Pawpaw Cloud Forest
Reestablishing Authentic Native Landscapes — Pittsburgh PA
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Specialists in Creating Authentic Native Plant Landscapes in Pittsburgh PA & Wheeling WV
Ecological Restoration/ Bioregional Landscape Design
About the name: Pawpaw Cloud Forest extends the tropical characteristics of our native pawpaw trees to their broader, growing affect on the Appalachian understory. It's a celebration of our common landscape for what it is: remarkable, unique, at risk, and worthy of an intentional ecological recovery. Pawpaw Cloud Forests are the semi-mythical Appalachian woodlands of our childhood, our pre-industrial past, and our ecologically re-claimed future — mountainous and green, covered by clouds, and related to tropical Cloud Forests. They can be found covering distant hazy mountains, in our regional parks, and in backyards. Unsurprisingly, a portion of East-Central West Virginia is climatically characterized as Appalachian Temperate Rainforest or Appalachian Cloud Forest. The name is also a nod to the future, asking us to consider how our landscape is changing; heavily shaped by suburban sprawl, highways, Whitetail Deer overbrowsing, introduced species, and a warming climate, as tropical looking shrubs like Pawpaw and Ohio Buckeye are starting to noticeably expand in recent years — even taking over hillsides in striking fashion where dense deer populations have reduced numbers of maples, oaks, and other historically abundant saplings. I expect our native Pawpaw patches to continue to be prolific in a hotter, more humid, and potentially wetter climate while also continuing to inspire the growing adoption of native landscaping in Appalachia through the full suite of botanical experiences — being delicious, nutritious, visually impressive, fragrant, deer resistant, teachable, and forming critical and regenerative habitat for the conservation of native pollinators, wildlife, and people. Pawpaw Cloud Forest didn't occur to me merely as a fun novel ecosystem catchphrase, but after observing the uphill expansion of the historically lowland Pawpaw understory, as outlined in the NPS article linked below.
Our Mission is to holistically re-create authentic, context-sensitive bioregional landscapes as a conservation and watershed-focused alternative to lawns and traditional landscape architecture. We work with ecological succession creatively, pragmatically, cost-effectively, and without the use of herbicides. We aim to set a new precedent for landscape design in the region by demonstrating a more authentic and seriously considered approach to regional landscaping, which intends to actually reestablish thriving plant-communities endemic to the Western Allegheny Plateau.
Our Mission is to holistically re-create authentic, context-sensitive bioregional landscapes as a conservation and watershed-focused alternative to lawns and traditional landscape architecture. We work with ecological succession creatively, pragmatically, cost-effectively, and without the use of herbicides. We aim to set a new precedent for landscape design in the region by demonstrating a more authentic and seriously considered approach to regional landscaping, which intends to actually reestablish thriving plant-communities endemic to the Western Allegheny Plateau.
ECOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE DESIGN & INSTALLATION
Our Work intends to be the most ecologically holistic and regenerative approach to landscape architecture offered in the Upper Ohio River Valley. We want to work with like-minded clients to create legitimate, regenerative habitat which evolves seasonally and annually through a thoughtful and context-sensitive approach to ecological restoration as a sophisticated 21st century approach to landscape architecture. We're about approaching the landscape from a holistic application of ecological restoration, as part of a collection of restoration actions to put our regional landscapes, broadly and strategically, back toward a trajectory of ecological health, biodiversity, and resilience / adaptation to environmental change, and to do so with pragmatic methods that are considerate to cost/ outcome analysis, as well as minimizing potentially negative environmental health impacts of restoration, such as the use of heavy equipment, soil disturbance, and herbicides. We don't believe that restoration outcomes justify any means, regardless of their cost, carbon footprint, and net environmental impact — but that intelligent approaches to ecological restoration must focus on all relevant environmental and human factors, simultaneously, while setting landscapes up to be beautiful, bioregional, useful, inspirational, and self-sustaining — never going out of style.
Our Work intends to be the most ecologically holistic and regenerative approach to landscape architecture offered in the Upper Ohio River Valley. We want to work with like-minded clients to create legitimate, regenerative habitat which evolves seasonally and annually through a thoughtful and context-sensitive approach to ecological restoration as a sophisticated 21st century approach to landscape architecture. We're about approaching the landscape from a holistic application of ecological restoration, as part of a collection of restoration actions to put our regional landscapes, broadly and strategically, back toward a trajectory of ecological health, biodiversity, and resilience / adaptation to environmental change, and to do so with pragmatic methods that are considerate to cost/ outcome analysis, as well as minimizing potentially negative environmental health impacts of restoration, such as the use of heavy equipment, soil disturbance, and herbicides. We don't believe that restoration outcomes justify any means, regardless of their cost, carbon footprint, and net environmental impact — but that intelligent approaches to ecological restoration must focus on all relevant environmental and human factors, simultaneously, while setting landscapes up to be beautiful, bioregional, useful, inspirational, and self-sustaining — never going out of style.
