Is it ok to trim back your neighbor’s prized oak tree if its limbs begin achieving into your yard? Who’s liable for pruning the overgrown hedge that runs alongside your property line? What about that strip of grass among your homes that no a single wants to assert when it will come time to mow the garden?
The problem of who’s liable for what when it will come to landscaping emerges where by your assets ends and your neighbor’s begins. Even though these conflicts can often be solved with a helpful dialogue, often they escalate into bitter disputes and lawsuits if neighbors can’t concur. Find out what you are and are not dependable for when landscaping starts off creeping throughout residence strains.
Choose care of getting older trees.
Legal guidelines differ from state to state, but, typically speaking, any tree whose trunk resides on your home belongs to you. If it falls on your neighbor’s home, irrespective of whether or not you are liable is dependent on the tree’s situation.
Whilst you will not be liable if a healthier tree falls on your neighbor’s residence as the result of a lousy storm, you may possibly have to foot the bill if you neglected to take treatment of a dead tree that was obviously threatening your neighbor’s house.
Get to the root of the issue.
Tree roots can develop into sewer lines, walkways, and even foundations, triggering key troubles. If the roots of a neighbor’s tree are creating harm to your house, you simply cannot pressure your neighbor to do anything about it, but you—generally-–have the correct to take away them.
Continue to keep in head that slicing out all those roots may perhaps destroy the tree, which could upset your neighbor and even cause them to find damages from you. Make sure you have right documentation exhibiting that the roots had been in truth leading to destruction to your assets in advance of chopping them out.
Photo: istockphoto.com
Trim shrubs and trees with care.
Although most folks know they simply cannot enter their neighbor’s garden and commence chopping down offending trees or shrubs, numerous aren’t conscious of the restrictions they have on trimming areas of trees and shrubs that encroach onto their assets.
You have the right to trim a tree or shrub encroaching into your property, but that doesn’t imply you can hack off every single branch and limb that is suspended in your air place. If you do so significantly trimming that it damages or destroys the tree, you’ll be liable for damages.
Be aware of a increasing problem.
A person of the major issues men and women make when planting new landscaping is failing to take into consideration just how significant that minor plant that came in a 3-gallon container could become. Be sure to check out the experienced width and top of any shrub prior to planting it in near proximity to your assets line. If you plant a shrub that crosses that line, your neighbor has the suitable to trim it back.
Image: istockphoto.com
Possess people autumn leaves.
Even though you may perhaps despise the mess your neighbor’s magnolia tree drops in your yard, it is not their responsibility to clear it up. Any leaves, acorns, branches or cones that drop or blow on to your home from neighboring yards are your duty on your own. And, just in circumstance you were being setting up on returning them to their operator, blowing individuals leaves back again into your neighbor’s property is not an appropriate way to dispose of them.
Mow outside the house the traces.
Seeking to gauge that invisible line that is the boundary among yards when you are mowing the lawn can be a challenge. Though numerous persons recognize a neighbor who normally takes that more go with the mower, those who are distinct about the peak of their grass may well get challenge with that observe of getting a mow over the house line. Although you can put in a fence to outline the boundary, a much better selection may perhaps be to chat with your neighbor about a mutually agreeable remedy.
Share the load with shrubs.
Boxwoods, holly, arborvitae, and other evergreen shrubs that grow tightly jointly are common property line boundaries. As with trees, when shrubs run instantly in excess of the house line, both equally get-togethers are accountable for retaining their respective sides. Approach a hedge trimming working day after a yr with your neighbor to make certain it has a uniform search from both of those qualities.
Planting on the house line.
Photo: istockphoto.com
If you want to plant trees or shrubs on your home line, you are going to need to have to come to an settlement with your neighbor very first. Not like a fence, which is a static item, trees and shrubs are dwelling matters that will very likely get wider as they increase, encroaching on the neighbor’s assets. As these kinds of, both property homeowners need to have to consent to planting trees or shrubs that straddle the home line. Also, both of those events should also concur when taking away any trees or crops that sit on the residence line.
Not sensation vine.
Though we imagine mainly of trees when it will come to foliage that can hurt assets, other crops also have the likely to trigger difficulties. Out of manage vines these as kudzu and poison ivy can provide down fences and even destruction walls. When this transpires, it’s generally the duty of whoever owns these plants to choose care of the harm.
