Other questions on meta deal with whether or not certain kinds of landscaping or "hardscaping" (someone else's word, but I like it) are welcome here, or better asked on the diy site.
I feel it's OK for the landscaping questions to live here, but if the consensus here is that they belong elsewhere, then is it possible to amend the title here and remove and Landscaping?
I mean, is that possible, within the StackExchange architecture?
Technical question, asked without prejudice.
It's absolutely possible, and not even uncommon—for instance, Electronics was, at one point, Electronics and Robotics.
The whole point of a beta period is to find out who the community is, and what does/doesn't work for them (within SE's framework). At this point, what will and will not be on topic for the site is entirely up to the beta community's consensus.
If landscaping gained traction then it would add an awesome dynamic to the website. I'd reckon landscaping is 2/3rds more a profession than gardening is a hobby. And it's an expertise with a much smaller pool of skilled professionals.
Most of us are programmers who happen to enjoy gardening, when the site opens up we may be wise to attract this niche!
Food for thought (in USA):
In more cultured nations (i.e. France) capable of producing a Versailles, the landscape/garden questions would overlap so beautifully that it would be silly to drop landscaping from the title.
So far, I've seen a lot of English and Americans and one person from Hong Kong. I think we're in for some very interesting conversations if we keep going with landscaping, even if I don't personally care to do anything with my yard past grow veggies.
So far, the patio question is the only "landscaping" tagged question to come up. Only one other "landscape" question was asked (about lawns). To me it seems like we could attract more landscapers to this site, and the site would be better for it. But so far at least, we haven't.
The small overlap with DIY doesn't bother me in the least. When I looked at the DIY site just now, I quickly found a few questions about stump removal or lawn care, questions which they consider on-topic, but would clearly also be on topic here. Perhaps in the future they'll transfer those questions here?
I don't think of myself as a "DIYer". I have no interest in Home Improvement. And (for better or worse) I see patio construction as a completely separate topic from "Home Improvement". I think that this site is more likely to attract professional landscapers than the DIY site is, because their jobs tend to have more overlap with gardeners than with home renovators.
But if the landscaping off-topic is too much of a hassle for attracting good gardening discussion, and we haven't attracted any landscapers here by the time we're ready to leave beta, then I'd strongly prefer we remove it from the title. Otherwise, we'll be constantly confusing newbies by moving their seemingly legitimate landscaping questions to the home improvement site.
Landscaping is tricky. I feel like there are plenty of things that are landscaping that are on topic for a gardening site, and there are plenty of things that are off topic for a gardening site. However, with landscaping in the title we open ourselves up to things that are better served being asked on the DIY site.
Patio questions are something that has come up. Those are sort of landscapes (Better said hardscapes) but don't feel right for an atmosphere where people are primarily dealing with plants. We probably aren't going to draw enough experts to answer them well, and its redundant with the experts over at the DIY site.
I don't however believe that dropping landscaping from the title is the right thing to do. Lawn care is landscaping, as are several other things this site should address quite effectively (I am trying hard to think of an example and if someone suggests one Ill integrate it). We just need to be fairly strict so that we can provide good answers from our experts here instead of doing a disservice to the question owner by not directing them to someone who can help them more effectively.
In a couple of week I'll need to move set a 50cm wall back 2-3 metres, which means building the new trenches to deal with drainage, etc. Is this DIY or landscaping? To me, it's a complex overlap.
Still, I'm not sure there's any point trying to force landscaping questions into this SE site. Isn't it better to have a dedicated site for gardening and leave landscaping to another site if it doesn't seem to naturally mesh into this site?
So far this site branches into the areas of biology and chemistry relevant to producing plants and food, but not really physics. So questions on the more physical aspects of landscaping might not be a great fit.
In my experience, if the tools for the job are different then they shouldn't be lumped together.
Landscaping deserves a tag for questions like...
How do you make a water garden?
But shouldn't be in the title of the site.
