from Beanstalk Builders.
The “natural playgrounds” booth reminded me of woods and creeks near the house I was lucky to grow up in.
There was play space for adults, too.
And dogs.
Speaking of dogs, there’s also special grass for them. Don’t know if it’s really “forever” or not.
Here’s one plant-related product I found interesting – a complex system for giving street trees plenty of uncompacted space to grow.
There were several booths that offered no clue (to this gardener at least) as to what their product does. Like this one – which I’m guessing is design software?? 
My favorite booth was for Planted Earth, a residential design/install/maintain firm in the DC-Baltimore area. I stopped to chat and learned from these nice folks that their projects run from $250,000 to $1 million or more. “People who buy $5 million homes don’t flinch at another million for the landscape.”
Yikes! Confirming again how out of place I was in the world of landscape architects.
A gardener out of place at landscape architect convention originally appeared on GardenRant on October 26, 2024.
The post A gardener out of place at landscape architect convention appeared first on GardenRant.
