Cues to Care

Native gardens and naturalized areas are sometimes imagined to be wild, unkempt, and unattractive. In fact, this is a major reason people don’t include native plants or naturalized areas around their homes.

Cues to Care are a solution. These landscape elements may provide a sense of human intention, or neatness, while allowing environmental benefits. Joan Iverson Nassaur, who developed much of the early theory around Cues to Care noted that a human desire for neatness was a significant factor in preventing homeowners from planting native gardens.

“Neatness is a potent form of human communication—so potent that it may sometimes arrogantly dominate natural forces and native landscapes,” she wrote.

Nassaur’s Cues to Care is described as a series of perceptual, cultural and social mechanisms that “are immediate recognizability, communication of caring human intention or presence, and a consistency with local cultural traditions or social norms for landscape appearance.”

In short, Cues to Care are landscape design elements that are incorporated into naturalized spaces to bring a sense of intention and make them aesthetically pleasing by local standards. These elements include: