NJASLA 2024

 It isn't too late to sign up for NJASLA 2024 in Atlantic City.

Happy Parking Day!

Happy Parking Day!

The ASLA and NJASLA have helped grow this into an annual tradition of reclaiming a little asphalt for humans for a few hours. Keep an eye out in New Brunswick for our installation or watch online at #ASLAPD. Last year's was a big success and this year could be even bigger.

Pruning in the Park

Volunteer Now for Pruning in the Park, April 13th at Branch Brook Park Help preserve the vitality of a world famous cherry collection!! Date: April 13, 2013 Time: 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM. Free bagels and coffee from 8:00 AM. Location: Meet in Branch Brook Park, Newark, NJat the Abudato Center Parking Lot PLEASE RSVP THIS WEEK:Contact President Tim Delorm(tim.delorm@terranoble.net ), or call 609 393 7500 Volunteer for a "hands-on" Public Service morning. The cherry trees should still be in full bloom, so it will definitely be worth the trip!!!. Be on time for direction by Paul Cowie, Branch Brook Park Arborist. Paul will provide tips on pruning and safety precautions. Hand tools will be available, but bring pole saws and pole pruners, if you have them. If turn out is strong for this event, NJASLA hopes to continue public service efforts at Branch Brook Park. FYI: Take in the cherry blossoms, bike races, fun runs and other scheduled events for adults and children at the Branch Brook Park Cherry Blossom Festival, April 6 through April 20 (Essex County Branch Brook Park). Also, the North American Tree Climbing Competition will be held in the Southern Division on April 27 and 28. Top tree climbers from across the U.S. and Canada will be competing. All worth seeing.

NJ ASLA is coming - Are you going?

SUBURBIA TRANSFORMED, One Garden at a Time

SUBURBIA TRANSFORMED, One Garden at a Time:
EXPLORING THE AESTHETICS OF LANDSCAPE EXPERIENCE IN THE
AGE OF SUSTAINABILITY

A Competition for Built Residential Landscapes

Through a juried competition, Suburbia Transformed, One Garden at a Time will assemble contemporary projects achieving the goal of exploring green technologies within the context of the aesthetics of human landscape experience on small residential sites. The competition, sponsored by the James Rose Center and co-sponsored by NJASLA, Garden Design Magazine, and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, will result in a traveling exhibition and catalogue. The emphasis is on how emerging sustainable strategies and tactics are used to create human landscape experiences that are beautiful, inspiring, perhaps profound; and which might serve as examples for transforming the suburban residential fabric, one garden at a time.

Outstanding projects will be selected by an international jury of academics and practitioners including:

Shane Coen, Principal, Coen+Partners, Minneapolis, New York
Patrick M. Condon, Professor, James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments, University of British Columbia
Gary R. Hilderbrand, FASLA, FAAR, Principal, Reed Hilderbrand Associates Inc., Watertown, MA
Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Virginia
Dean Cardasis, FASLA, Professor of Landscape Architecture, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; Principal, Cave Hill Landscape Architects

For detailed information and/or to enter see http://www.jamesrosecenter.org

Great presentations

One of the great thrills of teaching is seeing the students excel.  I have to brag on some of our students who did a great job at NJ ASLA.  The students from the Fall 2008 studio looking at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed were represented by Ben Heller and Ed Krafcik.  The design work was presented in a remarkably professional lecture, in which they were both energetic and relaxed.  And, on Monday the class brought home a design award too. Well done!

NJASLA 2010 Chapter Awards Program

Mark your calendars now:

NJASLA 2010 CHAPTER AWARDS PROGRAM

NJASLA is issuing the CALL FOR ENTRIES for the 2010 NJASLA CHAPTER
AWARDS PROGRAM. This is an opportunity for Landscape Architects to
proudly exhibit their work and significant accomplishments before their
peers, clients and the general public. Deadline for entries is Friday,
October 23, 2009.

