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Assignment – Maintaining Urban Vegetation Types Tom Wild
Choose one of the vegetation types listed below as the focus for your maintenance study (some possible sites shown in brackets, please see emailed maps).

?Urban grassland gradients (e.g. Crookes Valley, Weston Pk,). Up to 1000m2.
?Planted/spontaneous Woods/Woodpasture (Ponderosa, Crookes Valley). <1000m2. ?Urban shrub planting (Weston Park). Up to 1000m2. ?Urban water margins / riparian land (Crookes Valley Pk, Porter Brook). Up to 250m2. ?Urban Brownfield site (Myers Grove Lane, City Road). Up to 500m2. ?Wildflower perennial meadow (Green Estate, Crookes Valley) Up to 1000m2. ?Sustainable urban drainage systems (Grey to Green II, Furnival Gate). Up to 250m2. ?Naturalistic herbaceous planting (Botanical Gardens, Weston Park). Up to 500m2. Using ONE of these vegetation types (marks as % of the total are shown in brackets). 1.Describe its purpose within the landscape (why is it there at all? Is it a contested use or well accepted? In what way do people or wildlife use it?). You need to consider these issues within the socio-cultural context of Sheffield, not where you come from, a reflection on this is required. Write a critique of how successful or otherwise it is now, with reasons that support your argument. Identify a preliminary vision (a short written paragraph) for the site in 5 years’ time plus what you think are key goals for its long-term maintenance. Is this landscape “steady as it goes” or is it in need of development through maintenance? (20%). 2.Key characteristics – identify the areas that you are specifically focusing on, photograph these and show on a plan up to the maximum area permissible. You must undertake your study on a real place, and get to know and understand that place. It is not a hypothetical essay on “no place”. You need to “get under the skin of the place”. Are all the areas the same or are there different types of vegetation and species present, and if so what are they and where? What is their maintenance history? It is useful to think in terms of typologies (habitats) first, and species second. Profile sketches are useful here in terms of you analysing the structures and layers present, plus their condition (15%). 3.What are the key maintenance considerations, practices, theory, both philosophical and technical for this type of vegetation? Consider the benefits and drawbacks of possible approaches. Review these considerations using scientific and horticultural literature sources. Consider aspects such as how people or wildlife use, or might use the vegetation / space, what are optimal soil and microclimate conditions, identify plant nutrition and irrigation needs (including none) and sustainable ways to control invasives, are there any specific risks associated with the vegetation e.g. to the public, staff, wildlife, the wider environment or what are the typical staffing levels and levels of knowledge / training required? The emphasis you place on any of these will depend on the nature of the site and vegetation units you have chosen. You are expected to make these judgements, as part of the assessment (25%). 4.Develop i) a detailed annual maintenance plan for your vegetation type. This needs to commence with a paragraph of text in which you state your assumptions and make connections with other parts of this report, for example the vision etc. Then you identify activities, their times / timings, locational aspects, equipment and labour required, relative costs in terms of approximate hours per unit area. The maintenance plan is usually best presented as a table, or series of tables. Follow the When (Month), What, Where, For Who, By Whom, How Long, How Much….. approach! ii) a longer-term strategic maintenance overview, for up to 10 years to address issues that are unlikely to be hugely important in any one year. You may wish to add diagrams or images that help interpret your maintenance approach where more explanation is required (40%). 5.References (to be cited in line with the Harvard System). Guide to progress in relation to tutorials Tutorials are only useful when you have thought about the issues to be discussed in advance. The module is structured as far as possible so that lectures in week 7 mostly relate to Part 1 of the assignment and then Week 8 to relate to Part 2 and so on. Everyone is different but it is suggested that you should be undertaking this assignment in line with the suggested schedule below: Week 7. Preliminary site visit, confirm decision onsite. Second site visit on Tuesday week 8. Week 8. Draft your initial thoughts for part 1 of the assignment (there will be a tutorial on each of the sites in weeks 8-9. You can sit in on all of them if you want. Week 9. Draft your initial thoughts for part 2. Week 10. Draft your initial thoughts for part 3. Week 11. Draft your initial thoughts on part 4. Week 12. Review and finalise any details. Key points in undertaking the assignment ?You should adopt strategies and maintenance activities that are sustainable and environmentally sound, or if not, justify why there are no alternatives to the approaches you propose. ?Some of the vegetation communities will have very few plant species and cultivars present, other may have hundreds. We do not expect a review of all of the plant types present, but select examples – perhaps 10-15 species of the dominant species that form most of the fabric. ?We are