Some municipalities even have ordinances that require residents to control invasive vegetation that originate on their assets or experience a fantastic. Before it receives that much, first try to function with your neighbor to either control or eradicate the offending vines.
Study in which to seem to obtain the house traces.
Analyzing whether a tree, shrubs, or that disputed segment of grass no a person would like to mow are on your home or your neighbor’s assets demands you to know the site of the residence line.
There are a couple of means to locate the residence line: Some qualities have steel pins in the ground that mark their boundaries. If you just can’t find pins, you may require to head to the area zoning office to get a copy of the plat information and facts for your property.
Darkish colors are the compromise that sets the phase for this pair’s combine of modern-day and standard home style in Delaware County.
Garry Staegemann is a minimalist. John Crossan is a collector. Staegemann is modern. Crossan is standard. The home they share is a content marriage of sophistication and sentiment—a place where by a weathered century-outdated butcher block life harmoniously in a smooth, modern-day kitchen area. “This house is best for us,” states Crossan. “It’s a blend of both worlds, a conference in the center.”
House owners Garry Staegemann (still left) and John Crossan.
When the partners started house searching back in 2015, they’d been in a connection for 6 years but hadn’t lived less than the similar roof. Staegemann owned a hip condominium in Philadelphia, and Crossan rented a secluded country house in northern Delaware.
In their quest for a home with each other, they toured extra than 20 properties ahead of settling on a light circa-1990 residence. Set in a woodsy Concord Township neighborhood bordering Chadds Ford, the household made available a perception of local community, along with the tranquility of hundreds of unspoiled acres just outdoors it back door.
The songs room.
GROUNDING TREETOPS
When Staegemann and Crossan came on the scene, the property experienced just been relisted after a few several years of remaining on and off the market place. “Like it was waiting for us,” Crossan claims.
The associates speedily struck a offer, seeking past dated finishes and focusing on the flowing floorplan and sweeping woodland vistas. The organic setting was the inspiration for the title they selected for the home—Treetops.
A extra humane model of a deer head hangs over the hearth.
They immediately started putting their individual stamp on the home, beginning with the oak flooring they uncovered beneath drab wall-to-wall carpet. The wooden was in pristine problem, while the orange-tinged stain didn’t attraction to the new owners’ aesthetic sensibilities. To floor the decor, the floors were refinished in a dark espresso combined with mahogany and black. That established the stage for a masculine palette of 5 diligently curated Sherwin-Williams colours: Bottle Environmentally friendly, like the saturated hue of the deepest forest Plum Brown, the deepest of purples a calming navy-blue Anchors Aweigh a heat Cloak Gray and a fruity-brown Raisin.
Committing to this kind of a bold color plan was a dangerous decision—but the proprietors imagine it was the appropriate one particular. “It feels like I’m strolling into a retreat, a position of peace,” Crossan claims. “The darkish colors relaxed the spirit and assist your eye concentration on the views outdoors.”
Staegemann selected Bottle Environmentally friendly for the vaulted spouse and children area, enveloping the ceiling and partitions to enhance the perception of coziness. They retained the existing brick fireplace, flanked on either facet by created-in cabinetry. In excess of the mantel, there’s an inventive twist on a deer head—a panel depicting a buck fashioned from roofing nails the few observed at an artwork truthful in Chadds Ford. “No animal experienced to die for us to have a deer head above the hearth,” suggests Staegemann.
The unique chandelier around the dining desk is a obtain from Bali.
Linked TO Mother nature
The eco-friendly shade also heightens the loved ones room’s link to woodland vistas behind the house, which are obvious by way of glass doors that guide to a deck perched about Beaver Valley. The house owners installed horizontal cable traces under the deck’s railing for an unobstructed perspective. Uplighting in trees will make the outdoor truly feel like a all-natural extension of the family home. “The valley is not just a backyard—it’s a window into God’s earth and a reminder to do our aspect to be fantastic citizens,” states Crossan, a Harmony Township councilman and an open-house advocate.
With a lengthy, lean mid-century sofa from Scout & Annie in Kennett Square, the official living space is devoted to music. “This dwelling has fantastic acoustics and was intended for a piano and a bash,” Staegemann claims. “One of the factors I liked about this dwelling is how all the rooms circulate.”
