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How I fell in love with a fish

At the heart of this talk is the understanding that landscapes, even designed landscapes are integrated systems built upon relationships. As a landscape architect, this is information that personally resonated with me and reinforces the message we have been diligently shouting from the tree tops. As I watched this TED talk, for the first 10 times, my heart filled with excitement that there are others out there who are “getting it”!!

In this talk Miguel, a fish farmer, has designed a landscape for farming, something that is not often seen as a sustainable endeavor these days. His farm, however, is different from the run of the mill farm; it is in fact a #HighPerformanceLandscape. This term was coined by the Sustainable Sites Initiative to describe a designed landscape that actually restores the planet’s Ecosystem Services. His farm was designed as a rich system, where fish eat what they would eat in the wild with no supplemental feed. But the more miraculous aspect of this farm is how it has literally started to heal the once damaged ecosystem that surrounds it.

Miguel, the fish farmer understands how powerful this system is. Now the chef, with patrons clamoring to return to his restaurant understands this. Every individual that watches this TED talk has the opportunity to understand that we can indeed DESIGN landscapes that perform incredible feats.   By embracing both this system and relationship model, we can design landscapes that revolutionize the way we feed ourselves as we simultaneously strengthen the planet in realistic and incredibly meaningful ways.

This is #LandscapeArchitecture

This is #LandDoneDifferently

This is #JKLA