Land Matters
Do Landscape Architects Suffer From Nature Deficit Disorder?

You’ve probably heard of it by now—the range of childhood problems, including obesity and depression, said to result from kids’ spending most of their lives indoors, away from unstructured play in the woods and fields. In his book, Last Child in the Woods, journalist Richard Louv termed the syndrome “nature deficit disorder.”

It’s something I worry about. You see, William, my three-year-old grandson, spends most of his time indoors, and when he goes out, it’s to a suburban backyard where every shrub and every blade of grass are carefully primped and where his play area is one of those plastic manufactured thingamabobs. But to my daughter Emily’s credit, when I gently introduced the topic of nature deficit disorder, she immediately suggested that we plan a weekend in the woods.

A few weeks later, there we were at our Civilian Conservation Corps-era log cabin in a state park that was mostly hardwood forest. “This is the first time he’s ever been in nature!” Emily remarked. Within the first couple of hours, William was busy (with my help) rolling a fallen log down the hill. By the third day he was rooting around in the dirt with his bare hands and managed to dig up a worm, which thrilled him no end. So there is hope for my grandson.

But why is the fuss just about kids? Don’t plenty of adults suffer from nature deficit disorder? Take landscape architects, for example: They generally spend most of their waking hours cooped up in an office, glued to a computer screen or poring over paper plans. Is their separation from the green, growing world—the canvas on which they are supposed to be working—good for landscape architects? I’m not suggesting that they’ll succumb to obesity and depression, but might it not affect their design work? Could nature deficit disorder be the reason so few landscape architects have a passion for plants or why the backbone of their designs is often a product picked out of a catalog rather than the soil, water, and other elements of the site and region? Or, to bring the topic back to kids, why so many landscape architects’ designs for playgrounds are built around sterile manufactured play equipment rather than native materials that invite kids to concoct their own little play worlds?

But perhaps some landscape architects have found ways to reconnect. What about you, reader? What do you do to get back in touch with the dynamic world of sun, wind, mountains, rivers—and soil and plants? Do your office and your employer encourage interaction with the outdoors in any way? And to the extent that you do reconnect, does it have a salutary effect on your design work?

I notice that Connecticut has launched a “No Child Left Inside” program that encourages families to visit parks, among other things. Is it time for this profession to launch its own initiative: “No Landscape Architect Left Inside”?

J. William “Bill” Thompson, FASLA
Editor / bthompson@asla.org