What is a “natural landscape”? Our landscapes have been thrown out of balance by forest fragmentation, invasive plants, climate change, wildlife explosions, and disease-carrying insects. Landowners are busy mowing lawns, cleaning woods, and managing forests to their tastes. This course will explore our local fields, forests, and wetlands, and how they can be designed and maintained to function as diverse ecosystems, while remaining attractive to all.

We will begin with a description of our local natural community types - the vegetation, soils, hydrology, and wildlife habitat that make up our natural landscape. We will study some basic landscape design principles of form and function, and compare tidy yards with messy meadows, cleaned forests with dirty woods, and detention ponds with waterfowl marshes.

We will then go on field trips to local landscapes with managed meadows, shrub edges, forests, and wetlands. Guest naturalists and land managers will assist us in interpreting natural history, landscape ecology, and how landscapes can be designed and managed for different uses. Students will be encouraged to look at their own properties or local natural areas, and how to design them as bio-diverse landscapes.