What You Do As An Entry Level Landscape Architect 

Depends largely upon where you are initially employed. My initial experienced was with a US Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works District office in 1973. The District had over 900 employees including several types of engineers, architects, biologists, hydrologists, archeologists, landscape architects, ecologists, project rangers, project managers and various other professions and staff. After a week's worth of training on civil works processes and Federal regulations, I was placed on an interdisciplinary team tasked with revising a recreation/restoration plan for a 22,000 acre flood protection project with multiple lakeside recreation sites, visitor center facilities, a state park and project management/maintenance facilities. It was a crazy first year, but I learned something in multiple fields every day from my highly-skilled teammates and produced multiple design layouts in a team environment. This was prior to the computer design age, so all of my design work was hand drawn to scale showing multiple alternatives at the preliminary stage including site layout, vegetation, grading, drainage and circulation. I was involved in project reviews with coordinating agencies (Federal and State) and environmental impact documents. Final designs were completed in conjunction with team members and I was involved in follow-up construction management and site inspections. So, in some work venues, you are expected to perform at a high level very quickly.

Thank you so much for the advice! I’m currently a senior and I’m thinking abt majoring in landscape architecture and this helped me so much!

The senior LAs always change your designs only to come back to your original design and claim credit.

I stumbled upon your videos, and started to share them with my staff here at BMLA. I will share with as many landscape architects as I am able. Good tutorials, and great content and well presented.

Feel free to drop a comment and share your experiences as an entry level architect or if you had any other questions about what it's like to be in the field!

Loved it. Keep up the good work.

Hey Carter! I’m a new subscriber and I love the content! Keep it coming! I’m currently studying for my LA license, any general studying tips you could share for a entry level designer pursuing a LA license?

Hi Carter, thank you so much for creating such awesome video. I finished my master degree of landscape architect. When I first step on this industry. I have worked for some landscape design companies to gaining more working experience. Most of the jobs I did were the residential designs and the common using softwares are AutoCAD, Vectorworks, Sketchup and Lumion. Even through I still feel have lots things to learn, but at the same time base on the working experiences, I feel would be hard for myself back to work for landscape architecture company as more of them involve big scales of commercial projects and with city planning, urban design knowledge. Have you got any suggestions on how to change the career from a landscape designer to a landscape architect?

Very helpful tips.

I need interview advice, questions to expect, and how to be confident and not nervous

0 seconds ago HI!! im looking to get my foot in the door with landscape design. are there any high-quality, in depth certificate programs you could recommend to me? I'm having a lot of trouble finding and choosing.

I’m a senior in college graduating with a Natural Resources degree, and I’ve taken some really great classes in my latter half of college and would love to apply to MLA programs in the next few years. What would you recommend to do to start to gather or a portfolio if you’re not already enrolled in classes with projects?

Hello, we build retractable louvered roof aluminum pergola. I need a software that allows me quickly draw the pergola and get measurements for production. Which software would you recommend.

CAD Monkey.. Wtf Lol. There seems to be a very tense culture similar to Software Engineering (SWE) or Solutions Architect.

Is there a group

Hello, I got an offer for landscape architect from sheffield,UK and I wanted to try out for just architecture and people are being very discouraging about landscape architecture in terms of salary, job availability and the job demand. Do let me know some insights whether I should go for it or not.