As I’m certain all of you know, we’re in the midst of planning for the 2017 ASLA Annual Meeting in October! The Southern California Chapter and Los Angeles are looking forward to hosting the largest gathering of landscape architects and affiliated professionals in the world. Our chapter co-chairs, Andy Bowden and Baxter Miller, have been in regular contact with ASLA since the first of the year and we’re getting closer to what we believe will be the best conference in many years. New Orleans is stiff competition, but I’m confident SoCal can outdo any host chapter and city.

Speaking of outdoing, thank you to everyone who has volunteered to assist during the conference and those who submitted education and field sessions. The Chapter is incredibly proud of the effort put in by its members to demonstrate and share the works and issues that are most important to Southern California.

There were 39 field session submissions and it was very difficult for ASLA to select the final programs, however, we now have 16 field sessions ranging from exclusive tours of Lotusland, Huntington Gardens and Disneyland to bike tours of Venice Residential Gardens and Southern California waterways, including Ballona Creek and the LA River.

The committee could only choose 16, so we will be using many of the remaining submissions as future Chapter events and programs. So, fear not, we are committed to sharing everyone’s ideas and hard work. Again, thank you all.

Another big thank you to RELM and AHBE for hosting our recent chapter mixers in Downtown LA. We look forward to having more events like these in the coming months to keep everyone updated on the annual meeting planning process and finding opportunities for everyone to participate. We have mixers coming up in Orange County and Los Angeles, so look for them in your weekly newsletter and join in!

ASLA Advocacy Day is April 26 in Washington, D.C. On that day Chapter President-Elect Pamela Brief, our trusty Chapter Trustee, Perry Cardoza and I will travel to the Hill to educate members of congress to on landscape architecture and legislature supporting projects in which landscape architects participate. This year’s focus is Multimodal Transportation, Water Management Systems and Public Lands Infrastructure.

For anyone interested in learning more about advocating for landscape architecture at the local, state or federal level check out ASLA’s Government Affairs page (https://www.asla.org/governmentAffairs.aspx) and use their toolkit to contact decision makers in your community.

Also, as mentioned in the greeting, April is World Landscape Architecture Month! The intent is to celebrate the diversity of the profession and the great work being done at all levels and in all areas of landscape architecture. Everyone is encouraged to participate, and it’s so simple even I figured it out.

Take the “This is Landscape Architecture” card from your recent LAM magazine and photograph it in front of landscape architecture works then post it to social media. Can’t find your card? No problem, log on to www.asla.org to download one and find out about more ways to participate. Don’t forget to tag them with #WLAM2017 SOCAL ASLA.

Before I sign off, I want to encourage everyone to visit the recently redesigned Southern California ASLA website (https://socal-asla.org) to find out how you can get involved in the events leading up to the 2017 ASLA Annual Meeting, become a part of chapter leadership and get to know our invaluable sponsors.

On behalf of the entire SCCASLA Executive Committee, thank you for all your support and we look forward to working you to make 2017 the best ASLA Annual Meeting ever!