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Plants you can walk on are attractive additions to pathways. These low-lying perennials can withstand heavy foot traffic, release pleasant odors when crushed, smother weeds, and cushion your step in the narrow spaces between bricks or flagstones.

You can use steppables for all kinds of applications, said Kathy Gurnee, owner of Green Thumb Landscaping in Clinton, Wash.

You can use them as groundcover in lieu of bark, she said. On patios, pathways, rock walls and crevices. I like them around the bottoms of trees. Theyre also good for living roofs and living walls. They deliver a beautiful resilience.

Walkables generally are defined as creeping plants that dont exceed 12 inches in height, said John Schroeder, president of Valleybrook International Ventures Inc., a family-owned horticultural operation in Abbotsford, British Columbia. The companys line of Jeepers Creepers includes around 100 varieties of low-to-the-ground herbs, mints, evergreens, ivy, moss and more.

I like them for lawn repair or replacement, he said, adding that he stripped 900 square feet of turf grass from his own front yard and replaced it with creeping mazus, a dense, ground-hugging plant.

Many walkable plants are drought-resistant, while others perform well in shade, on hard-to-maintain slopes, covering bulb gardens, spilling from containers or protecting high-use areas. A sampling:

For areas with moderate to heavy foot traffic: Corsican sandwort has moss-like foliage with white flowers in spring. Does well in damp, dry or shaded settings. Celestial spice pratia has tiny green leaves covered by deep blue flowers all summer.

For fragrance: Corsican mint, the smallest of the mint family. It delivers a pleasant crme-de-menthe fragrance when crushed. It also does well in shade. Creeping thyme is a fast-growing groundcover that gives off a spicy scent. Most thymes are drought-tolerant and can survive moderate traffic.

As a lawn substitute: Alpine moss ear grows into a dense carpet with white flowers in summer. It thrives in dry climates. Blue star creeper is a dark green perennial producing soft blue flowers through summer. Creeping mazus, with its low mat of green leaves studded by small lavender flowers, tolerates hot, humid summers.

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'Steppable' plants for walkways, patios and more

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A Networx contractor can help you pick the right type and color for your home. There are so many types of paints & techniques that it's a good idea to ask for some tips from a professional home painter. Browse through our many articles, including such topics as how to stencil your walls or how to pick the best exterior paint for your home. Just let one of our local painting contractors take care of it and you'll feel so much better!

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Maid Services in Brooklyn NY
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New Jersey house, officecleaning andmaid servicesInexpensive andvery efficient, we have been taking care of busy and senior communities of Central New Jersey inMercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Somerset and Union Counties for some time now. Our maids areextremely capable, quick and professional. We know that taking good care of our customers is what cleaningservice is all about. We love what we do and it gets reflected in the quality of our work. We try to work around your schedule and base our services around your needs and not the other way around. Cleaning and maid service FAQ's Ourcleaning staff consists of very dedicated hardworking people with one goal in mind, to make your life easier and more fulfilled with other, perhaps more pleasant and productive activities. Go ahead, leave the home cleaning part to us, ease up on your chores and have a piece of mind, you deserve it. We are dedicated to providing you with outstanding maid service with the highest ranking in the market. We make a point to exceed your expectations and earn your repeat business with every task we undertake. Our goal has been to ensure the complete satisfaction of every client. We don't cut corners while doing our job, we properly clean them and undoubtedly, it makes a world of difference in the cleaning service. Maid service and cleaning rates General cleaning guidelines: All floors and stairs will be swept, mopped or vacuumed and hardwood floors cleaned. Living room, bedrooms: Furniture dusting and wiping down of applicable surfaces. Kitchen: Cabinets/cupboards outsides spot will be cleaned, counters wiped clean, sink scrubbed clean, all appliances cleaned, outside of refrigerator cleaned, stovetop and outside of oven cleaned, floors swept and mopped. Bathrooms: We will clean and sanitize tile, toilet, sink, tub, shower stall and doors. Cleaning service description If you wish you could spend more time on things you love instead of cleaning your home or office, our maid service could very well be the perfect solution for you. No job is too big and no job is too small, we do it all and very thoroughly. We guarantee your satisfaction and our rates and we will meet or beat all competitive estimates written in the State of New Jersey. Please get in touch with us if your place is located in Central NJ and could use a cleaning lady - be it house cleaning, condo cleaning, apartment cleaning or commercial property cleaning, get a free estimate or schedule regular visits. GET FREE ON-LINE ESTIMATE

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James van Sweden, FASLA, the landscape architect and author who transformed the texture of American public spaces and gardens over four decades, died September 20 at his home in Washington, D.C., after a long illness. He was 78.

