Contrary to what a lot of people might think, roadway landscaping is much more than just planting trees and flowers along the road. It is a process that involves beautifying the landscape adjacent to functional roadways while ensuring minimal deleterious impact on the natural environment — natural habitats support wildlife as well as the growth of plants, so it is of utmost importance to ensure that they are well-protected. 

The principal objective of a roadway landscape designer, architect or contractor is to ensure that a roadway is successfully incorporated into a landscape context. This objective is guided by three crucial goals, which are further discussed below:

Goal #1: Protection of natural as well as cultural resources 

Plant species, particularly trees, provide a myriad of wide-ranging benefits, including natural habitat, air filtration, control of soil erosion, terrain stability and storm water catchment. In addition, they also add to the visual appeal of the roadway infrastructure. As part of project planning and design, landscape contractors endeavour to protect and preserve natural species of plants that exist along the roadway corridor.

What's more, roadway landscaping professionals also seek to protect critical cultural ecosystems, such as rivers, dams, lakes and hills, which make up the transport corridor. When you see a tunnel dug through a hill or a bridge constructed over a waterway, know that is a roadway landscape designer's way of preserving important cultural ecology. 

Goal #2: Restoration of ecosystems

When it so happens that impacts to the landscape adjacent to the roadway corridor cannot be avoided, landscaping professionals should, to the extent possible, seek to rehabilitate landscapes ruined by construction work. For natural and cultural ecology, the aim of such rehabilitation should not simply be to replace lost features, but to restore specific lost functions as well. This may mean doing so many different things, including restoring lost natural habitat, soil stability, water buffers and tree coverage. 

Goal #3: Enhancement of the roadway landscape

If possible, roadway landscaping professionals often have a responsibility to leave the roadway landscape in a better shape than they found it as part of a civic improvement initiative incorporated into a road construction project. Road landscape improvements may include providing street lighting, paving sidewalks, planting trees and flowers and so on. The introduced features should be incorporated with existing road landscape features in such a way that not only adds beauty but also creates a sense of place.