In search of meaning

Every New Year people re-evaluate themselves and make their New Year’s resolutions. For landscape companies the period of making those resolutions is slightly more extended and is connected to our hibernation period- winter. That’s when we make plans, analyze the previous year, organize whatever needs to be organized and mentally brace ourselves for a new season.

Lately, I have been contemplating on the meaning of what we are doing and what we are doing it for. Is it all about money and business? Aesthetics and space organization? Or is it all a part of something larger? I want to believe so. I feel that landscaping is one of the processes of the complex body of the Earth. I feel that there is “the Whole Picture” that consists of an immensity of smaller elements that are in constant movement and interaction with each other. Unfortunately, a lot of the examples of human interactions I know are rather negative, such as, how a shrinking of natural habitats, specific plants and usage of certain pesticides has put bees in danger of going extinct. But there are also some positive examples, for example National/State parks, such as Yellow Stone, that were signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, thus giving us an opportunity to experience nature in …a somewhat natural/untouched way. That’s why for me it’s not JUST today, JUST money or JUST beauty, (although all of those matter) it is a joined effort of all of those to create something that matters now and will matter in the future. And I hope that, as the most developed and the only self-conscious creatures on this planet, we will make sure that whatever you and I do, affects the whole picture in a way that creates a bright future for all of us and for future generations.