The kitchen has easy access to the deck
The Steinway grand piano is a stunner. Built in 1879, it was obtained by Crossan’s excellent-grandfather, who handed it down to his grandmother. “She paid for me to have piano lessons, and I used to check out her and enjoy for her,” he claims.
In the eating area, the rustic chandelier earlier mentioned the table was crafted from driftwood. The pair found out the piece although vacationing in Bali and took it straight to the neighborhood article workplace, in which the staff located a durable box and packed it for shipment to the United States. “It goes to show that if you obtain a little something you adore while you are traveling, you can discover a way to send out it house,” Staegemann states.
Perfectly-TRAVELED Home
All throughout the dwelling are artistic reminders of the owners’ travels. A wall clock from Vienna chimes in the kitchen area. Vivid rugs from Romania and Mexico Metropolis heat the flooring in the learn bath, exactly where a vintage atlas is always open to the upcoming area the couple options to check out. And from Staegemann’s indigenous South Africa: a trio of shields embellished with seashells and a chess established with wood items carved in the form of animals.
Household keepsakes bring warmth and character
Other objects had been uncovered closer to home. The coffee table in the eating home is the repurposed Army chest of Crossan’s father, Robin Adair Crossan. A framed rendering of a 1930s Boeing B-17 take a look at-piloted by his grandfather hangs in the place of work, and a wooden stool is a family members memento from the 1939 New York World’s Truthful. As for the aforementioned butcher blocks, they came from the Wilmington sausage and scrapple organization operated by Crossan’s grandfather and fantastic-grandfather. “The items that we have characterize what we value,” he suggests. “Many of the items I have maintain me connected to my grandparents and excellent-grandparents.”
Initial art is also an critical component of the combine in the household. The couple commissioned Greenville, Del., artist John Matteo to paint two huge oil panels of fish, which flank a huge window dealing with the woods. The spiky wooden chandelier hanging involving the paintings is reminiscent of a sea urchin.
The learn bed room has its have gorgeous sights.
Matteo also gave the few a vibrant canvas as a reward. Framed in ornate brass, it was created in excess of time by several artists, who used the excess paint on their brushes to the canvas right after classes. “In a way, the portray signifies Garry and me, with the extremely modern day spatters of colour and the quite conventional body,” states Crossan.
The walls attribute artwork by Delaware’s John Matteo.
Right after 6 several years in the house, the couple proceeds to refine its look and sense. For their most recent project, they replaced builder-grade closet doorways with smooth sliders resembling shoji screens. Outside, they planted a meadow of wildflowers in the front yard to greatly enhance the connection to the woodlands at the rear of the residence, which is now nationwide parkland. “We assume of the meadow as a changeover from cul-de-sac to woods,” Crossan states. “You phase out from the suburbs and move into the natural beauty of the Brandywine Valley.”
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Lafayette artist Francis X Pavy and his wife, Cathi, are taking his art in a new direction with the launch of a wallpaper and textiles line from their new company, Pavy Art + Design.
The line, officially launching Tuesday, includes eight fabric patterns in two to three colorways each and seven wall coverings in one to three colorways each, printed with Louisiana-inspired imagery from Pavy’s body of work and previously unseen sketches.
The project has been nearly four years in the making, the couple said. In 2018, Cathi Pavy retired from BBR Creative, a Lafayette advertising agency she co-founded, and the couple took the transitional moment to re-evaluate what they wanted professionally and as a family.
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Cathi Pavy said after years of support from her husband while building her business, she saw an opportunity to put his art at the forefront and push it into new frontiers, while building a legacy company for their two children. For Francis, the new outing was an opportunity to bring an idea the couple had batted around for over 25 years – a home goods line – from concept to reality, he said.
“It’s always a gamble…You don’t know whether it’s going to be fruitful or not — but why not?” Francis Pavy said. “I’ve had like a hundred ideas but eventually this came around so many times that it’s time to try it and see what happens.”
The artist, whose career has spanned 40 years, said reinvention and trying new things is a key part of his process. Francis Pavy got his artistic start as a child watching Saturday morning drawing lessons on his family’s television and later attending classes in a local park, before exploring mediums such as photography, ceramics, glass work and printing, he said.
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“I try to keep asking questions and challenging myself. It’s just what comes about. I like to paint. I enjoy making imagery, so I’m always looking for other ideas, other venues to work in trying to expand what I do. I almost feel like it’s like a ball of wax I’m adding to, like it’s a cumulative effort,” he said. “It’s challenging myself to work outside the boundaries of what I’ve done before.”
