Be the first to ask a question about Principles of Ecological Landscape Design. Lists with This Book. Feb 25, Kelly Brenner rated it it was amazing. What if, instead of building and maintaining artistic creations, we worked to develop and manage living systems? This is a book that encompasses, in great detail, all of the aspects of designing a landscap "What if, instead of depicting nature, we allowed nature in? This is a book that encompasses, in great detail, all of the aspects of designing a landscape with ecology in mind.

It is a comprehensive manual, both instructional and case study at once. It offers the designer the opportunity to make ecological design part of their regular practice by giving them the framework of understanding complex systems and how it affects not only design, but the long term life of the designed landscape. Instead of giving the reader a recipe to follow, this book teaches you how to cook. This book will take you from a designer who follows simple instructions to a designer who fully understands the systems of the landscape and can comprehend how everything fits together.

An ecological design may incorporate restoration of degraded ecosystems, but it does not principally seek to put things back the way they were. First it gives a lesson with details about the subject at hand, often accompanied by scientific studies illustrating the point. This can be a bit overwhelming if you have little or no past education on the topic, but to balance this overload, it is usually followed by a real world case study illustrating the lesson.

The case studies are a great selection from all over the country, I was particularly happy to see Olympic Sculpture Park featured in the lesson about designing plantings modeled on natural communities. Following the case study, Beck will then offer a summary with simplified instructions on how to apply each concept into the design process. There are so many good points throughout the book, I found myself stopping to constantly highlight sentences and entire paragraphs.

I appreciated how Beck addresses all aspects of the ecological, regional and seasonal landscape. He discusses for example how to make use of existing structures to benefit the design instead of pointing out all of the ways which it is a problem. I also appreciate the recognition that ecological design is certainly grey, there is no black and white here.

For example he points out that some exotic plants can be compatible with an ecological design while at the same time explaining in some instances exotic plants which are attractive to wildlife can be detrimental to the environment. For example, when discussing using the right plants in the right place, he takes it from understanding the simple idea of a shade plant in the shade all the way down to sourcing seeds grown in the right locale. This book will be on many shelves to come, but not only on ecology professors and firms which specialize in ecological designs, but all practicing designers.

It should be required reading for every student of landscape architecture and required for practicing designers to get their continuing education credits. It is a well-written, thorough book which will be more and more important in the future, a must-have for anyone who is connected to creating landscapes. Apr 26, Steven McKay rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is the book I wish I had written, done better than I would have achieved.

This book is not exactly a how-to guide for the home landscaper, but rather a clear, concise introduction to the ecological principles hence the title to be considered should you want to create a more sustainable landscape. Reading this book took me back to my time as an ecology grad student, one of my favorite periods in my life.

This book energized me as I begin to thoroughly renovate my own small urban yard. Feb 05, Nikki rated it it was amazing Shelves: Had to return to library.

Margery in Dańsk

An in-depth, readable, exciting treatment of the subject. Meredith Juliana rated it really liked it Aug 16, Ibrahim Ragab rated it it was amazing Dec 30, Heather Holm rated it really liked it Feb 07, James Golden rated it it was amazing Feb 23, Douglas rated it it was amazing Apr 11, Christopher rated it liked it May 27, David rated it really liked it May 22, Jean Ni rated it liked it Jul 20, Evelyn Hadden rated it it was amazing Feb 17, Laurin rated it it was amazing Mar 19, Marie rated it it was amazing Jun 29, Anna Dzieciolowska rated it it was amazing Oct 24, Jenetta marked it as to-read Jan 29, Niko marked it as to-read Feb 02, Aleisha marked it as to-read Feb 03, Once again, the ship becomes church-like for this particular felaweshipe of East Anglians and Danskers.

And so Margery Kempe, who began her journey to Dansk as something of an exilic Jonah figure, ends it as Mary: This last analogy seems a little forced, but it is Margery who makes it: This comes as part of a firm bid for closure, for final justification of willful traveling, as the epical sea journey comes to an end:.

Sche went at the biddyng of owr Lord, and therefor hyr Maistyr, whech bad hir gone, purveyid for hir so that sche ferd as wel as any of hir felawschep, worschep and preysyng be to owr Lord therfor. The description of the journey to Dansk, then, assumes a highly-wrought literary character, analogising ship to church and church to ship through complex figural and typological strategies. To don chevisaunce , however, can also mean to make atonement for sins.

Even her perennial instinct to form felaweshipe while journeying speaks to both worlds. She seeks out those who would travel her roads to religious sites of pilgrimage; but above all, she seeks out those of her own nacyon. The symbolic overdetermination of this extraordinary city can hardly be exaggerated. It is where shipyard workers were murdered in , giving rise to Solidarity, to sanctification by a Polish pope, and ultimately so the Solidarity Museum says to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Postwar rebuilding was quickly undertaken as part of a heroic effort that saw Germans move out of Danzig and Poles move in. The lines of reconstructed houses often align imperfectly with the original foundations; there is a thus a civilised civil war in Gdansk between muddy-booted archaeologists, academic historians, and property developers.