Van Sweden and his partner, Wolfgang Oehme, founded their firm, Oehme, van Sweden & Associates, in Washington in 1975. With an evangelical zeal, and aided by Oehmes expert horticulture, van Sweden unleashed an explosion of romantic naturalism in landscapes large and small, offering torrents of grasses and huge wildflowers as an alternative to perfunctory public plantings and lawns. Nationwide, and especially around Washington, he composed public gardens, parks, memorials, and campuses to be engrossing in all seasons, unbound in form and flush with colors before browning toward collapse and a startlingly rich afterlife. The firms many residential projects range in scale from sweeping meadows and marshy waterfronts to intimate woodland gardens and lush little terraces around pools. Legions of designers and home gardeners embraced the firms style, which became known as the New American Garden. In its composed wildness, the approach drew new eyes to overlooked spaces and showed people in suburbs and cities a multitude of ways to live more comfortably with nature nearby.

Van Swedens books, among them The Artful Garden: Creative Inspiration for Landscape Design, Gardening with Nature, and Architecture in the Garden, sold remarkably well to broad audiences. He received the ASLA Design Medal in 2010, and was also honored, alongside Oehme, in 1992 with the American Horticultural Societys Landscape Design Award. Oehme died in December 2011. The Oehme, van Sweden firm continues to operate under the founders partners, Sheila Brady, FASLA; Lisa Delplace, ASLA; and Eric Groft, ASLA. Van Sweden is survived by two sisters, Karyl Mangus, of Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Christie Kauffman, of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation has a biographical profile and an extensive oral history of van Sweden on its website. A feature about van Sweden and the redesign of his own garden on the Chesapeake Bay appeared in LAM in January 2012.

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Thank you very much for completing our survey The American Society of Landscape Architects(ASLA) If you have any questions, comments, concerns or you just need someone to talk you off a ledge call Jared Green he's your man

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Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor public areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes.[1] It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and geological conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of interventions that will produce the desired outcome. The scope of the profession includes: urban design; site planning; stormwater management; town or urban planning; environmental restoration; parks and recreation planning; visual resource management; green infrastructure planning and provision; and private estate and residence landscape master planning and design; all at varying scales of design, planning and management. A practitioner in the profession of landscape architecture is called a landscape architect.

Landscape architecture is a multi-disciplinary field, incorporating aspects of: botany, horticulture, the fine arts, architecture, industrial design, geology and the earth sciences, environmental psychology, geography, and ecology. The activities of a landscape architect can range from the creation of public parks and parkways to site planning for campuses and corporate office parks, from the design of residential estates to the design of civil infrastructure and the management of large wilderness areas or reclamation of degraded landscapes such as mines or landfills. Landscape architects work on all types of structures and external space - large or small, urban, suburban and rural, and with "hard" (built) and "soft" (planted) materials, while integrating ecological sustainability. The most valuable contribution can be made at the first stage of a project to generate ideas with technical understanding and creative flair for the design, organization, and use of spaces. The landscape architect can conceive the overall concept and prepare the master plan, from which detailed design drawings and technical specifications are prepared. They can also review proposals to authorize and supervise contracts for the construction work. Other skills include preparing design impact assessments, conducting environmental assessments and audits, and serving as an expert witness at inquiries on land use issues.

In some states, provinces, municipalities, and jurisdictions, such as Ontario, Canada and Santa Barbara, California, all designs for public space must be reviewed and approved by licensed landscape architects.

The variety of the professional tasks that landscape architects collaborate on is very broad, but some examples of project types include:[2]

Landscape managers use their knowledge of landscape processes to advise on the long-term care and development of the landscape. They often work in forestry, nature conservation and agriculture.

Landscape scientists have specialist skills such as soil science, hydrology, geomorphology or botany that they relate to the practical problems of landscape work. Their projects can range from site surveys to the ecological assessment of broad areas for planning or management purposes. They may also report on the impact of development or the importance of particular species in a given area.

Landscape planners are concerned with landscape planning for the location, scenic, ecological and recreational aspects of urban, rural and coastal land use. Their work is embodied in written statements of policy and strategy, and their remit includes master planning for new developments, landscape evaluations and assessments, and preparing countryside management or policy plans. Some may also apply an additional specialism such as landscape archaeology or law to the process of landscape planning.

