By Dr. Fadera Williams
Usually, every January 1 comes with excitement around the globe. However, as our nation steps into 2026, we must debunk the misconception that has cost us a lot in the transformation of our cities. It is the idea that landscape architecture is simply about planting flowers.
This misunderstanding may sound harmless, but its consequences are visible everywhere, and the results are felt by all and sundry. From the flooding that plagues the streets of Lagos and its heat-trapped neighbourhoods, to the poorly planned estates and peri-urban sprawl occurring in the adjoining cities of Ogun and Oyo, to the lifeless public spaces, the problems are glaring and evident.
When landscape architecture is reduced to gardening, urban development loses a critical layer of intelligence. Landscape architecture is not decoration. It is urban green infrastructure.
A profession hidden in plain sight
Landscape architects are professionals whose deliberate inclusion into the framework of the built environment dates back centuries in the West. However, in Nigeria, it is still in its toddler stage in terms of recognition. As the first landscape architect produced by a Nigerian University, I can testify (considering that this happened about 15 years ago in 2011) that not much has changed concerning the profession in all these years. One of our greatest challenges as landscape architects is that there is a poor understanding of our role. I will attempt to enlighten the readers in this regard.
Its concept
Landscape architecture is the discipline responsible for the planning, design, and management of outdoor spaces—streets, parks, campuses, estates, waterfronts, and entire urban districts. It integrates environmental science, engineering, urban planning, and human behavior to ensure that land works efficiently for people, nature, and the economy. Traditional (building) architecture is easy to comprehend because building Architects create indoor spaces that are places. In other words, they transform a parcel of land into a building structure that has different indoor spaces that are places. A place is beyond a space. It holds identity and meaning and lacks ambiguity of function because, usually, form follows function. Landscape architecture is not different in this regard.
What we do as landscape architects, however, is that we design outdoor spaces that become places, and these hold meaning and identity for the users, and also, the form follows the function. In addition, we solve socio-environmental problems by engineering the land and involving the populace. Gardening and horticulture focus on plant care and aesthetics, and are a small part of how we ensure the proper functioning of outdoor spaces on a residential scale, city scale, regional scale, or national scale.
Landscape architecture focuses on how the environment is synchronised with the human and built environment, regardless of its scale of operation. Yet in Nigeria, this distinction is often blurred, leading to a systemic under-valuation of the profession.
The Policy gap holding our cities back
One of the biggest challenges facing Nigeria’s urban development is the lack of a clear government policy recognizing landscape architecture as a core planning profession. In many public and private projects, landscape professionals are engaged too late or not at all. Outdoor spaces are treated as afterthoughts. Urban green infrastructure is excluded from budgets. There is poor or no information at all about the importance of green practices. There are no government incentives to encourage green building practices, flood control, walkability, and thermal comfort are poorly addressed, and the approach is largely reactionary rather than precautionary. This policy blindness is compounded by the persistent confusion between landscape architecture and horticulture, resulting in misaligned project briefs and underperforming urban environments. The cost of this confusion is not theoretical; it is measurable.
Urban chaos is a design failure
Cities like Lagos and Abuja face increasing urban stress. In Lagos, for instance, there is recurrent flooding due to poor land and stormwater planning and a lack of Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS). There is a rising urban heat island effect caused by the loss of tree canopies. For the regular person, it simply refers to the effect felt when the indoor thermal comfort is poor despite the introduction of electric fans and many cooling gadgets, and the higher consumption of power for cooling because the urban areas have greater heat levels compared to their counterpart neighbouring rural areas. Abuja also experiences congestion worsened by poorly designed streetscapes as well as unsafe, unused, or inaccessible public spaces.
These challenges are often framed as inevitable consequences of population growth. But, they are not. Without mincing words, these are design failures. Countries that take landscape architecture seriously use it to manage density, climate risk, and liveability simultaneously. Nigeria has yet to fully unlock this potential.
The economic case for landscape planning
What is often missing from the conversation is the economic value of professional landscape planning. Globally, studies show that well-designed landscapes increase property values and the liveability index of those residential areas. Green streets and public spaces attract investment as well as a higher life expectancy for the residents. Quality public realms boost retail performance and tourism potential, and climate-responsive landscapes reduce infrastructure costs and can attract international funding because of the climate justice ideology that the West would support developing countries where these practices are implemented and safeguarded. In Nigeria, the same principles apply.
Proper landscape planning can increase real estate value, improve tourism environments, reduce flooding damage, and enhance public health outcomes. Green spaces are not luxuries; they are economic assets!
A green resolution for 2026
As the year begins, Nigeria needs a Green Resolution for urban planning. This resolution should prioritize the formal recognition of landscape architecture in planning policy. As an association, we have clamoured for years to be recognized as a fully-fledged profession by the Architects Registration Council of Nigeria (ARCON), but this has not seen great traction. Unfortunately, rather than being encouraged by traditional architecture bodies, we have been misunderstood. When we tried to get our own council passed into law by an act of parliament, our efforts were shot down at the second reading.
The loss of the inclusion of landscape architects in our nation’s environmental team think-tank is a great loss indeed. There should be mandatory inclusion of landscape professionals in public projects. As landscape architects, we understand the lay of the land. Situating any built environment project should happen with a compulsory multidisciplinary approach. For instance, the direction of the sun, the wind speed and flow, and all those landscape elements would aid the proper layout of any building structure to take advantage of the environmental conditions and not build at cross-purposes with nature.
There should also be an integration of green infrastructure into urban master plans. Landscape architecture integrates elements of heritage, tourism, climate resilience, landscape engineering, and so on, and this would be invaluable as an input into our urban master plans.
Lastly, the clear differentiation between landscape architecture and horticulture should be recognised and respected. A landscape architect can function in a horticultural capacity, but a horticulturist cannot replace a landscape architect. This distinction must be recognised and respected.
The need to make an investment in public realm design as a development strategy would help our nation as a whole. This is not a call for more flowers; it is a call for better cities.
Redefining Nigeria’s urban future
Nigeria’s future will not be shaped by buildings alone. It will be shaped by how land is organized, how people move through space, how cities respond to climate stress, and how public environments support daily life. Landscape architecture provides the tools to address these realities.
In 2026, the question is no longer whether Nigeria can afford to take landscape planning seriously. The real question is whether we can afford not to. Beyond “gardening” lies a profession capable of transforming our cities, if we choose to see it.
I hope we see it. Happy New Year!
Williams, the national vice president, Society of Landscape Architects of Nigeria, is an Associate Lecturer, University of Lagos.
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