Production of the home goods line began with painting, Francis Pavy said.
Each artwork was painted on a piece of canvas wrapped around a large tube, ensuring the repeating design connected seamlessly at each edge. Then, the paintings were photographed meticulously and moved into Photoshop for adjustments and stitching — where Francis worked to ensure the integrity of the colors, the translation of the paint strokes and sharpness of the pattern.
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The digital fine tuning took from 40 hours for some pieces to over 100 hours for others, he said.
Once completed, the digital files were sent to the couple’s manufacturer in Connecticut, which created strike offs, or samples of the printed fabric, for the couple to review. Each piece was sent back and forth for tweaks until completion, he said.
Selecting which prints to use for the first collection was a collaborative effort.
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Cathi Pavy said the duo would hold up a piece of cork board they fashioned into a frame to paintings in Francis’ studio, trying to home in on what icons and details would look best isolated into repeating prints. Francis Pavy said his wife also unearthed the inspiration for his favorite print of the collection, Tunica, while digging through sketchbooks of unused concepts.
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The goal for each selection was to communicate the culture, history and spirit of south Louisiana, Cathi Pavy said.
“Everything is stamped with ‘Made with love from French Louisiana’ because one thing we’re trying to do is really elevate the brand of south Louisiana and share it with the rest of the world. We both truly believe that we have a culture that’s special. We just want to make sure that people get to understand what it is and hopefully experience it one day,” she said.
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Working as a husband-wife team, the duo has gotten to see each other and their work from a new perspective.
“We share the same values, which is critical to partnership, and work ethic. And also the vision of where we’re going. Sometimes we can get in the weeds because my background is marketing and his is art…it can be one of the areas we have the most friction, because he’s focused on maintaining the integrity of the artwork and I’m always trying to maintain focus on the customer and what they need and want, but I think those two things together are the perfect balance,” she said.
While a longtime dream, the experience has been challenging, she said.
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There was the learning curve of entering a new industry and understanding what it means to produce an appealing, high quality product for designers and how to capture their attention. Add to that the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused supply delays and starts and stops in the production process, and the last few years have been both exciting and scary, Cathi Pavy said.
The line of wallpapers and fabrics are available for purchase at the Pavy Art + Design website, but the couple said for now their primary focus is business-to-business sales, working with designers, design showrooms and fabric sales representatives to get their fabric into the market and into the hands of professionals in the interior design and decorating community.
For launch day Tuesday, the couple is hosting an open house for interior designers, architects and trade professionals from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Pavy Art + Design Studio at 100 East Vermilion Street, Cathi Pavy said.
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With the initial market push underway, the Pavys said they’re already looking ahead and thinking about next steps. Francis Pavy said he envisions fleshing out the existing collection with an expanded range of colorways in coming months, while also brainstorming what iconography might be ripe for use in a second collection.
Cathi Pavy said the long term possibilities for growing the business are endless; the marketing strategist said she’s partial to one day producing a line of dog beds, inspired by the family’s pugs, Otis and Lincoln.
For now, the couple is focused on growing business around their current products and excited to see how the products are translated into spaces.
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“The warmth of our home and the joy that we have in our home is what we want to bring to the homes and interiors of others,” Cathi Pavy said.
“I’m anticipating it’s going to be beautiful. I have no idea what people are going to do or how they’re going to combine the stuff. I’m anxious to see how it’s used and where it’s going to be used,” Francis Pavy said.
As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in Spanish.
The state of Virginia has regulated landscape architecture as a profession since 1980, certifying practitioners through its professional occupational agency. In 2010, landscape architecture became a licensed profession in the state.
A few bills attempted to deregulate or lower the level of regulation back to certification, but none of them made it out of legislative committee. Around 2011, Republican then-Governor Robert McDonnell set up a commission to eliminate regulations in general, including of professions such as landscape architecture and interior design. Members of the Virginia chapter of ASLA persuaded the governor to remove landscape architects from the list.
Robert McGinnis, FASLA, an associate principal at Kennon Williams Landscape Studio and a member of the Virginia ASLA chapter’s government affairs committee, says that interior designers and landscape architects get targeted because people don’t know what they do. “They see the word landscape and think we put trees in the ground.”
