Landscape Architects have a long history with TxDOT, dating back to the hiring of Jacobus ‘Jac’ L. Gubbels as the first ‘Landscape Engineer’ in 1933. His philosophy that a completed highway design should be “in harmony with the surrounding landscape” and avoid “angular stiff …sharp lines and corners” since these posed a “mental hazard” to the driver still holds true today.

Just as TxDOT has grown, this aesthetic has expanded; today Landscape Architects are charged with visually and physically integrating highways and transportation facilities into the fabric of the surrounding landscape, providing visual relief, and improving the safety and function of the entire transportation network. The public is increasingly demanding aesthetic enhancements to existing and proposed transportation facilities.

The first consideration of landscape and aesthetics master planning and design is to improve the safety and function of the transportation network. This means that aesthetics planning is a process that occurs at every stage of design, construction, and maintenance. In most cases, meeting basic safety, operational, and design goals will be sufficient to meet most landscape and aesthetics goals. However, in special cases, meeting aesthetics goals may require going beyond these basic needs, without compromising the safety of the facility.

The goal of this manual is to provide the tools and resources Landscape Architects require to create the best possible designs, furthering TxDOT’s mission of ‘Connecting You to Texas’.