CHAPTER THREE LANDSCAPING AND HORTICULTURE INTRODUCTION: People have been planting flowers, ornamental plants, fruits and

other trees to beautify their compounds. From time immemorial, trees have been planted or deliberately left to grow along the road side, at market places, village squares and family shrines as shade trees and religious purposes. The deliberate use of plant to improve the environment marked the beginning of landscaping as a career is relatively young in Nigeria. WHAT IS LANDSCAPING? The term landscaping has different meanings to different people. Like the six blind man of hindostan who described the elephant differently depending on what part of the animal they touched. Some people think that landscaping deals with flowers and raising beautiful flowers gardens. Other see landscaping as the mowing of lawns. Pruning overgrown shrubs and erecting of hedges. Still, other see landscaping as the architectural designing beautiful sceneries on paper. These and other associated functions are all aspects of landscaping. But in this context, the term landscaping is defined as the business of using plants and other materials to purposely protect and beautify the environment. There many ways that plant materials can be used to improved the environment. For example, plants can be use as a cover mat on eroded area, and as a revenue trees to proved roadside shade etc. WHY DO WE NEED TO LANDSCAPE AN ENVIRONMENT? This bring us to the next question the need to landscape an environment. According to the Holy Scriptures. When God created the earth, He put in plants of all kinds and was pleased and satisfied with the beautiful scenery. But over the centuries man has drastically altered this nature set-up and has changed earths beauty as nature designed it. Man is endowed with the ability to developing life-styles which unconsciously but obviously tend to alienate him from the natural world and what was provided naturally. As a result of his

constantly changing life-styles, cities, towns, roads, buildings, industries and farmlands have been constructed thereby altering the natural landscape. THE BUSINESS OF LANDSCAPE DESIGNING The study of landscaping as a profession began many years ago in Europe and America. Unfortunately, institution of higher learning in Nigeria are yet to offer courses in landscape architecture. However, landscaping has been practiced in this country as a hobby and as a career for many years now. HORTICULTURE Horticulture is the cultivation of garden crops. Garden crop traditionally include edible fruits, vegetables, ornamental plants as well as medicinal, the cultivation of which bring monetary rewards or personal pleasure. According to the kind of products and uses to which they are put, horticulture is sub-divided into: (a) Pomology: The cultivation of edible fruits such as apples, guava, oranges, paw-paw, coconuts, mango. (b) Olericultur: The cultivation of vegetables such as tomatoes, okro, waterleaves and other greens, peppers, pumpkin, garden eggs, beans, carrots. (c) Floriculture: Deals with the production of followers, potted plants and other ornamental plants. (d) Landscape horticulture: deals with the cultivation of plants for the landscape such as shrubs, trees, vines and turf grass. PRINCIPLES OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN Landscape design is a form of applied art. It combines creativity with imagination. All forms of art are guided by basic principles. The following principles are applied in landscape designing: (1) simplicity (2) balance (3) proportion (4) focalization (5) rhythmn and line.

(i)

Simplicity: a good landscape design should be as simple as possible. It can be achieved in several ways. e.g. repetition of some species, construction material, or colour. Massing of plants is another way to create simplicity. In massing, a sense of unit is achieved so that the individual plant do not have to complete with each other for attention.

(ii)

Balance:

This can be achieved in two ways; a) Symmetrically: By planting the same species at the exact position as on the other opposite side of the out-door room. b) Asymmetrically: by creating the same amount of interest on both side of the out-door room without duplicating the plant species. (iii) Proportion: this is concerned with the size relationship of the features of the landscape. a good design should have all the features in the proper size relationship with each other. For example, a tall tree planted to tower well above a small bungalow will be out of proportion with the building. In landscape designing, the principle of proportion can be applied in position plant materials in right size relationship with constructed feature and buildings. (iv) Focalization : The principle of focalization is based upon the knowledge that when the human eyes views a scene, it is attracted immediately to one features the focal point before it takes in adjacent features gradually. Focal point can be created by a designer, but it is always good to look out for one already established and build upon that. Example of landscape focal points are front door of a house, highly attractive (specimen) plants, flowers, statues and fountains. (v) Rhythm and line: This principle is used to create sense movement for the viewers eyes, a feeling that the design is transporting or progressing him from one out door room to another. Whatever principle or combinations of principles are adopted for a job, a good landscape should satisfy the aspects of design principle. These are the

satisfaction of user requirements, the improvement o f environmental comfort the concept of providing aesthetic values.

Choice and Use of Plant Materials Plant materials are available for every purpose or function a designer may wish to fulfill. What actually determines the choice of plant material is principally the function the plant is expected to perform. Plants may be classified into: (1) ground covers (2) trees and shrubs (3) climbers and vines (4) flowers; 1. Ground covers: Plants like Portulaca spp., Commelina and wandering jew are ground covers, which are plants with low growing prostrate surface plants usually less than 50cm high. They can be used to cover bare earth and control erosion. They can also make patterns which create visual effect, as well as absorb heat, moisture and dust. 2. Trees and shrubs: Trees are defined as having single stem and growing to a height above three meters. They may be deciduous, evergreen or conifers. Shrubs on the other hand are woody plants that are usually multi-stemmed, low branching and between one and six meters in height. 3. Vines and climbers: Vines are plants whose habit is to climb either naturally or on support. They can creep and climb in three ways by twining themselves around trellis fence or another plant by tendrils and by structure called holdfast. Vines can be used to serve many functions which are a. They can be used to absorbed dust and moisture b. Used to reflection and glare and to increase the thermal insulation of buildings. c. They can be used to provide shade in pedestrian path among others uses 4. Flowers: these are the wealth, glory and delight of a garden. Naturally they possess color and fragrance and seasonal tones and so easily make focal point in the landscape.

