[Tagging] Tagging small areas of bushes, flowers, non-woody perennials, succulents, etc

[Jerry Clough]

I've wondered about this for a while. There is a need to map these 
features both within large gardens (particularly those which are tourist 
attractions), parkland, campus locations and even typical townscapes.

For reference I wrote about botantical gardens some time ago: 
http://sk53-osm.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-quartet-of-botanical-gardens.html

My working notes on which features may need to be mapped are here 
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:SK53/Garden> . Please note 
that although I use the key garden (by analogy to things like golf), I 
am aware that this probably clashes far too much with existing usage, 
and that another key will be needed.

I'm currently looking fairly intensively at these features in my local 
university campus. Looking for something else I came across detailed 
plans for planting of areas associated with new buildings including 
lists of plants and layout by the landscape designer. My starting point 
was to check my identifications of plants 
<https://twitter.com/SK53onOSM/status/1222163049798361088/photo/2>, but 
of course I now have a good place to try out any tagging scheme.

The main components are:

  * Regular beds, often alongside a path of building. Some are planted
    with perennial herbs, but many are planted with shrubs, and
    increasinly ornamental grasses are used.
  * Areas of wild flowers. These are predominantly native wild flowers,
    introduced in a special turf (£20 sq m) rather than the mixes which
    are commonly described as wild flower which are usually colourful
    annuals from North America. These areas are only cut once a year.
  * Numerous lawns, amenity grassland and a playing field (recreation
    ground area)
  * Many low hedges planted with Yew (so-called "instant hedge" ordered
    by the metre), various cultivars of Cherry Laurel, various Berberis
    species, Box-leaved Honeysuckle, Christmas Box. Some of these grade
    into areas of shrubs.
  * A few taller hedges planted with a mix of native species
    (Blackthorn, Hazel, Hawthorn, Rose).
  * Shrub areas including smallish trees (Magnolia, Wintersweet),
    Bamboos, low-spreading Juniper and Spanish Gorse. More extensive
    single species plantings of Cotoneaster, Hazel and various Dogwoods
    Cornus.
  * A major tree avenue planted with Scholar's Tree (was Sophora
    japonica but has changed it's name).
  * Numerous specimen trees & areas more densly planted with trees to
    the point they can be mapped as woods
  * Some trees (not many) are planted in tree pits and the area of the
    pit is covered with a non-climbing Ivy
  * Many smaller buildings have climbers planted at their foot with a
    trellis attached to the building. In these cases the associated bed
    is small.
  * Large specimen plants which are notionally herbs. Notably New
    Zealand Flax Phormium and Pampas Grass Cortaderia selloana.
  * Wetland planting (Phragmites, Typha, Carex) now more or less
    entirely naturalised and thus suitable for natural=wetland tagging.
  * Planting interspersed with ornamental pebbles
  * A very small number of containers (planters) and raised beds
  * Limited areas of persistent tall herb vegetation (mainly close to
    wetland features) something where I dont think we have a commonly
    used natural tag.
  * Extensive areas around the fenced perimeter which have may be from
    1-5 m thick consisting of a mix of small trees, large shrubs and
    other woody plants (Brambles, Honeysuckle, Agave). This would
    originally have been a border planted at regular intervals with
    shrubs (Cherrylaurel, Acuba, Forsythia, Elder) which gradually
    became overgrown with self-sown plants (Cherries, Sycamore, Birch,
    Bramble) and plants escaping from adjoining gardens. At a stretch
    this could be described as natural=scrub.

Having written this list I obviously ought to turn it into a blog post 
and illustrate each of these feature.

Jerry

On 09/02/2020 02:33, Joseph Eisenberg wrote:
> In the discussion about `barrier=hedge` areas, it is clear that
> mappers want a way to tag small areas of bushes and shrubs, and not
> everyone is happy about using natural=scrub for this case.
>
> Currently there is a tag landuse=grass for small areas of managed
> grass, but this might be considered to exclude other non-woody herbs.
> And leisure=garden is usually considered the whole area of a garden,
> rather than being limited to a certain type of vegetation.
>
> I would suggest that we need a more developed system of tags for
> micro-mapping small areas of plants, not just woody-stemmed bushes and
> shrubs, but also semi-annuals, herbaceous perenials (e.g. in the
> tropics) and annual flowers and herbs.
>
> This would also help with problems like using village_green for all
> sorts of areas: see discussions and examples in
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tag:landuse%3Dvillage_green
>
> Rather than just discussing how the tag small areas of bushes or
> hedges, how about how to tag this area of flowers:
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Vg6.jpg
>
> Or a garden bed planted with these:
> https://www.thaigardendesign.com/bird-of-paradise-strelitzia/ - or
> these: https://www.wikilawn.com/flowers/ornamental-red-ginger-plant-alpinia-purpurata/
>
> Or this bed full of succulent plants, in a semi-arid region:
> https://www.finegardening.com/app/uploads/sites/finegardening.com/files/images/spotlight-collection/resize_of_pa230150.jpg
>
> Are people micro-mapping areas such as these?
>
> How specific should the tagging be?
>
> - Joseph Eisenberg
>
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