In addition to having tropical looking palmate leaves and appearance, and uniquely tropical-like fruits, and being a card-carrying member of the pan-tropical Annonaceae plant family, the Pawpaw tree is also the host plant to the Zebra Swallowtail butterfly — yet another Appalachian resident fit for the Pawpaw Cloud Forest moniker. Photographs by Betty Hall photography, used with permission.
Our Niche as of Spring, 2025 is to recreate naturalistic landscapes around buildings, new construction and redevelopments, campuses, and environmentally-oriented residences to create seamless gradients, or landscape patches amid development and our surrounding woodlands; to create regenerative landscapes which will mature over decades to provide continuous and essential regional habitat. Our ideal projects involve substituting traditional landscape design & installation with the resurrection of native flora, in visible settings that double as educational landscapes. Replacing the need for unending, environmentally deleterious, and costly lawn and traditional garden maintenance is central to our work, and we use a straightforward cost/ benefit consideration, allowing clients to break-even by greatly reducing landscape maintenance costs. Typically, a bioregional landscape will pay for itself by offsetting the costs of traditional mowing and maintenance over a period of approximately five years. Our services offer a genuine alternative to the problematic development norm of having a wild woods set squarely against a manicured, lifeless lawn. The possibility of a natural landscape becomes apparent only after ditching the entire, deeply flawed and outdated premise that our landscapes and lives should be devoted to preserving the idea of a lawn — at which point we can focus on limiting lawns to the extent they are useful and beneficial, and can be easily managed. Like other modes of being an ecologically responsible citizen, adopting a native and/or bioregional landscape is an intentional act of minimalism — and seeks to greatly reduce the energy and ecological impact of maintaining large, useless lawns, not unlike the minimalist movement suggests we don't all need to live in 4,000 square foot McMansions. It's about improving our quality of life by letting nature reclaim our landscapes, carefully, methodically, and beautifully. This doesn't mean we expect all residential neighborhoods to become fully afforested, but suggests woodland-edge and open understory, successional meadow habitat as a landscape layer to effectively replace expansive lawns when and where they serve no purpose and simply exist as an anachronism from a Gilded Age, not unlike the McMansion development trend. This doesn't mean we are opposed to useful lawns and athletic fields that are actually used as lawns and facilitate play, community gatherings, and exercise — as a former college soccer player I'm appalled by the astroturf trend and think there's a huge need to retain and return America's organic grass athletic fields, and as dog-owner I appreciate the utility and practicality of maintaining some natural lawns as indispensable green spaces. That being said, large manicured lawns are a poor fit for the Appalachian region, and we have a native landscape that's inherently worth recovering — even compared to less biodiverse regions of the country. Cutting down a forest to build McMansions in the Allegheny Plateau, and then landscaping them with lawns and exotic shrubs from Lowes and traditional garden centers, in cookie cutter patterns, is a special kind of stupid, and a development norm that should have been banned long ago. Such norms are appalling to those of us with the slightest awareness of our ecological situation.
Our Niche as of Spring, 2025 is to recreate naturalistic landscapes around buildings, new construction and redevelopments, campuses, and environmentally-oriented residences to create seamless gradients, or landscape patches amid development and our surrounding woodlands; to create regenerative landscapes which will mature over decades to provide continuous and essential regional habitat. Our ideal projects involve substituting traditional landscape design & installation with the resurrection of native flora, in visible settings that double as educational landscapes. Replacing the need for unending, environmentally deleterious, and costly lawn and traditional garden maintenance is central to our work, and we use a straightforward cost/ benefit consideration, allowing clients to break-even by greatly reducing landscape maintenance costs. Typically, a bioregional landscape will pay for itself by offsetting the costs of traditional mowing and maintenance over a period of approximately five years. Our services offer a genuine alternative to the problematic development norm of having a wild woods set squarely against a manicured, lifeless lawn. The possibility of a natural landscape becomes apparent only after ditching the entire, deeply flawed and outdated premise that our landscapes and lives should be devoted to preserving the idea of a lawn — at which point we can focus on limiting lawns to the extent they are useful and beneficial, and can be easily managed. Like other modes of being an ecologically responsible citizen, adopting a native and/or bioregional landscape is an intentional act of minimalism — and seeks to greatly reduce the energy and ecological impact of maintaining large, useless lawns, not unlike the minimalist movement suggests we don't all need to live in 4,000 square foot McMansions. It's about improving our quality of life by letting nature reclaim our landscapes, carefully, methodically, and beautifully. This doesn't mean we expect all residential neighborhoods to become fully afforested, but suggests woodland-edge and open understory, successional meadow habitat as a landscape layer to effectively replace expansive lawns when and where they serve no purpose and simply exist as an anachronism from a Gilded Age, not unlike the McMansion development trend. This doesn't mean we are opposed to useful lawns and athletic fields that are actually used as lawns and facilitate play, community gatherings, and exercise — as a former college soccer player I'm appalled by the astroturf trend and think there's a huge need to retain and return America's organic grass athletic fields, and as dog-owner I appreciate the utility and practicality of maintaining some natural lawns as indispensable green spaces. That being said, large manicured lawns are a poor fit for the Appalachian region, and we have a native landscape that's inherently worth recovering — even compared to less biodiverse regions of the country. Cutting down a forest to build McMansions in the Allegheny Plateau, and then landscaping them with lawns and exotic shrubs from Lowes and traditional garden centers, in cookie cutter patterns, is a special kind of stupid, and a development norm that should have been banned long ago. Such norms are appalling to those of us with the slightest awareness of our ecological situation.
