Talk:Hardscape

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 January 2020 and 24 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cotterill.4.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:04, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 05:55, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Reassesed Start.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 19:35, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Has this maybe been a bit overhyped?
The text of the article seems to suggest that it's a general term for any piece of artificial (or indeed naturally occurring?) hardstanding, whether in someone's garden, a private or public park, or across a cityscape. Someone's even linked the much broader scope and verifiable "town square" article to this one as if to imply this includes that.

I arrived here in fact through clicking that link out of curiosity, as I'd never heard of the term before... and I was rather disappointed at the content. The lede paragraph is such poor english that I'm not entirely certain what it's trying to say. The links are all to commercial sites who want you to buy their "hardscaping" products, and at least one of them doesn't actually back up the text for which it's supposed to be a reference.

An independent websearch turned up, in about ten pages of results, maybe five links that weren't either commercial entities (hardware stores, landscaping companies) or fuzzy lifestyle pages like Pinterest that probably took their lead from them; those five count three dictionary links, one HowStuffWorks (not sure how useful that is), and a general landscaping info site... which is still going to be somewhere talking more about how to add a patio area to your garden than discussing the finer points of piazza design. None of those were page one, or the top of their respective pages. In fact, top of page one was a company CALLED "Hardscape", closely followed by... this wiki page. So it's in a nice spot for some cheeky SEO merchant to insert a few backlinks to their clients and try to enhance the seeming importance of it.

Here's the MWD link, by the way. Note how it's a relative neologism (1984 ... younger than me ... you'd think if this was a proper technical term it'd pre-date "concrete jungle", right?), and their own description barely stretches to two lines, and simply boils down to "man made structures within a landscape", nothing more. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hardscape

The OED says it even more explicitly, almost my own words in fact: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/hardscape

There's enough evidence for it being a term in use for a particular landscaping concept that it's probably still worthy of a small article, but as one applied to general urban construction? Probably not. I mean, I'd like it to be, as it's a good word, but unless someone can cite a good third party resource that I've missed which explicitly shows it as something other than a buzzword some garden-design company came up with, it seems uncouth to try and bend reality. 91.125.109.21 (talk) 11:58, 21 July 2013 (UTC)


 * In Philly (check out Lawncrest around Allengrove) the toxic waste from the industrial period just might have been covered up with concrete and then marketed as "hardscaping". Don't want to say Love Canal around here. 96.26.79.253 (talk) 12:58, 22 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Hardscape is a legitimate, general term as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "...man-made elements of landscape architecture... contrasted with vegetation." I find substantial resources using the term such as Graphic Standards Field Guide to Hardscape and many other books in a Google book search. It does seem to be a modern term with OED's earliest quote only from 1972. Hardscaping is contrasted with softscaping which is not defined in OED but still widely used in modern landscape and gardening books and websites. This article can certainly be expanded. Jim Derby (talk) 16:24, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit to Hardscape for Au Hardscaping enterd by Danydandaning and Edited by Deli NK
Please explain how starting an Australian Hardscaping/structural landscaping entry has been marked with Spam on this page?.

Here is the Entery 19 december 2016 by Danydandaning

"Hardscape landscaping in Queensland Australia is a licensed qualification called Structural landscaping divided into two classes of licenses, Trade Contractor Structural landscaper and a Builder restricted to Structural Landscaping. Referred to as the "Jack of all trades" due to its large scope of works. These Structural Landscaping licenses include the erection and fabrication of decking, fences, carports, pergolas, paving and the construction of Retaining Walls [3]"

Please note - a) The on page link was to another wiki page on a historic Mainly retaining wall b) The entry under reference was to a Builder ( qualified in the field of Hardscape) that also offers free advice and education on the subject. c) No local regulations were Included in the edit. d) Included existing References on this Hardscape page are Spam as one directs you to product pages ( not informative pages ) and a dictionary with what appears to be affiliate links.

Ozscaper (talk) 01:10, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, licensing regulations specific to small local area such as, "Hardscape landscaping in Queensland Australia is a licensed qualification called Structural landscaping divided into two classes of licenses, Trade Contractor Structural landscaper and a Builder restricted to Structural Landscaping" are irrelevant details that are completely out of place in a global encyclopedia. Deli nk (talk) 13:18, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Please Explain, I can not find another article on wiki or in fact on the web that the URL that was used for a reference has been used for so-called web spam??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ozscaper (talk • contribs) 07:33, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I will take it that you have no answer for the above question Deli NK, So I will give you the opportunity to do the right action and remove WP:REFSPAM from your edits to Danydandaning on this page or remove all external Spam URL's from page references and their contributions to Hardscape. Ozscaper (talk) 07:47, 21 January 2017 (UTC)