using the sites given as reference examples, but we recognise that you might wish to refer at some point to other case studies (with properly referenced citations) to deal with omissions of elements within the reference example. This would go in either part 1 or 3 of the document. ?Be concise and ensure no repetition - write no more than 2500 words (excluding captions, legends and references). ?Keep the report ‘lively’ though through the use of images and plans to help illustrate important points and reduce words. ?The use of Word or Excel generated tables is recommended for the Maintenance Plan section. ?Estimated costs should be given in terms of hours of time to achieve an end point. They are nearly always approximate. Use the internet, other sources and informed/reasoned estimates to research typical costs. ?You will have a group tutorial every week where you can ask the tutors questions about the approach you are taking. ?The submission date for this report is Friday 16th December 2022 by 17.00, submitted via Turnitin on MOLE. You can submit the document through Turnitin at any time before this date. General resources Additional References given within the module week by week. Environmental Horticulture (Cameron and Hitchmough, 2016) CABI. Watkins & Wright, 2005 (online chapter pdf), Lincoln. Plant User Handbook (Hitchmough & Fieldhouse, 2004) e.g. Chapter 6. Maintenance oriented professional magazines, e.g. “Horticulture Week” Scopus and Google Scholar (search on “weed control” or similar) Google in general for the issues (e.g. as regards reduction in herbicides) Example of a Feedback sheet for this assignment in 2020 To help you understand how the assignment will be marked, attached is generalised but real feedback for a student project. The text in blue and italics are the criteria for assessment, alongside a judgement on a gradient scale from very well achieved to very poorly achieved for each of these in order to give a mark to each part of the assignment. They are in essence short-hand for the more discursive text that you have in the document for each of the four key parts of the assignment. The same criteria will be used this year. University of Sheffield Department of Landscape Architecture Feedback sheet for LSC 6008 2020 Student name: 1Describe its purpose within the landscape; in what way do people or wildlife use it in the context of Sheffield? Identify a vision of how you want it to look in 5 years time, identify key goals for its long term maintenance, (20%). This is a sound and intelligent intro, put the issues on the site into context, and supports this with references. Vision is sensible and reasonable, although there isn’t much development of what this vision might actually look like, nor is there any mention of how it should look at 5 years? What’s the broad target? The 5 year idea sort of comes up a bit in the next bit under key characteristics 2Key characteristics – identify the areas that you are specifically focusing on, photograph these and show on a plan, are all the areas the same or are their different types of vegetation and species present, and if so what are they and where? Do you understand the place and the vegetation, how real is your approach, how accurate is your description of the vegetation (15%). This is pretty good, breaks down the vegetation pretty effectively, you identify species and there is some sense of what is where but not to a really high degree. It’s a bit hesitant on the possible direction of travel? 3What are the key maintenance considerations for this type of vegetation? What might you do and why in relation to the place, resources available, training and skills, the public needs. To what degree does your approach respond to these? (25%). Caption for the yellow daisy as S. oblongifolius is incorrect, ditto the Bulbocodium. It is an interesting concept to add additional species, which could be done, but who would do this? nothing on the cultural dimension. How do these actions relate to the 5-year vision? Site zoning is generally sensible. 4Develop i) a detailed annual maintenance plan for your vegetation type, commencing with an explanatory linking para, identifying activities, their times / timings, locational aspects, ii) a longer term strategic maintenance overview, for up to 10 years to address issues that are unlikely to be important in any one year (40%). Explanation of your pitch? Useful to have a few sentences as an introduction. If you want to control tall forbs like Chamaenerion, you need to cut them to the ground in summer, not just remove the flowers, so you need to set down some ground rules for when would you do this or not? The one year plan is ok, it’s a bit vague sometimes about specifics of do what to what, this would be made more possible if you linked the sort of species in the different patches to what the goals of the site are. The 10 year plan; I like the monitoring bit, although it could join up more and be more convincing. The soil disturbance regime is an interesting idea but I think you would make more but smaller scale disturbances, not a great big 4m2 area, be a bit more nuanced. Summary: Overall this is a reasonable attempt at the site, I have the general idea what you want to do, but you never really describe what it is going to look like in your mind? This is critical in terms of moving forwards and everything else sort of rests upon this. All in all this just needs a bit more ‘glue’ to bind it together better.