- 1). Research municipal building codes and regulations related to planting around buildings. Many municipalities have learned to incorporate approval of a landscaping plan when reviewing proposed new construction. Requirements can go from general insistence that plantings and landscaping actively complement new buildings to much stricter directions on setbacks, width and depth of plantings, surrounding path and wall designs and even choices of plant materials. As a builder, you may be responsible for creating a landscape plan that will help your tall building fit into an existing cityscape.
- 2). Take the initiative if building codes are not demanding. Both residential and office buildings have much greater appeal to tenants if landscaping is attractive, providing shade, shelter, and visual interest as well as a welcoming air. Good landscaping, therefore, is good business. Southeastern cities like Miami use tall, dark palm trees and light building colors to temper building height visually. People expect palm trees to be tall, and therefore buildings seem less monumental. Other tall trees and massed shrubs provide big visual blocks of color that suggest visually that a tall building is just one more component of a sheltering canopy.
Sometimes abundance is the key to reducing building scale. For years, the flowers provided by the Astor family along the wide median of New York's Park Avenue have made the kind of broad colorful ribbon that makes all the buildings along the avenue seem less looming. - 3). Plant on land you control to diminish sights you do not control. Thanks to the way the brain handles perspective, tall bushes planted at the back of your property or schoolyard are massive enough to block the sight of ugly factory buildings several blocks away. Increasingly, municipalities welcome community participation in greening, conservation and planting programs. A dividend, in addition to the exercise of gardening with your neighbors, may be an improvement in nearby air quality.
- 4). Tackle the use of plants to humanize a building as an inside job. As an owner or builder, investigate green building standards to learn how planting in indoor atria, on terraces and throughout your building will repay the care that plants demand with cleaner air, lower cooling bills and more satisfied workers or tenants. Letting plants flourish throughout your building lessens the sense of being trapped up in the air and isolated from nature.
- 5). Become an advocate and publicist for publicly accessible green space at all levels of your community. An informal student guide teaches San Franciscans how to travel to rooftop gardens and terraces throughout the downtown area with little more than personal identification and a willingness to ride elevators. Whether your tour is from park to park or expands to other publicly accessible green spaces, putting together a list lets green space do what it should for urban residents.
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