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Al Whitley/2 min read

Understanding the Landscape Plan in Civil Engineering Drawings

Blueprint Reading Essentials

Title Block

Project name, scale, date, drawing number.

Plan Views

Top-down view of each floor — walls, doors, windows.

Elevations & Sections

Vertical views and cuts revealing wall and floor construction.

Detail Drawings

Zoomed-in views of specific construction conditions.

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This tutorial walks through understanding the landscape plan in civil engineering drawings, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

The last of the civil engineering drawings that we will be reviewing is LS.1, the landscape plan. Landscape plans are created either by Landscape Architects or on occasion by Civil Engineers. The purpose of this drawing is to show the planting legend.

So there is normally a plant schedule. In the plant schedule, you will see that there are the symbols, there's a code, there's the quantity of the items, the common name, the botanical name, container size, category, the size, and then the grade. So they have the trees grouped over here.

They have the shrubs, shrub areas. This would be smaller shrubs that are grouped at a high density. And then they have ground covers, which have different hatch patterns.

So you can see, for example, right here, there are three of the trees that are coded RF, and this is where they are. And the same pattern is happening throughout the drawing. We have certain areas where we have shrubs, ground covers, and flowers.

We also have an area that's showing plants to be removed. Many jurisdictions provide people credits for removing plants because they can take the plants, transfer them somewhere else in the city, and receive credits for that action. So again, the landscape plan deals with the information outside of the building.

We have the symbols, we have the call-outs, and we have the quantities. It's always fun to see what different Landscape Architects and Civil Engineers are proposing for different projects. And I look forward to working with you in our next set of professional discipline drawings.