Interviewed by Cathy Sivak
  EnviroEducation.com Contributing Writer
  June 12, 2006

YOU & YOUR CAREER

Tell us about your career in the field of landscape architecture. What area of the field do you specialize in?

I've been practicing for about 25 years in Colorado and have worked in numerous areas, including residential subdivision planning, healthcare facilities, urban design, corporate facilities and park design. I worked with a couple of small firms when I got out of school, then I worked for EDAW about 10 years before starting my own practice. Today, our firm focuses on park design as well healthcare and corporate facilities. We also feature sustainable design, which many people feel is important.

I've been in my own practice for about 13 years now. I didn't really want to have my own business, but changes at EDAW would have led to a transfer, and my wife and I wanted to stay in Fort Collins. As a result, I struck out my own. We're doing really well and we're fortunate to have outstanding people working for the company and we've had some exceptional clients. We have a pretty flat organizational structure. I try to encourage myself, and everybody in the firm to be the best they can, and I try to provide the opportunities that allow them to excel.

It's important to be a member of a national organization that represents the profession on issues. The biggest benefit is having someone in Washington to lobby for landscape architects. Plus it's a national society, so we're able to get together once a year and share information on the state of the profession and at the same time receive recognition for the work that we do.

We won four Colorado awards and one national award; the Colorado awards really represented exemplary work in Colorado. The awards were judged by peers in an associated ALSA chapter from another state. One project was the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which is a major water supply organization for northern Colorado. The work we did with them was focused on telling the story of how water is delivered in the Colorado Front Range to people that live here. It was also a demonstration project on how water is used in our landscapes. We live in a semi-arid environment, with only 15 inches of rainfall a year, so every inch counts. We have to be careful of how we use it.

The second was the Aurora Xeriscape Demonstration Garden for the city of Aurora, which is a community adjacent to Denver. The project was created in 2002, and construction complete in 2003. In 2002 we had the worst drought in Colorado history, this was a very good example of low water use plant materials and strategies that look good and don't take a lot of water.

Another state award was for our work on the ConAgra Beef world headquarters in Greeley, Colo. Our effort was to develop a corporate campus that brought national stature to the overall appearance of the campus.

Another award we won at the state and national level was for Ute Cemetery in Aspen, Colo. The award was for restoration of a pauper's cemetery which was created in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The cemetery not only contained paupers it also contained a number of civil war veterans. Our effort was to work very delicately with the landscape and restore it from a deteriorating condition. It was a very controversial project; residents of Aspen were concerned we were going to gentrify the cemetery landscape and create a meticulously manicured cemetery. In fact, it's a very natural aspen forest. Our challenge was to work together with a historic specialist in re-emerging the cemetery out of the forest, while still preserving the rustic mountain quality of Aspen. It was an interesting challenge. In the end we not only won an ASLA National award, but we also received a local historic preservation award.

The recognition is important on both a professional and personal level. It is a sense of attainment when you gain recognition by your peers that the work you are doing is exemplary work. On a professional level, getting awards is helpful in recruiting new employees as well as obtaining new commissions.

The environment is a pretty spiritual experience for me. Something that we try to bring to our everyday work is that spirituality in the landscape, so when people enter one of our projects, they come out feeling better, happier, more inspired and in touch with nature.

There's one we're working on right now which I think will really be outstanding, the Medical Center of the Rockies, a new hospital in Loveland, Colo. The landscape we're developing there is going to be very sustainable and very therapeutic. We are trying to blend and merge the two concepts of sustainability and outdoor therapy. Fortunately we have a very supportive client, Poudre Valley Health System. We think that when this is completed, it is going to be a national model for how to build landscapes that work well in the medical environment.

One of the things that makes this profession extremely interesting is that it always is changing. The type of work we do varies so much. For example, in the morning I can be out in field working with a contractor, and that evening I can be making a presentation to a city council. The scope can vary from a small garden space to a 4,000-acre master plan. That kind of breadth provides for a lot of change during the week and during the day. You're not locked into doing the same thing every day, which I think helps to create a lot of long term interest.