Green roof designers design extensive and intensive roof gardens for storm water management, evapo-transpirative cooling, sustainable architecture, aesthetics, and habitat creation.[citation needed]

For the period before 1800, the history of landscape gardening (later called landscape architecture) is largely that of master planning and garden design for manor houses, palaces and royal properties, religious complexes, and centers of government. An example is the extensive work by Andr Le Ntre at Vaux-le-Vicomte and for King Louis XIV of France at the Palace of Versailles. The first person to write of "making" a landscape was Joseph Addison in 1712. The term "landscape architecture" was invented by Gilbert Laing Meason in 1828 and was first used as a professional title by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1863. During the latter 19th century, the term "landscape architect" became used by professional people who designed landscapes. This use of "landscape architect" became established after Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and Beatrix Farrand with others founded the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1899. IFLA was founded at Cambridge, England, in 1948 with Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe as its first president, representing 15 countries from Europe and North America. Later, in 1978, IFLA's Headquarters were established in Versailles.[3][4][5]

Through the 19th century, urban planning became a more important need. The combination of the tradition of landscape gardening and emerging city planning that gave Landscape Architecture its unique focus to serve these needs. In the second half of the century, Frederick Law Olmsted completed a series of parks which continue to have a huge influence on the practices of Landscape Architecture today. Among these were Central Park in New York City, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York and Boston's Emerald Necklace park system. Jens Jensen designed sophisticated and naturalistic urban and regional parks for Chicago, Illinois, and private estates for the Ford family including Fair Lane and Gaukler Point. One of the original ten founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), and the only woman, was Beatrix Farrand. She was design consultant for over a dozen universities including: Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey; Yale in New Haven, Connecticut; and the Arnold Arboretum for Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts. Her numerous private estate projects include the landmark Dumbarton Oaks in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C..[6] Since that time, other architects most notably Ruth Havey and Alden Hopkinschanged certain elements of the Farrand design.

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Landscape architects create graphic representations of plans.

Landscape architects plan and design land areas for parks, recreational facilities, highways, airports, and other properties. Projects may include subdivisions and commercial, industrial, and residential sites.

Landscape architects typically do the following:

People enjoy attractively designed gardens, public parks, playgrounds, residential areas, college campuses, and golf courses. Landscape architects design these areas so that they are not only functional but also beautiful and harmonious with the natural environment.

Landscape architects plan the locations of buildings, roads, and walkways. They also plan where to plant flowers, shrubs, and trees. Landscape architects design and plan the restoration of natural places disturbed by humans, such as wetlands, stream corridors, and mined areas.

Many landscape architects specialize in a particular area, such as beautifying or otherwise improving streets and highways, waterfronts, parks and playgrounds, or shopping centers.

Increasingly, landscape architects are working in environmental remediation, such as preserving and restoring wetlands or managing storm-water runoff in new developments. They are also increasingly playing a role in preserving and restoring historic landscapes.

Landscape architects who work for government agencies do design sites and landscapes for government buildings, parks, and other public lands, as well as plan for landscapes and recreation areas in national parks and forests.

In addition, they prepare environmental impact statements and studies on environmental issues, such as planning for use of public lands.

Interns are often supervised by more experienced landscape architects.

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Hogans land clearing 559-280-4602. Ernie carson
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San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) October 31, 2013

Dsg.nr, http://dsg.nr (pronounced "designer"), an online design collaboration platform, launches its "beta preview" app today. It aims to change the way interior designers and consumers concept and create their digital design boards, which is currently a difficult, costly process. While popular sites such as Pinterest and Houzz serve as places for people to gather inspiration for interior design projects, Dsg.nr takes it to another level by giving them tools to manipulate images and create their own vision for how they want to design a space.

After seeing interior designers experience the frustrations and limitations of complicated, expensive software programs such as Photoshop, the Dsg.nr team created a free web-based application that helps designers of all levels, consumers and professionals, create boards in minutes, not hours. The design tool aims to eliminate the needless hours that designers spend cataloging and tracking products, manipulating images and compressing files to share with others.

"At the idea stage, design communication should be simple and flexible. Anyone should be able to grab images and move them around as naturally as they speak," said Nancy Quan, a former professional interior designer, Co-Founder and CEO of Dsg.nr.

The new Dsg.nr web tool allows users to easily find product images from mainstream brands as well as from retailers with unique offerings and add them to their design boards. In addition, users can easily add their own products onto their boards by simply dragging and dropping images from most websites as well as from their desktop.

Users can arrange items freely, add labels and share the design boards easily. The free design board tool is available to users who sign up at http://dsg.nr.

"The design board editor is just a minor portion of what we are envisioning; ultimately, we will build a platform that will provide true social collaboration features to help designers streamline their processes and make it easier for them to share their ideas with clients and keep costs down. Were excited to invite users to join our community and share their ideas with everyone," said Oscar Medina, Co-Founder and CTO of Dsg.nr.

About Dsg.nr:

Driven by a team passionate about design and technology, Dsg.nr (http://dsg.nr) is a web-based social collaboration platform for interior design. The San Francisco-based startup was founded in May 2013 and has just released the first version of its main product, the design board editor. Dsg.nr is working towards building out other exciting features.

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Dsg.nr Launches Its App for Interior Designers and Consumers