Amenity Horticulture II

Learn about the development and planning of horticultural assets for amenity purposes

Who manages amenity horticulture sites? These days many different professions are involved in the management of natural and designed landscapes, including architects, town planners, engineers, landscape architects, environmental scientists, sport and recreation specialists, botanists, biologists, horticulturists and agronomists. Depending on the size and nature of the site, and the inputs required to manage that site, people from these (and possibly other) professions might be employed as specialist consultants, as site managers or as team leaders.

 The management skills include:

• Defining a mission, vision, goals and activities planning
• Ensuring that the above are reached or planned within a specified time frame
• Managing budgets
• Managing human resources
• Managing material resources
• Managing natural resources skill

This usually means looking for more resources and solving problems related to the running of the amenity site together with the team that he or she is leading.

 

Lesson Structure

There are 7 lessons in this course:

1. Adapting Amenity Horticulture to Changing Needs
   • What is an amenity horticulture site
   • Challenges of amenity horticulture: political, social, economic, environmental
   • Management of Amenity horticulture sites
   • Defining a mission, vision, goals and activities planning
   • Ensuring that the above are reached or planned within a specified timeframe
   • Managing budgets
   • Managing human resources
   • Managing material resources
   • Managing natural resources
   • Management options
   • Amenity sites; horticultural displays
   • Management framework
   • Types of organisational structures
   • Chains of command
2. Macro Panning for Amenity Land Provision
   • Macro planning introduction
   • What to plan for
   • Principles of neighbourhood planning
   • What is a community
   • Principles of leisure facility planning, including sports grounds
3. Resources and Information
   • Information sources
   • PBL project to create and present a report that identifies, describes and uses up-to-date information sources relating to changing influences on the amenity industry
4. Social, Cultural and Environmental Impacts
   • Introduction
   • Comparing positive and negative aspects of different factors
   • Examples of environmentally driven management decisions
   • Cultural, social and environmental issues
5. Economic Impacts
   • Financing amenity horticulture sites
   • What are we funding
   • Funding sources
   • Funding amounts
   • Human resource management
   • Volunteer management
   • Material resources management
6. Community Involvement
   • Amenity horticulture and the community
   • Where might you find community participation
   • Community needs or wants: not always the same
   • What motivates community involvement
   • Community participation to develop parks and playgrounds
7. Developing a Management Plan
   • PBL project to create and present a management plan for an amenity horticulture site.
   • Components of a management plan
   • What to do to make those plans come true
   • Staff morale and enthusiasm
   • Involving the community so that they take responsibility
   • Solving the budget problem without cutting on services

Aims

• Identify optional management approaches for amenity horticulture sites.
• Determine varying features of optional management approaches for amenity horticulture sites.
• Explain planning concepts and processes used for provision of amenity land.
• Identify and describe up to date information sources relating to changing influences on the amenity industry
• Explain current social environmental issues as they evolve in a changing political climate, for example community involvement, sustainability, public/private partnerships
• Explain current economic issues as they evolve in a changing political climate, for example community involvement, sustainability, public/private partnerships
• Describe Methods of community involvement from user surveys and consultation exercises through to physical involvement using volunteer groups.
• Explain the relationship between the amenity industry, government policies and communities.
• Critically evaluate the means by which the community can be engaged with the amenity industry.
• Determine the impact of community policies on local strategies
• Determine relevant issues (social, political, economic and environmental) that relate to management of amenity sites.
• Develop an appropriate management plan for an amenity site.

What Is An Amenity Horticulture Site?

An amenity horticulture site can be defined as ‘Land primarily used for recreation, pleasure, visual enhancement or environmental protection or improvement rather than for the production of economic crops’. Under this definition, there is a very broad spectrum of land uses for amenity horticulture sites, and no one management strategy can be applied to all types of amenity horticulture pursuits.

An amenity site is any land dedicated to any of the functions below, alone or combined:

• Recreation
• Education
• Nature protection
• Embellishment
• Production of landscaping plants

Amenity horticulture can include natural parks, as they need some degree of plant and vegetation management, and also nurseries where plants are grown to be used in landscaping. It includes city parks, green belts and road landscaping. Broadly it includes all types of activities relating to landscaping.