“Once we show them what we do, they usually back off,” McGinnis says. “We believe that our defense of our licensure in Virginia is important not just to our licensure but to the entire licensure status of all landscape architects, because once you pull that one licensure out, it will be identified by another state—particularly nearby abutting states—as an example.”
McGinnis has been active in the profession for 35 years and engaged in advocacy for licensure for more than 20 of them. “It is exhausting,” he says. “I never wanted to do it. I wanted to just practice. But once your license or regulatory status is threatened, somebody has got to do something.”
Led by right-of-center advocacy organizations and often funded by private interests, state legislatures have increasingly been writing bills to restrict licensing requirements for professions and occupations. With legislative titles such as the “Right to Earn a Living Act” and “Consumer Choice Act,” the laws are put forward under the premise that professional licensing imposes an unfair barrier to entry into certain types of work, infringes on individual freedom, and increases the costs of services to the consumer.
Lawmakers have included landscape architecture in “right-to-work” bills reflexively, without clearly understanding the nature of the practice or its difference from other kinds of landscape work. Conservative and libertarian lobbying groups such as the Institute for Justice,the Goldwater Institute, and Americans for Prosperity—the latter funded by the libertarian Koch brothers, heirs to the commodities-production-and-trading conglomerate Koch Industries—began pushing these laws around 2016; by now, nearly every state has voted on some version of a law rolling back or limiting licensing requirements.
Licensing laws now guard entry into hundreds of occupations, including jobs that offer upward mobility to those of modest means, such as cosmetologist, auctioneer, athletic trainer, and landscape contractor. Yet research provides scant evidence that licensing does what it is supposed to do—raise the quality of services and protect consumers. Instead, licensing laws often protect those who already have licenses from competition, keeping newcomers out and prices high.
ASLA, other professional design associations, and licensing boards argue, on the other hand—with decades of jurisprudence as evidence—that the rationale for licensing professional practices and occupations derives from the idea that their work can have significant impact on public health, safety, and welfare. The public has an interest in ensuring that someone calling themselves a doctor, engineer, or an architect—or, for that matter, a beautician using chemical agents on clients’ bodies—has adequate education, knowledge, and experience to perform their job without causing injury or harm.
One of the first direct assaults on landscape architecture licensure was in Arizona in 2016. Licensure came up for sunset review, a routine process in which programs, regulations, or agencies are reviewed for relevance. The Arizona ASLA chapter hired a lobbyist, went to legislative committee meetings, and then the licensing board, which makes decisions about licensure applications, passed the renewal through the legislative committee in a unanimous vote. (To get passed into law, a bill has to be approved by the relevant legislative committee, then put on the floor for a vote of all members of the legislature.) In February, a bill came up, introduced by Representative Warren Petersen, a surrogate of Republican Governor Doug Ducey, that included landscape architects with occupations such as geologists, citrus packers, and athletic instructors as licensed work that should be deregulated. The chapter had to scramble to figure out how to respond, with help from ASLA national.
Because the bill was being sponsored by the Republican governor, it was going to be difficult for Republican-majority legislators to vote against it. The chapter’s lobbyist advised a strategy of simply getting landscape architects removed from the bill. Then they notified their membership, called on state universities with landscape architecture programs, and engaged ASLA national and chapters in adjoining states. Students showed up en masse to speak and explained to the governor’s aides that, if the bill passed, they’d have to leave the state to practice after investing in a four-year degree. Within 24 hours, landscape architects were removed from the bill.
Galen Drake, ASLA, a senior landscape architect at J2 Engineering and Environmental Design, was president of the Arizona chapter of ASLA. “After this experience it became clear, especially in 2016, talking to legislators, that they had no clue—no clue—what landscape architects did,” says Drake. “At one point they said, ‘Why do we need registration? Why can’t we just go on Yelp and see who’s good?’ So, our focus became education: Let’s educate them as to what we do.”
Elizabeth Hebron is the director of state government affairs at ASLA, and she has led the fight to protect licensure as attempts to deregulate landscape architecture have proliferated in statehouses over the past five years. Hebron oversees the tracking of licensure bills and coordinating the response to educate lawmakers and the public on the importance of clear, responsible licensing standards for landscape architecture—a highly skilled, technical profession with a direct public impact.
