Study may create landscapes with year round visual appeal

New York: A new study offers recommendations that may help landscape professionals create landscapes in temperate climates that people can enjoy year-round.

Rob Kuper, from the department of landscape architecture and horticulture at Temple University, used photographs of landscapes in various seasons to determine peoples' perceptions and preferences for the colour complexity of changing natural scenes.

"Plant and vegetative colour changes may influence human perception and affect preference ratings and complexity estimations," Kuper said.

According to him, determining whether and how measures of categorical colours (plants and vegetation that are red, green, blue, etc.) and perceptual colours (landscapes containing variations of reds, greens, and blues) affect consumers' landscape preferences has practical implications.

"Plant growers, scientists, designers, and installers can benefit from understanding and predicting whether people prefer landscapes containing categorical colours, perceptual colors, or neither."

Kuper's study involved 48 colour photographs depicting four visual states of plant growth -- winter dormancy, foliation, flowering, and senescence -- at four locations on each of three landscape architecture project sites in New York and Pennsylvania