Landscape Design and Architecture Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, design principles, and concepts from the lecture on landscape design and planting principles.

Outdoor Rooms

Enclosed outdoor spaces created and shaped by the architectural qualities of plants.

Foundation Plantings

Plantings added around buildings after a design is complete, traditionally used to visually soften or dress up the structure.

Landscaping

A term often incorrectly used as a synonym for landscape architecture that specifically refers to planting and site maintenance.

Landscape Architect

A design professional whose scope includes site-scale planning, systems-based design, and integrating plants as functional, structural, and aesthetic elements.

Opacity

A plant characteristic referring to how much light or vision can pass through it, ranging from opaque evergreens to transparent deciduous plants.

Principles of Composition

Universal visual design rules—including harmony, contrast, balance, emphasis, sequence, and scale—that act as a visual grammar for planting design.

Harmony

A principle of composition resulting from similarity in plant form, texture, line, color, and connection to the surrounding landscape.

Contrast

A principle of composition resulting from differences in form, color, line, and texture, creating visual variety without conflict.

Symmetrical Balance

A formal and orderly design arrangement where plantings are directly mirrored on either side of a central axis.

Asymmetrical Balance

A design arrangement where unmirrored, varied elements maintain equal visual weight through form, texture, color, and position.

Emphasis and Accent

A design principle using plants with strong visual impact or distinct forms to establish focal points and visual rhythm.

Sequence

The orderly, regular, or intentional unfolding and progression of plantings experienced by an observer moving through a space.

Scale

The relative size relationship between plants, their surroundings, and the human body across both regional and site-level contexts.

Brunchtime Pavilion

A coffee shop and tea house project on the Rice University campus in Houston, Texas, featuring integrated tree canopies, gardens, and a pergola.

Lurie Garden

An urban oasis in Chicago designed by Pete Udall to evoke a prairie environment within the city.