For more information and an entry form, please go to our website
www.njasla.org <http://www.njasla.org/>

Mapping NJ Landscapes

I get a fair number of questions about where students, potential students, practitioners and just plain old fans of landscape architecture can go to see special landscapes nearby. As an initial list, I came up with a short, varied list of examples of landscapes that our students might see in the Garden State as a way of getting to know some places and spaces. But that list sparked an interest in something that dug a little deeper and, with the support of Rutgers' Department of Landscape Architecture, the Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis, and the NJ ASLA, we created a couple different online resources for exploring these.

First we created a database of landscapes that is available in multiple formats at the NJ Landscape Architectural Sites page. With just under 300 sites, the database can be explored as a GoogleEarth KML or as a pre-composed map in ZoomIt. If you grab the KML data, make sure you check out the different attributes.

More recently we created an interactive map interface at http://njlasites.rutgers.edu/ that allows users to use their browser as a way of exploring New Jersey's landscapes.

It is valuable to note that users can select a category to look more closely at. In the graphic below I selected out just campus designs.
We still hope to add a richer set of attributes available through a tab for each site as well as photos of the site, thousands of which were already taken by Jenna Pauloski. And, there have been some notable recent projects in New Jersey that we want to add (like the work by MVV on the Princeton Campus).

Big publicity for Landscape Architecture

The NJ ASLA and Rutgers Department of Landscape Architecture were in yesterday's Home News and Tribune as part of an advertisement of Landscape Architecture Month. Aside from our lecture series, they also mentioned other ways to celebrate including Ag Field Day and an Elaine Mills historic tree tour of the Lawrenceville School campus.

Mark your calendars now

NJASLA is coming to a casino near you......unless you live in Nevada. In which case NJASLA is coming to a casino that is inconveniently distant to you.

NJ LA Practice Act passed by the legislature

The NJ ASLA has succeeded in getting the NJ Legislature to pass the NJ Practice Act:

The New Jersey Chapter of ASLA is proud to announce that Monday, June 23, 2008 was a red letter day for NJASLA, as the bill that will upgrade the “Title Act” (protecting only the use of the word Landscape Architect for state Certified Landscape Architects) to a “Practice Act” that defines an inclusionary scope of work and duties that a state licensed Landscape Architect may perform and submit to government agencies, including “overlapping” practices in common with other professionals in the land development field. The new Act provides for all actively certified landscape architects to be automatically elevated to practice license status.

The NJ LA Sites are finally online

We are finally unveiling the first public product from our Landscape Architectural Sites of New Jersey project with the ASLA and NJASLA. This is an effort to find different ways to help more people find interesting landscapes and sites throughout New Jersey and beyond. As a first draft we have posted both a Zoomify image and a KMZ file for Google Earth.

Since the list has been developed, in part, by culling information from other sources, I haven't yet visited all of the sites myself. Here are a few that I am interested in visiting sometime soon:

• Smithville Floating Walkway
• Deep Cut Gardens
• Cattus Island
• Leaming's Run Gardens
• The Wetlands Institute

Most importantly, we hope to continue improving the static web site this summer while trying to get our online map hack up and running too. We need to add the list of 9-11 memorials, link more of Jenna's photos and improve the data representations (we hate the current Google Earth symbols as much as you do). But to really make it work, we could really use your help. Please use the comment section below as a way to add to our to do list. What surprised you? What are the glaring omissions? What form of data do you still want?

NJASLA newsletter

The August/Septmeber NJASLA newsletter is online.

NJ ASLA 2007

The NJASLA has started to announce the details for its 2007 Annual Meeting in Atlantic City. It is being held January 28 - 30, 2007 at the Trump Taj Mahal. It is a valuable opportunity for students and professionals alike. The room rates are reasonably cheap ($75) and the meeting often helps students work in exchange for a discount on their conference registration.

Aside from our own talent (Drs. Goodman, Hoefer, Hartman, Hamilton, Goto, etc.) there are also some great keynotes with one by Laurie Olin looking like my early favorite.