Lessons from the Field: Making an Impact as a Landscape Architect
Articles
Lessons from the Field: Making an Impact as a Landscape Architect
October 12, 2026
Cheri Ruane, FASLA, Chief Development Officer, Weston & Sampson
Landscape architecture education provides a strong foundation in design principles and technical skills, but many of the profession’s most valuable lessons emerge through experience in the field. This article reflects on three key lessons learned through projects involving parks, trails, and public spaces, highlighting the importance of community engagement, communication, and professional curiosity.
The first lesson emphasizes the value of understanding community needs beyond physical infrastructure, demonstrating how meaningful engagement can transform public spaces by fostering trust, ownership, and participation. The second examines the role of visual communication and storytelling in helping residents understand and support proposed projects, particularly when addressing community concerns. The third highlights the importance of site observation, attention to detail, and authentic enthusiasm in developing strong project solutions and building client confidence.
Together, these experiences illustrate that successful landscape architecture extends beyond design drawings and technical expertise. The profession requires listening, adaptability, communication, and a genuine commitment to understanding the people and places being served. By combining these skills with a strong technical foundation, landscape architects can create public spaces that strengthen communities and improve quality of life.
When I think back on my time in the landscape architecture program at UMass Amherst, I’m grateful for the grounding it gave me. However, a lot of what has shaped me as a landscape architect came later, on real projects with real communities, when the work got more complicated than anything included in a studio project brief. These are three lessons I keep coming back to:
1. Your perspective is an asset. Learn how to use it.
Early in my career, I worked for the Boston Parks Department and managed the Edgerly Road Playground project in the Fenway neighborhood. We hosted a community meeting, where we prepared to talk through design ideas and hear feedback. Instead, residents talked about safety, hypodermic needles in the park, and the feeling that the playground no longer belonged to the neighborhood. It was a good reminder that we were not there just to solve the problem of aging park infrastructure. If people did not feel safe using the space, a better layout or new play structures were not going to be enough. We changed course and partnered with a youth mural crew to work with neighborhood families on refreshing a worn mural at the edge of the park. That work helped bring people back into the conversation and developed a renewed sense of ownership that allowed them to reclaim the park as their own. That project changed the way I understood design. Your training gives you a point of view that requires listening carefully and adjusting to the conditions in front of you.
2. Good ideas only matter if people can understand them.
Years later when I was working as a project manager at Weston & Sampson, my team was brought in by the City of Framingham, MA to help get a stalled project moving again. The idea was to turn a former aqueduct into a multi-use trail. On paper, it made sense, but in the neighborhood, it had become a source of real concern. People were worried about privacy, safety, and what the trail would mean for their day-to-day lives. Part of the issue was that the earlier design materials were hard to read. Simplified black and white plans may have made sense to the engineers, but they did not help residents picture what would actually be built. When people cannot see what you mean, they fill in the gaps themselves.
Our team spent more time listening, added vegetative screening where it was needed, and changed the way we presented the work. Renderings helped people see the trail as a place that will provide safe, off-street circulation through the neighborhood, not just lines on a plan. Once people felt heard and could understand what we were proposing, the conversation opened up and the project got back on track and eventually built.
3. The technical foundation matters, but how you show up matters too.
More recently, we were pursuing a waterfront park project in Provincetown, MA. At the pre-proposal meeting, there were close to twenty firms on site. Everyone there could do the work, so we were really going to need to differentiate ourselves if we wanted to be awarded this project.
As we prepared for the interview, I went back to the site several times on my own. I watched how people used it, how it fit into the surrounding community, and a few subtle details I had missed in my previous visit. Those visits gave me a better feel for the place than I could have gotten from the formal site walk alone. We built the interview around what we had noticed. We still had to show that we were qualified, of course, but we led with care, attention, and a real understanding of the site. By “nerding out” on some of these details, our passion for the work also came through. That made a difference. We were selected for the project not because we were the only qualified team, but because we showed that we were paying attention and eager to do the work. Ultimately, our deep commitment to improving quality of life and designing parks with a true sense of place won the day.
