Destination: Landscape
Nurturing visitor interest through creative park design
By Kelli Anderson
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Landscapes done well also share one thing in common: They're beautiful.
For Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va., beautiful landscaping has earned them the title of "World's Most Beautiful Theme
Park" by the National Amusement Park Historical Association for 15 consecutive years.
Visitors to the park's European themes will find their experience enhanced by plants and structures that suggest their particular location.
"In the Italy area, landscaped gardens are dotted with Romanesque statues," says Diane Centeno, communications manager at the park. "They give guests the impression that they are walking through formal Italian gardens."
The park's use of large mass plantings create impressive displays, while hundreds of container gardens and hanging baskets, water features, and carefully preserved 100-plus-year-old oaks, beech, pine and other trees add to the visitor's experience. All the landscaped elements work together echo their intended European charm.
A common mistake in many designs, however, is boring uniformity. Trees—often all the same species—are frequently part of a formal, monotonous layout. As one architect and syndicated columnist Arrol Gellner of Emeryville, Calif., describes, "trees are spaced exactly the same distance apart, seemingly poked into the ground like so many Tootsie Pops."
Gellner attributes much of this cookie-cutter approach to habit, hurry and lack of forethought.
"In principle, it has to be a gathering place—not formal, not arranged," Gellner says. "It must have a natural appeal. There is an element of serendipity or accident."
Appearing natural, however, takes effort and careful planning that goes beyond the mechanical output of a computer drafting program. To help avoid the stiffness of symmetry, Gellner suggests varying the distance between a variety of trees and allowing the design to be, as in nature, off-center, imprecise and unpredictable.