He also takes plenty of notes-so he can share news of the latest advances in the field with future students. Smith, who works in the landscape design studio, is known to incorporate storytelling and other novel learning techniques, including team-building exercises, to foster cooperative learning. First, I want to foster a strong sense of caring for our planet and, second, I want to promote individual creativity. As a teacher and as a landscape designer, I try to achieve those goals in everything I do. Smith says many are accustomed to working in the hard sciences where objectivity is paramount.
Landscape design involves very intuitive and subjective ways of looking at the world.
After earning an undergraduate and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Smith owned a successful five- person design firm during the 1980s. He began teaching part-time at Penn during this period. He continues to design for a wide range of public and private gardens, greenways and urban landscapes. He has developed master plans for such locations as the Delaware Memorial Bridge greenway, woodlands at Tyler Arboretum, Buena Vista and Belmont Hall state conference centers, and, most recently, Peirce's Woods at Longwood Gardens. This summer, he began a sabbatical to develop a master plan for all of Longwood Gardens, a comprehensive document that will examine the status of Longwood today and the direction it will develop in the future.