It is challenging, we typically have very demanding schedules of our projects and we have to meet very exacting performance standards to get our projects approved through government agencies, and to meet client expectations for timeliness, quality and cost. Those things can be very challenging, and sometimes meeting with the public can be really challenging. It can be quite difficult on occasion. One of the things about owning your own business is working with your employees becomes an important part of it, which is demanding in itself. The human resources side is something we don't often think about when you opening a business, but it becomes very important.

The rewarding side is to be in your project and to see people enjoying it, people picnicking, children on the playgrounds, playing hockey, sitting in a plaza. It's a pretty rewarding feeling to see people using your space and enjoying it.

There are a couple of differences between architecture and landscape architecture. For an architect, the building gets constructed, and they see the final project completed and the building opened. In landscape architecture, you have to be a bit more patient, because the palette you work with is a plant environment, and you have to wait for things to grow. With my projects, it might 5 to 10 years before it looks the way you want it to.

The greatest success is still the goal I'm trying to achieve. I really would like for BHA Design to be world class. You could say I'm still trying for that one.

Some of the popular tools of the trade are AutoCAD, SketchUp, Adobe Photoshop, 3D Studio Vis, Prisma Color pencils; the tools that I use the most are felt tip pens and colored pencil.

People think of landscape architects as having detailed knowledge about plant materials, and we don't, though we've got a working knowledge, enough to understand and use them in a creative way.

Extremely important… on almost every project, we end up involved with civil engineers, architects, geotechnical engineers, soil specialists, traffic engineers and other professionals. There's no way to really achieve success without tapping into the expertise of other professionals. Sometimes we lead them, it depends on the project

We are striving to be world class in northern Colorado and the surrounding area. We have three focus areas: sustainability, therapeutic garden design and fun. All three are interrelated, and we also focus on one point or another on separate projects.

It's important for people to be passionate about anything they do for it to be significant to them; or they probably won't be very successful.

EDUCATION INFORMATION & ADVICE

Tell us about your landscape architecture education.

I have a bachelor degree in psychology and a master's degree in landscape architecture from the University of Colorado in Denver. I've been ‘Lleed' trained through the US Green Building Council and I teach sustainable site design at Colorado State University. I also have a certificate in healthcare garden design from the Chicago Botanic Gardens.

I fell into the field. It was not an intentional thing; I began in architecture, found the landscape architecture program and grew into it.

I was living in Denver, and investigated the environmental design school at the University of Colorado. That's when I found out about their program with landscape architecture.

How hard we work. If I'd known how hard we have to work, I might have chosen another profession. You work hard year in and year out, there's never really a lull (especially when you own your own businesses). What you find out is there is no homeostasis, you're always either looking for work or trying to figure out how you are going to get the work done. It's a knife edge that you walk and you're constantly falling from one side to the other, trying to stay balanced.

My graduate program was very detail oriented, and it helped me to get started in my career in a very productive sense.

I see a lot of different students coming out of different programs, and I find sometimes undergrad students are better prepared than graduate students in the landscape architecture profession. The reason for that is that the undergraduates quite often go through a program where they learn a lot of really good detailed information on design, whereas graduate students that have an undergraduate degree, particularly those with a degree in a different field, come out thinking more on a higher level, but less prepared to walk into an office and start being productive. Plus they have higher expectations for income, which is not always productive for the graduate or their employer.

They should meet the instructors, they should look at the curriculum, and they should make sure there is a both a curriculum that is detailed as well as one which encourages thinking at a higher level. It should be an accredited program, through the Council of Landscape Architecture Registration Board (CLARB). Accreditation is really important. There is a uniform national exam which gauges students' abilities on the same levels, not related to unique regional characteristics. The exam is called the Landscape Architecture Registration Exam (LARE). In individual states, there will be unique things that you need to know, which are quite often in a supplemental section of the LARE. It's important for students to take the LARE exam at some point. You can practice without one, as long as you work for someone that is licensed, but ultimately, it is important because it is comprehensive and assesses your skills in a wide variety of areas.

