Evidence-based landscape architecture: The maturing of a profession

Professions tend to change over time, typically becoming more scholarly as information is generated and incorporated into practice. Medicine has made the transition to a scholarly profession over the past hundred years or so and has recently embraced the concept of evidence-based medicine. Landscape architecture is poised to become a more scholarly profession and this essay proposes that it become a discipline of evidence-based landscape architecture. Actions for everyone from professors and administrators to practicing professionals are suggested to meet the goal of a more scholarly, relevant profession. The risk of ignoring the trend of evidence as a basis for practice is described in terms of the divergence among historical medical disciplines. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.