What's so special about Pawpaw Cloud Forest?
What's so special about Pawpaw Cloud Forest?
Will you please stop saying Pawpaw Cloud Forest?
We're really going after the expansion of authentic, regional landscapes, which merge seamlessly with outlying natural areas, such that the general public and conservationists alike will experience them and automatically understand them as appropriately fostered natural landscapes, which exist as an extension of our regional ecology — being inherent to a site. The difference with our work, is that you're not going to be able to easily determine where our work ends and a pre-existing regional woodland begins. You're not going to know if it was planted. It's not going to be a designed landscape, per se, it's going to be an extension of the natural landscape, not Design with Nature, but Design by Nature. I'm going to use the AI in my own brain to mimic and re-create a fully regional landscape of the present. And we're going to do this in a cost-effective manner, which is environmentally sustainable, requiring minimal management, mowing, and energy / water use, and saving clients significant money vs. traditional landscaping, whether we're starting with a new site or converting an existing lawn and garden. This is fundamentally different from most landscape architects and/or eco-minded gardeners who produce vaguely naturalistic landscapes featuring native plants, normally at high costs and requiring considerable ongoing maintenance, while paying themselves not as skilled ecological restorationists, but as graphic designers with at best a limited understanding of how to approach ecological restoration authentically, with sensitivity to local ecology, timelines, costs, and how to work with ecological succession over time.
I have a good, somewhat rare appreciation of the history and philosophy, and academic underpinnings of ecological restoration, including recent considerations and theoretical discourse, as well as future directions for the Field. I'm equally familiar with our local woods, woodland edges, and old fields, such that I can act creatively to authentically set our targeted regional ecology back on a path of health and recovery. Unlike most landscape architects who are starting to play ecologist and use native plants in recent years, I'm already thinking about the existing regional ecology and site, and have a very good ability to offer a fitting ecological prescription for a given landscape context, to source and grow native seed and plant materials accordingly, and to anticipate and plan for how that site will evolve over decades, and how it ties into the surrounding wooded hillsides. This is fundamentally the realm of ecological restoration firms, not people who simply have a degree in landscape architecture and an appreciation for native plants, and aren't genuinely acting as applied ecologists. Even the better landscape architecture firms in the Pittsburgh area don't show a good grasp of restoration, enough to know that they desperately need to hire someone like me: an academic ecological restoration professional, for the purposes of prescribing the right nature as the moving, successional target of restoration. For that reason, there are few good ecological restoration-based public landscapes in the PIttsburgh area that are authentic and place based, and there isn't a collective or central authority to critique the few visible ecological landscaping projects we have — it's essentially a bunch of landscape architects patting themselves on the back for using native plants with a budget of millions of dollars, with no real sense of the actual pragmatic science, which necessarily seeks to do things methodically and cost effectively; holistically. At the same time, the greater Pittsburgh region is such a good fit for letting nature reclaim what are in many cases still post-industrial, abandoned/ underutilized, and/or degraded landscapes — there is yet a very bright future for ecological restoration in Pittsburgh, but there's still a notable gap between the current use of native plants in public landscaping projects and what should be considered good ecological restoration, as well as a failure to internalize ecological realities/ realism in public landscape design.
Why Pawpaw Cloud Forest? Becuase I can improvise and act with sensitivity to the site and ecological context, while thinking as broadly and academically as necessary about regional conservation outcomes and targeted environmental trajectories. I'm not merely someone following a recipe, a plant list, or a naturalistic garden aesthetic. I'm not merely offering 'native plant gardening' or 'sustainable gardening' within the constraints of traditional landscape design. In this analogy, I'm a chef with a good enough knowledge of regional plants, the applied science of ecological restoration, and the contemporary practice of a new, ecology-based landscape architecture, to offer restoration staples as well as bold Pawpaw Cloud Forests.
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