Landscape architects seek novel solutions to navigate tricky regulations.
By Timothy A. Schuler
The ?pond? in Lake County, Illinois, shown in May 2021, is subject to a complex legal and regulatory system. Photo by Practice Landscape.
At first glance, it was just a pond. Dammed with earth at the southern end, with a single small outflow pipe, the small water body on the farm in Lake County, Illinois, could have been any one of the thousands of farm ponds that dot the rural Midwest.
But Rosetta S. Elkin, ASLA, and her team at Practice Landscape soon discovered that the ?pond? was not fed by rainwater but by two culverts that drain neighboring farms. More surprising, it was legally considered a wetland and therefore subject to federal oversight. ?Even though [it] was dug in the ?70s, it is now ensconced in the GIS databases as a wetland,? says Sarah Diamond, a project manager at Practice Landscape. For the past four years, the landscape architects have been working to revitalize the 33-acre former farm property for use as a primary residence. And it has evolved into a large-scale experiment in ecological landscape management practices, largely because of the unforeseen regulatory context. With the potential to influence future restoration projects, this project is a case study in the generative potential of constraints?whether legally or artificially imposed?and the novel practices that emerge in response.
In this December 2020 image, a single outflow pipe had carved a deep ch...