I earned a degree in landscape architecture in '97 (BSLA) at the U of Idaho. Environmental protection and restoration was an important part of the curriculum and has grown more since I was there as it has everywhere else as well.

An important thing you should consider is that you can positively affect great amounts of land working for developers to make their many projects as sound as possible. The catch is that in order to work for them, you have to be able to also be working in their best interests at the same time.

If you are too idealistic your opportunities will be extremely limited - government and non-profit organizations. Working for them is fine, but their projects are more likely to already support the values you are trying to proliferate and there are far fewer of them.

Environmental restoration is a huge industry that is going on all around and not being noticed very much by those not involved. I did not set out to be involved in it at all, but almost all of the commercial projects that I work on involve environmental restoration or mitigation and certainly all of them involve environmental protection. Much of it is in the form of making projects conform to Federal, State, Regional, and Local laws, regulations, or commission's descretions in order to get them permitted.

Today I was in a pre-hearing conference with regional agency about an office building being proposed in what used to be a gravel pit. There is a rain garden (bioretention pond) of over an acre, half of which will be planted with over 500 native shrubs. We discussed artificial turf as an alternative to lawn. Groundwater, energy conservation, and wildlife habitat is driving the site plan. It is a response to regulations, but it is the developer who is paying for the project. If we were not actively trying to make his project work as profitably as possible while still getting it permitted, someone else would be doing the job while we sat at home and blogged about idealistic values while not actually participating.

You have to get into the barn in order to clean it sometimes. Be prepared for that. Government and activists affect policy, but it is the developers team that actually does the designing almost all of the time. You have to support their agenda in order to work for them and you have to work for them in order to design their projects.

I don't think many people consider that early on.

It is a challenge, but you actually do affect real sites that get built. Then you feel good about it.