ASLA and the state licensing boards operate independently of each other, but ASLA has been engaging them in recent years through quarterly joint webinars with CLARB, sharing information about what’s happening with legislation, organizing in-person summits, and encouraging closer communication between the state chapters of ASLA and licensing boards.
Hebron gives as examples a boy who nearly punctured his heart because of a spear-like thorny bush on the edge of a playground, and larger-scale flood mitigation failures in Louisiana. In presentations she gives to various groups about the importance of licensure, she offers images of unnavigable driveways laid abnormally steep at nearly 45-degree angles and playground slides that literally run into tombstones.
Anti-licensing advocates invert the logic of harm prevention: Occupations and professions should have to prove a continuing need for regulations. In some cases, they argue for mandating a periodic review or automatic sunsetting of licensing requirements. In the most extreme cases, they claim the free market will weed out the incompetent players and that wrongs can be pursued through the justice system.
In Wisconsin, the battle against deregulation started with a November 2016 report by the libertarian think tank Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty,Fencing Out Opportunity, which argued that occupational licensing creates barriers to employment and identified landscape architecture among the target professions. Republican legislators moved to study an approach to professional licensure involving “self-certification.” Instead of licenses, a Yelp-like review platform would allow consumers to choose self-identified professionals based on evaluation by past clients.
Jonathan Bronk, ASLA, a landscape architect in the campus planning department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, was the president of the Wisconsin ASLA chapter at the time. He spoke at the hearing, gathered others to speak, and coordinated with lobbyists to fight the bill. Among the occupations listed for the study, landscape architects turned out in the largest numbers to defend licensure, and the profession was removed from the list for the study. In the end, the bill passed committee but never made it to the floor for a vote; it was not prioritized by legislative leadership.
Recently, ASLA has joined a coalition to defend professional licensure alongside architects, engineers, civil engineers, accountants, and surveyors. Founded in 2019, the Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing (ARPL) has an office at and receives most of its support from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The other members of the coalition along with ASLA are the American Society of Civil Engineers, CLARB, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, and the National Society of Professional Engineers.
To support its defense of licensing, ARPL commissioned a study, published in January, to examine the value of the licensure process and its outcomes from Oxford Economics, a business consulting and forecasting firm. The report found that, as of 2019, nearly a quarter of workers in the United States held a certificate or license, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report cites a public opinion survey finding that 75 percent of the public recognizes the importance of the distinction between trades and “highly technical professions that have a direct impact on public health and safety.”
Oxford also surveyed studies of the impact of licensure on salaries, which indicate that, on average, unlicensed workers earn wages that are 10 to 15 percent lower than those of licensed workers with similar education, training, and experience. Although this figure suggests an increased cost to the consumer, the report cited studies to show that two-thirds of the increase is because a license signals higher productivity on the part of workers. A plumber or an electrician earns more not only because the consumer is captive to licensed workers but because the requirement to have a license—and the specialized nature of the knowledge necessary to perform the job—ensures the consumer a higher value of work. The report also noted that for women and people of color, licensure led to significantly higher wages and earnings, even narrowing the wage gap between them and white men in professions, especially among highly trained professionals. One study found that college-educated women with licenses earned 20 percent more than their non-licensed counterparts, whereas college-educated men earned only 8 percent more than their non-licensed counterparts.
Marta Zaniewski, the executive director of the Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing and vice president of state regulatory and legislative affairs at AICPA, notes that it isn’t just libertarians and industrial lobbyists who push for limiting licensing. “What we saw that began with the Obama administration and carried on with the Trump administration was suggesting legislation that would take a broad brush to everyone from your manicurist to your engineer, looking at deregulating these professions,” she says. “There was just too much risk [to the public] to say that everyone should reform regulation across the board, and they were fixing something that didn’t need to be fixed.”
Hebron says that ASLA doesn’t necessarily oppose all of the features of the bills when legislated in a careful, responsible way that does not have the potential to affect public health, safety, and welfare. Some of the bills mandate reciprocity of licensing among states, also known as universal licensure, which allows professionals to move and work fluidly across state borders without additional testing, certification, and fees. Some state boards restrict licenses for people who have defaulted on their student loans, a practice that 13 bills have sought to limit. Many boards prohibit licenses for people with criminal records, which could be regarded as further punishing and ostracizing formerly incarcerated persons who have already paid their debt to society. Legislation known as Second Chance Acts limits the use of criminal histories in hiring and eligibility for a license: Sixty-three bills have attempted to limit use of criminal histories in hiring, with 15 of them so far passing and 23 others yet to be voted on.
