Volunteer landscape architects

The best opportunities for landscape architects to work as volunteers tend to come early and late in their careers. Between these times, voluntary work is more likely to take the form of pro bono professional advice. They overlap. The difference is that volunteering tends to be practical on-site work while pro bono tends to be the same type of work as one would do in an office but done without charging.

The Druk (Dragon) Garden in Ladakh is a good example of the overlap. I am near the end of my working career and the other landscape architects are nearer the start of their careers. But we all do some design work and we all do some practical work. The work Gordon Evans is doing for Buddhism for Social Development Action (BSDA) in Cambodia is also involves overlap. Instead of doing the work as an extra to his full-time job, he became a full-time landscape architect on a charitable project at a very much lower salary.