Green Gate, to our left, leads directly to Langer Markt and Langgasse, the most important civic thoroughfare of the Main Town. The most prominent feature here is the famous Zuraw, the huge medieval crane. This wall survives from the fortifications of the castle of the Teutonic knights. The castle controls entry to the city and the port rather like the Tower of London protects, or overlooks, London.

The Teutonic castle is the first grand structure that Margery Kempe and company would have seen in Very little of it survives today: In , when invited to put down a revolt at Danzig, the Order restored order and elected to stay; the castle fortress was then built and Teutonic Chelm law applied.

In , the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order moved from Venice to Marienburg see the image on the right , the fortress 58 km southeast of Danzig. Marienberg castle contains an impressive fireplace frieze of Teutonic knights fighting pagans that dates from the fourteenth century see the picture of the frieze below.


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It is currently in a recreation room, the place where knights met after their three meals a day. One Grand Master, Konrad von Jungingen, kept pet monkeys: The keeping of monkeys speaks, inter alia , to significant involvement in international trade. The Libelle of English Polycye , a remarkable poem about seaborne commerce from the s, 42 speaks of the great galleys of Venice and Florence exporting.

This poet clearly disapproves of such frivolous imports: But the Baltic merchants who took Mediterranean-based luxuries to their native region might have taken a more romantic view of their own enterprise and aventure. It would be misleading to posit straightforward opposition between Hanseatic merchants and Teutonic Knights at Dansk: The Knights actually oversaw the design and building of the Rechtstadt, the Main town of Danzig that was the heart of its trading and civic life.

The charter was granted in ; the process of building was technically demanding, since city buildings essentially floated on driven-pillar foundations. This last detail seems especially remarkable: A message from the Teutonic castle in Dansk could reach the Marienburg fortress, 54 km away, in about an hour through a series of relays across satellite castles. Within this Marienkirke, in the east wall of the chancel, we find the chapel of St Hedwig Jadwiga: On July 15th, , the seemingly invincible Teutonic Knights had been defeated by the combined forces of Poland and Lithuania at the battle of Grunwald.

Principles of Ecological Landscape Design

In , this murder of mayors was just over 20 years old; the Teutonic Knights would survive at Danzig for another 21 years. Forty years earlier, the heroic ethos of the Prussian knights had still just about been alive. Margery Kempe, who sometimes seems like a medieval Zelig, knew about this: The bows bent by the English at Agincourt were likely made of Polish wood, brought from Pruce to England in boats traveling in the opposite direction.

Margery Kempe may not have sought out scenes of chivalry when walking through Dansk, although they were very difficult to avoid. There is the intriguing statue of a woman holding two children: This sculpture is worth dwelling on for a moment, not because the young girl in the blonde braid is a Margaret she is not , but because it offers further clues to the peculiar culture of Dansk.

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The sculptural group and the painted background both date from c. The unflappable princess wears a girdle: For the merchants of Dansk, this scene was especially appropriate. Firstly, the idea of a saint killing a plague-bearing beast that lurks in deep waters was especially appealing to a seaport like Gdansk; the great pandemic of spread primarily through seaborne traffic. Secondly, George is a wonderfully chivalric saint; his damsel-rescuing and beast-slaying overlap with more secular exploits of medieval romance.

And thirdly, George is a genuine crusader, one who operates on the borders of Christendom: Margery Kempe had ample opportunity to see motifs of St George outside as well as inside churches in Dansk: These newcomers drew members from lower social echelons; new statutes of suggest considerable widening of membership. Secondly, merchants and townspeople lower down the social scale aspire to chivalry: A rather obscene English fabliau from the mid-sixteenth-century shows impressive knowledge of the workings of Dansk: This takes us back to the world of the statutes. In the s, the Artushof was evidently a vital civic and social space for locals and aliens alike.

There is little doubt that the idea of an Arthurian Court spread from, and was thought to have spread from, England. This, then, is the conflated model that quickly spread itself along both trade and military routes, from Thorn to Elbing and Danzig. The Book of Margery Kempe , I have suggested, is not to be categorised a priori as a religious treatise, a pious vita , but rather as a text negotiating and absorbing various genres and values hagiographic, mercantile, and romantic.

Models of ships hang from the ceiling; such ships were often awarded as prizes in chivalric competitions. In the first arcade of the east wall there is now a painting, c. The city in the background here, top left, is clearly Danzig; and the ship depicted here is an actual trading vessel of the period. This painting is called The Ship of the Church. Ship-shaped pilgrim badges are often found here; golden vessels presented to churches for containing and pouring holy oils are often fashioned as vessels, that is, as ships in the shape of a jug. Even in Solidarity Square, such circularity persists: The great opening sea journey of Book II arrives triumphantly at its promised destination: And so she is trapped: The solution comes in two parts: These difficulties are intriguing: Margery is in effect detained at Dansk at the pleasure of the Teutonic Order lines And than myth sche han no leve to gon owt of that lond, for sche was an Englisch woman, and so had sche gret vexacyon and meche lettyng [hinderance] er sche myth getyn leve of on of the heerys of Pruce for to gon thens.