For some landscape architects, there is also a concern with the barriers licensing creates to the profession, particularly as they impede those who are historically shut out of design fields. The licensing process became particularly arbitrary and onerous in the case of Sara Zewde, the founding principal of Studio Zewde and assistant professor of practice at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
By the time she began her licensing exams in 2016, Zewde had already become fairly recognized in the field. She had topflight credentials, having studied sociology and statistics at Boston University and earning master’s degrees in landscape architecture from the Harvard GSD and city planning from MIT. Zewde started her exams in the state of Washington, where she lived at the time. After she moved to the East Coast in 2018, even though all states use the same exam—the Landscape Architect Registration Examination, developed and administered by CLARB—she had to fly back to Washington at significant expense to finish the examinations where she had originally begun them. By 2019, her exams complete, she then submitted her paperwork for licensure in Pennsylvania, where she had most of her ongoing work. Then came the multiple reference letters and the requirement to undergo a criminal background check in every state where she had lived in the previous five years, involving hundreds of dollars in additional fees. A gap in her timeline in which she was traveling for research raised additional questions with the licensing board, leading them to ask her for additional background checks in those states or an FBI check, which she followed through on.
By this time, it was 2020 in the early months of the pandemic. Zewde’s work had already been published in this magazine, Harvard Design Magazine, and Topos, among other places, and she had been working and teaching in the field for more than five years. Yet the state board rejected her license, saying she should have asked for permission from Pennsylvania to apply for licensure there before she began taking the tests five years earlier—before she knew where she would be working, and something that she says was stated nowhere in any available public information.
During the appeals process, Zewde, who is Black, says she had to submit samples of work to demonstrate her proficiency and was told to prepare for questions from the all-white board in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to prove her credentials, though she had already passed all of the exams. Finally, in the spring of 2021 she received the approval.
“I feel like I stand in a position of privilege, knowing that I am a professor and show some level of competence there,” she says. “Being put in that situation to be voted on by this board is a harrowing experience that I don’t wish on anyone, but I especially don’t wish it on young Black people or young people of color, or young people at all. Knowing that there are [so few] Black women licensed in landscape architecture in the country, it seems like something is wrong with this process. I never even questioned the idea of licensure, but in the form that it exists right now, I cannot defend it.” (In response, the Pennsylvania State Board of Landscape Architects cited the relevant regulatory statutes mandating its requirements.)
CLARB represents the state licensing boards that set policy and developed the universal examination that is used in every U.S. jurisdiction. Veronica Meadows, CLARB’s chief strategy officer, agrees that some reforms in the process could be helpful but defends the public interest in licensing.
“We know that landscape architecture does have a profound impact on people [and] the environment, and so we do push to defend the integrity of licensure in the public’s interest,” Meadows says. “We have obviously seen in the last six years much more significant movement for licensure reform.” She allows that reforms are needed but cautions, “Reducing barriers to entry of a licensed profession that doesn’t have a direct public safety outcome is a good thing. Smart, targeted licensing improvements are important, but those have been hijacked and taken to extreme.”
CLARB joined ARPL as a founding member, and ASLA joined soon thereafter. ARPL provides support to local chapters and boards when proposed legislation would undermine the board’s authority to protect the public interest and works with ASLA and other member organizations to track, monitor, and respond to the legislation. As of today, no landscape architecture licensing restriction has passed in any state, but several sunset regulations, reviews, and studies of the issue have been approved. ASLA and its local chapters remain vigilant, engaging in outreach, activating advocacy networks, and educating legislators about the profession and what landscape architects actually do.
In a sense, professional licensure belongs to a legacy of good multinational and transregional governance and oversight that suffers from being misunderstood and underappreciated, quietly preventing harm without fanfare.
“I have not ever seen what I have seen in the last 10 years,” Robert McGinnis says. “It’s scary to see how this may play out in the future. We don’t know how long we’re going to have to deal with wrong-minded, uninformed individuals who hate government and just simply want to destroy it.”
Stephen Zacks is an advocacy journalist, architecture critic, urbanist, and organizer based in New York City.