Flowers are herbaceous plant, bulbs and shrubs. They are classify into annual, biennials and perennials. Flowers should be grown on bed, boxes, and pots and as focal point but should not been made to conflicts with more important focal point. E.g entry into the

houses. They should be designed so that they can be viewed and admired from all sides. For best performance, flowers are grown on rich loamy well drained soil and should be well managed after installation.

The landsscape nursery All plant materials required in the land scape are supplied from a nursery in the form of seeds, seedlings, suckers, cuttings or bulbs. People can go to the land scape nursery sometimes called amenity or ornamental nursery to buy what they what without necessarily having to raise their own nurseries. Seedlings in the nurseries are carefully tended by well trained gardeners and nursery men. Containerized plant: Some ornamental plant like |Begonia spp. Caladium bicolor, colocasia sp. Are grown in

containers such as earthen pot, plastic or metal container. This methods is useful for plant intended for placement in partios, rooms and verandas. Such containers plants may or may not be planted out on the ground. polypot: polythene bags are used as the container and are suitable for species like casuarine, cassia, pines and eucalyptus. The advantages in the use of polythene bags is that during planting the roots are not seriously distributed and the plant continues growth from the height it reached in the nursery. The polythene bag is simply torn apart and the seedling dropped with the soil, in tact into a hole already dug. The hole is then covered firmly with the soil. Stumps: The use of stumps is limited to plants that can coppice readily, for example, Tectona grandis (Teak) and \Gmelina arborea (Gmelina). The seedlings are lifted from the nursery beds and the stump prepared by cutting off the shoot and cleaning the roots leaving as stump of about 15cm in length. Where the stumps would not be planted out within a few days, the root region of the

stumps are usually dipped in thick loamy mud in a process called puddling. This is done to prevent the root from drying up. Corms: Caladium and colocasia ornamentals are planted out in forms of corms, while hip strum and Easter lilics are planted out as bulbs. Plant Nomenclature: All plans have two types of names. One is the common name by which the plant is known in the locality. The other is the botanical name which always express in Latin. Botanical names of plants are given by plants taxonomists and are governed by international rules of botanical nomenclature. Botanical names are scientific and recognized in all countries regardless of native language. For example, flame of the forest or flamboyant has its botanical name as delonix regia. in this system of naming plants each plants has only one name assigned to its name. the first part of the name is called the genus, the second part is the specific name. a genus (plural is genera) name is applied to several closely related types of plants. For example all eucalypts belong to the genus eucalyptus. The second part of the name, the specific, will eliminate all other type of eucalyptus and narrow it to one the species (abbreviated sp. and plural spp). Thus we have Eucalyptus camaldulensis, Eucalyptus citriodora, Eucalyptus terreticornis, all three different species of one genus, Eucalyptus. This is called the binomial system of classification and was invented by a Swedish physician, Carl Linnaeus. It is always good to identify landscape plants by their botanical names in addition to their common names. Landscape Maintenance After the installation of any landscape it is essential and important to maintain the plant materials and other landscape materials used. Good maintenance will bring out sustain the beauty of the landscape design. The maintenance consists in caring for and tending the landscape materials. The first maintenance operation usually carried out after planting is watering. The plants need water to grow and particularly during the dry season watering should be done from daily, preferably morning and evening. Weeding is also done to free the young plants from competition. Besides, a flower bed or lawn full of undesirable weeds show negligence and

reduces the beauty and attraction of the landscape. Landscape maintenance is a very expensive programme. This is so because it is an all-year-round affair. Landscapes are constantly dynamic; they are constantly growing and changing thereby altering their appearance season after season.ns FOREST REGENERATION For a many decade the natural high forest had been the major source of timber and wood supplies in Nigeria, not only for local consumption but also for foreign trade it was easily observed also that the rate at which the younger trees in the high forest were growing to maturity was very low. Therefore, to make our forest to perpetually supply timber and wood requirements faster and in abundance some deliberate regeneration efforts had to undertaken. Forest

regeneration is therefore concerned with the different methods of restocking the forest so as to ensure that the forest supplies timber and wood products in perpetuity A distinction is often made between natural and artificial regeneration. Natural and artificial regeneration. Natural regeneration is the spontaneous regeneration of forest trees that occur where and when environment conditions are favourable Early methods of regeneration (natural regeneration) In the past, Nigeria forest were left to regenerate naturally. The seeds would fall from the mother trees and germinate into seedlings: the seedlings would over very many years grow and mature into big trees and the cycle continues. Attempts were made to aid the natural regeneration. The following made were adopted to enrich the natural forests. a. Issuance of instruction to all timber exploiter to plant a certain number of young trees to replace the timber trees they felled b. Stimulation of natural regeneration by cleaning the vegetation around desired mothertrees so as to encourage the emergence of seedlings c. Introduction of tropical shelter-wood system (TSS). Tropical Shelter-wood System (TSS)

The system was adopted was adopted as a result of insufficient funds to establish plantation by directs methods. The Taungya system had also just then been introduced. The TSS was an adaptation of the uniform or shelter wood system successfully practiced in Malaya (Malaysia) and was introduced into Nigeria by colonial forest officer who had served in Malaysia during the Second World War. The forest operations were conducted in three stages namely pre-exploitation, exploitation and post exploitation and comprised thirteen activities which include among them climbing, cutting, and poisoning of uneconomic trees, regeneration counts, felling of economic trees and forest floor cleaning. Many factors contributed to the failure of the TSS in the tropical high forests of Nigeria. Among these are the particularly and complex nature of tropical high forest with a very wide range of different species ranging between 50-200 trees per hectare distributed over many girth classes. Enrichment planting Following the failure of TSS other ways of increasing the productivity