But following further disputes in both London and Dansk, a period of supreme tension was reached: The chief factor here was civil war: Arthur, we have noted, would return to Britain in the form of bookish recreation, purveyed by a Hanseatic printer, in By then the victory of the Hanse in the Baltic would be complete.


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  • There were two holy wives, subjects of lengthy canonisation processes, for Margery to contemplate in Dansk; the first of these was Bridget of Sweden. In , following that epical, old-age pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Bridget died in Rome; her relics, carried slowly back to Sweden, rested awhile in Dansk see the picture on the right: A strangely hybrid religious institution subsequently grew up at Dansk, promoted by Konrad von Jungingen that high Master of the Teutonic Order whose monkeys damaged wallpaintings.

    This was a community of pious female penitents, so-called Magdalenes, supervised by Bridgetines imported from Sweden and following a liturgical rite laid down by the Teutonic Order. To cap it all, the church co-dedicated to Mary Magdalene and St Bridget lay just across the street from a massive watermill see the picture on the right: The other wife, widow, and holywoman for Margery to contemplate at Dansk was Dorothea of Montau.

    Dorothea, from first to last, from birth to death and beyond, is a creature of the Teutonic Order. Her father was a Netherlandic colonist brought to Prussia by the Teutonic Knights. Montau, just a few miles from the great castle at Marienburg, had its own Hof or regional Teutonic outpost. The Dorothea of Das Leben is given to extreme masochism and self-wounding; she was unconditionally obedient to masculine authority her brother, her husband, her father confessor, her God.

    The parole of Margery Kempe, au contraire , is the glory of her text. In the s, Dorothea was invoked as Protectress of Prussia against new barbarism at the borders, namely Russian Bolshevism. The Book of Margery Kempe is also a text of the s: Early reviews convey the shock and awe of meeting Margery for the first time. There is much more in this vein, but also one observation of genius.

    Froissart is a romancer, believer and freelance knight who travels Europe, forms felaweshipe where he can, and survives to tell his tales. For Margery Kempe, the surviving of travel is the point and miracle that enables and reinvigorates her project of a written life. At Dansk in , however, Margery is a long way in every sense from Robert Spryngolde, the father confessor who was very likely her co-author or scribe; her passage back to him proves long and difficult. On returning to England, Margery did not, apparently, head straight for Lynn: The difficult return to her hometown then follows.

    It is worth noting, finally, that when Margery does get down to the business of Book -making, religion is not the only thing on her mind, or in her life. Margery thus reembraces the civic and commercial world of her youth even as she is co-creating her second Book. The vibrant culture of Dansk, with its complex interplay of chivalric and religious, romantic and commercial registers, and its intimate ties with England, pushes memory back to glory days at Lynn, and forward to ambitions for writing.

    I would like to thank the Master of Birkbeck for extending this invitation, plus others at Birkbeck whose help in producing the lecture in both spoken and printed form has proved invaluable: Luchterhand, , p. Michael Hamburger and Christopher Middleton Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, , p. Arnold and Katherine J.

    Principles of Ecological Landscape Design by Travis Beck

    Brewer, , pp. Longman, , p. This is undoubtedly true: Arnold and Lewis, esp. University of Texas Press, , p. The Middle English prose Three Kings of Cologne , a text whose genre Julia Boffey cannily resists defining, melds travel writing and romance exotica with articulation of familiar Biblical scenes: As Boffey notes, this text was popular with women readers; Margery very likely stopped at Cologne en route to Aachen in Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain.

    Essays for Felicity Riddy , ed.

    Meale, and Lesley Johnson Turnhout: Brepols, , p. At least seven English versions of parts of the book survive in fifteenth-century manuscripts, including two major translations both British Library manuscripts. Life and Selected Revelations , ed. Marguerite Tjader Harris, tr. Albert Ryle Kezel New York: Paulist Press , p. It is nonetheless possible to get some sense of an eventful journey. There are thus three female bodies at this death scene: Bridget, nursing her son, the Blessed Virgin as midwife, and the feminised, dying body of Charles himself.

    The Boydell Press, , pp. Routledge, , pp. See Morris, St Birgitta , pp. The first of the three response groups, in lines , shows a clear grasp of the perils awaiting Margery. For intelligent meditation on such matters, see A. Brewer, , Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: Edward Arnold, , pp. Oxford University Press, , pp.

    His vessels, encountering violent storms, touched on the coasts of Denmark, Norway, and Scotland before making it back to Tynemouth; Gloucester, happy to have survived, returned home to Pleshy. Being the Accounts kept by his Treasurer during two years , ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith London: Camden Society, , pp.

    Penguin, , Part III p. The addition of exclamation marks here and elsewhere, in the Book of Margery Kempe as in other texts, adds tonal color that is difficult to control with considerable hermeneutic consequences. We seem to need something between the modern exclamation mark which often seems over-emphatic and, as in medieval manuscripts, its absence. But Troilus, too, is in a rudderless boat; his true aventure or errancy, from the viewpoint of the end of the text, concerns eternal salvation.