Illustrations of this follow. Trees are often not planted in parking lots because people believe that valuable parking spaces will be lost. Illustrations later in this document show that this need not be the case. Under certain conditions plantings are superior to structural materials such as wooden or wire mesh fences for screening purposes. Trees and shrubs that lose their leaves in the fall provide shade in the summer and allow the sun to melt snow and ice in the winter.
Plantings are usually more attractive.
Structural materials have the advantage that they provide immediate screening, while plantings must usually mature before they are effective as screens. Fencing is also useful when there is not enough room to plant hedges, shrubs, or trees. Remember that your project's usefulness and convenience for the people who will work, live, relax, or transact business there is the primary consideration in your plan. Landscape elements and parking facilities, as well as buildings, should be placed and designed to provide the best possible use of the site from the human point of view. At all times keep in mind that your project, when finished, should be a single unit, not a haphazard collection of separate buildings, parking lots, and landscape elements.