Landscape design – a profession for everyone
Is there an interaction between human mental activity and nature?
Some people talk to their plants. There are quite a few gardeners and foresters who, before pruning a tree, explain to it why they are doing so. Such people are characterized by building an individual and empathetic relationship with nature and plants, rather than seeing them merely as utilitarian objects. An attentive observer can recognize from the plants whether they were pruned by someone who related to them in a constructive and aesthetic way or not. Afterwards, the plants will respond to humans, not only drawing their gaze but also touching them deeply on a soul level.
These freshly pruned trees display a very orderly and harmoniously shaped character.
The goal of the page is to:
Development of relationship-oriented future perspectives and the cultivation of life forces in nature and the environment using landscape design as an example.
Landscape design can be much more than what is generally imagined today.
Fountain design in Riva del Garda
Hexagonal design along the pedestrian path
Today’s concept is usually defined as the art and/or science of outdoor design. The main goal is often to beautify and make a piece of land more functional in order to create attractive outdoor spaces. Many people think of the design of private gardens, city parks, playgrounds or sports fields, traffic roundabouts, the creation of tree-lined streets, path designs, and much more. This also includes river landscapes
, climbing areas
, and thus the creation of new touring opportunities.
Landscape design as a profession, a hobby, or an ideal for every individual —
Landscape design can be thought of even more broadly beyond this approach. In a certain sense, it can be refined and elevated to a higher level. It is not only an activity in which landscape designers create a nature park or gardeners cultivate a garden according to functional, aesthetic, and useful criteria. Landscape design can become an activity in which any person—regardless of their profession—any hiker, walker, climber, or individual can actively shape nature and enhance the environment according to universally valid, harmonious principles. Every person possesses the capacity to generate life forces with their inner, creative, and inventive potential to achieve this goal.
Here, a secret is touched that lies deep within every human being and is meant to be discovered. It awakens the innermost desire of the human soul for development, progress, and a deeper connection through the spiritual and soulful forces that, today, are often denied to people—and precisely for that reason, are all the more eager to be cultivated.
“The longing for a connection to others, to the earth, to natural phenomena, but ultimately also to the higher worlds rests within the human being as a great desiring and driving force, and at the same time it is that dimension that can be described as “soul”. ” (Quote: Heinz Grill, The Soul Dimension of Yoga, p. 13)
Heinz Grill giving a lecture in Salzburg
Which desire predominates in an individual? Is it the utilitarian principle, with the aim of energetically drawing forces from nature for oneself—for example, to survive a stressful upcoming work week—or does the person already harbor the wish to build an individual, profound, and aesthetic relationship with nature, the environment, or the landscape, thereby contributing positively to a larger context?
- When is a design truly beautiful, aesthetic, and appealing, uplifting all people and the environment in a broader sense?
- What kinds of thoughts and inner attitudes are beneficial, and which forces tend to deplete or destroy nature?
- How do harmonious or disharmonious forms affect humans?
Through targeted, concrete questions related to the specific object, every person can cultivate conscious perception and experience.
How do colors affect humans? Does a person still experience them consciously today and pay attention to them, or do they influence him more unconsciously without him noticing?
Such and other questions promote clear ideas and deeper relationships and are available for further exploration…
As a basis, spiritual writings by the founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, and by the researcher of the spirit, writer, and climber Heinz Grill are used.
Rudolf Steiner, 1914
Goethe Monument in Leipzig
It is a spiritual principle that universally valid, true thoughts, which are free from quick emotions or compulsive willful interference, act in a liberating, clarifying, enlightening, and constructive way. Over time, they can lift the increasingly observable burdens that lie over plants and nature. Where do these burdens come from, which affect not only humans but also nature, plants, and animals?
How does Goethe already speak in his work “Faust”?
“Two souls, alas! reside in my breast, one wants to separate from the other: One clings to the world in coarse delight of love with grasping organs; the other forcibly lifts itself from the dust to the realms of high ancestors.”
Faust I, lines 1112 ff.; Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749 – 1832), German poet and Privy Councillor (high official).
“Two souls, alas! reside in my breast, one wants to separate from the other: One clings to the world in coarse delight of love with grasping organs; the other forcibly lifts itself from the dust to the realms of high ancestors.”
Faust I, lines 1112 ff.; Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749 – 1832), German poet and Privy Councillor (high official).