When Is Dirt Soil?

can be both depending on how or in what context the word is used. For example:

Gertrude Jekyll was a designer (noun) of some of the most memorable public and private gardens in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England. She designed (verb) over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. She was a prolific writer whose design (adjective) theories had wide-ranging influence, particularly when she design (adverb) processed spatial sequences and created imaginative palettes of color and texture for her visually exciting plant combinations for which she was internationally renowned.

In some countries, such as Portugal, the word design is used as a noun and refers to a drawing: the design. In America and elsewhere, design can mean a process, it can be used to infer the creative act of making as in making a design. And it can mean the product of a creative process such as “the design.” To further complicate the matter, the word design may have additional meanings when used by other cultures. What the intended meaning is depends on the context of how the word is used and how the specific meaning is generally understood when designers talk to one another.3 When design is used in a sentence to mean design as a process, the intended meaning is the process one goes through in understanding and solving a problem. The problem requiring a design solution might be a spatial problem. That is, searching to find the best approach for designing (creating) a space or the design of an facility such as a children’s play structure or a fountain for an entry.

Is dirt soil, is a bush a shrub, and is blue sky blue? Well, the immediate answer to all three questions is perhaps, it depends on who is using the words and what might be at stake. The meaning of the words also depends on whom one is addressing. The word soil in landscape architecture refers to a specific composition of ingredients and other desired physical properties (grain size, percentage of organics, pH, nutrient content, etc.) that are specified for specific plants (one type of soil may be required for a proposed lawn area while other types of soil are specified for trees and shrubs). More detail on soils will be reviewed in Chapter 8. While a client might refer to certain types of plants as bushes, a landscape architect refers to them as shrubs. Shrubs and bushes have the same meaning, it just depends who is talking. The issue of what is considered soil or not crops up when a landscape contractor brings a load of dirt (or soil) to the construction site. If the material is full of rocks, roots, and maybe bits of broken concrete or pieces of metal, can the landscape architect stop the contractor from using it? A soil specification is the basis for accepting or rejecting whatever is in the truck. The landscape architect will describe what constitutes acceptable soil and the basis for rejecting soil as outlined in the written technical specifications that accompany the drawings. Without the technical soil specification, the contractor can pretty much bring on site soil or dirt.