Most students don't know enough going in to really make a determination. If a student happens to know, I would suggest evaluating the professors and curriculums at different schools. The schools tend to vary depending on the interests of the faculty and their particular interests.

I really find attitude, talent, and motivation are the prime determinants in a student's success. I do see some differences in curriculum and portfolios but it is really the person and not the school that is important. School provides the structure, but it is the student themselves that actually make the difference. A student can be content with being spoon fed or they can take the initiative and decide to become an outstanding landscape architect. At the end of their college years their approach and dedication are reflected in their portfolios, resumes, and the way they present themselves.

Students should look at other practitioners in the field that they think highly of, find out what schools they went to, and then go and investigate those schools.

When students are applying, the best thing is to work on their design, drawing skills, and to have a nice portfolio with nice drawings, as well as to be able to demonstrate some aesthetic skill and judgment. I hate to say it, but it also helps if you have basic level CAD skills. While they are secondary to their importance for growth potential as a designer, CAD is a skill required in the profession and it is the tool of the apprentice.

Being able to write is also a great competitive edge. So many students come out of school under-prepared in writing skills and yet it is an important ability in any profession.

A master's degree does have value, I think it's stronger if a student has an undergrad degree in the field and then goes into grad school, although I'm not a good example. It's good to work for few years, to understand the business better, before going into grad school. That way they can tailor their graduate school program to their interests.

Always think broader than just the profession, look, read, and study things that are not necessarily directly related to landscape architecture in order to broaden their understanding of the world. Ultimately that helps in thinking through design solutions.

With my limited knowledge of what's out there, I would say that there isn't a good balance in technical skills vs. conceptual skills. The programs tend to lean one way or the other, mostly toward conceptual. But it is absolutely critical that the students also get the technical skills so they can operate in the apprentice role when they first graduate.

CAREER INFORMATION & ADVICE

On a basic level, what skills are required to be a landscape architect?

A basic artistic ability is important although the profession has a wide variety of opportunities; you can be a good manager and you don't have to be a great designer to be a great manager, and vice versa and still do well in the business. The rare person is one who can do both.

I would always encourage students to think deeply about issues, as opposed to just superficially trying to create quick solutions.

The need to reduce resource consumption and the way we use our environments is a major focus. There's a trend in United States and internationally to become less consumptive. The U.S. uses one quarter of the world's natural resources and yet we represent only 4% of the earth's population. The way we plan our cities and the way we plan our landscapes can all contribute to this trend. Both are significant tools of our profession.

There are a lot of disciplines competing in the same arena that we compete in, the ability to sustain professional integrity within that competition is pretty challenging. Civil engineers and architects are both fields that are seeing the value of what we do, so it's getting, a lot more competitive in the areas that have traditionally been left to landscape architects.

It is where we do research for almost everything. The advent of Google means that in half a second, we can have in our hands thousands of articles pertaining to anything we need. It has really impacted our ability to do research. Additionally our company has a web site (www.bhadesign.com), which is used by prospective students and clients to investigate our company and to evaluate our capabilities.

The artistic group out there, with all of their designs related to art, is a pretty hot profession right now.

It's a pretty steady industry; a growing field. In five years there will be a lot more landscape architects but there will also be a lot more opportunities.

Make sure that your cover letter is absolutely perfect with spelling and grammar. It's always helpful to call, even if an ad says to send; a call shows you have an interest in a particular firm. A call is the difference between broadcasting a resume vs. a genuine interest in a particular firm. I also highly recommend researching the firm where you apply. An interviewer will always feel complimented if you can say you have checked their web page and you like the work they are doing.

People at the top are making over $100,000-plus a year, the average salary after about five years is in the $50,000 range; straight out of school they are looking at $30,000 to $35,000.

It contributes in a lot of ways. It's very important. The way we plan our cities has a direct relationship on living there; we create urban environments that effect livability. The way we work with natural areas has a great deal to do with nature animals and plants. We affect the world in a pretty direct way, and I think it's pretty significant.

Be dedicated and passionate about your pursuit of the field.

EDITOR'S NOTE: If you would like to contact Mr. Hendee directly about the field of landscape architecture, click here.

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