President’s Message

Paul Jester, PLA, ASLA 2022 President

Hello spring! I hope everyone has had an amazing start to 2022. There were several educational events and conferences available to us during the winter months. These are great opportunities for us to learn and grow our knowledge within the industry and make sure we are providing the best information to our customers. LCA has always strived to help coordinate these educational efforts, helping our members demonstrate a level of excellence in the industry, including another successful year of virtual pesticide information for continuing education. While I enjoy the educational conferences and gathering together during the winter months, I am excited for warmer weather and cannot wait to see what amazing projects our association produces this year.

This past January, I was fortunate to attend a conference sponsored by one of our own members, Planted Earth. This Landscaping Winter Conference at Turf Valley Resort brought in a wide variety of speakers, including Jennifer Horn of Jennifer Horn Landscape Architecture, Jennifer Giunta of Riverbend Nurseries, and Nicole Sherry, who manages the field operations at Camden Yards. The presentations were entertaining, covered a broad range of topics, and made for a great day of learning surrounded by my peers.

During one of the presentations, the topic of biophillia was mentioned. Biophilia is defined as the innate human instinct to connect with nature and other living beings. This principal was introduced to me in my college days, and while I had forgotten the technical term over the years, the principal and idea of biophillia has always stayed with me. It is a principal that was first coined in 1964 and has continued to evolve to this day. Studies of the idea have shown evidence of positive benefits of human interaction with nature, such as lower stress, enhanced learning, and improved productivity. The positive benefits from these interactions is one reason we all take family vacations to the beach and mountains each year, allowing us to return to and relax in our natural environment. While the big vacation trips are fun, the effects of biophilic practices can be seen on a smaller scale with elements that range from plants in the office space, windows to view the outdoors, or even just pictures of nature.

I believe humans have a deeply engrained love of nature, a drive and passion that each of us has turned into a career. We each have an opportunity to embrace the idea of biophilia and make it more than a philosophy but can make it a daily practice in our lives through our office lifestyle and the projects we build. Each of our projects can create an amazing outdoor space for families to enjoy, relax in, and be within the natural environment. With embracing the ideas of biophilic design, we can create environments that maintain, restore, and even enhance our physiological and psychological health and connection to nature.

In addition to maintaining our connection to nature, we cannot wait to connect with you in person! We cannot wait to announce the lineup of in-person events for the upcoming year. These events will strive to create fun educational and networking opportunities that will allow us to appreciate nature and enjoy time with each other. A big thank you for your support of this organization.

Respectfully,

Paul Jester, PLA, ASLA LCA President 2022