Habitrail Landscaping

Barley, a dog, sniffs along a fringe of lawn next to some unnervingly bright, unnervingly bland plants in what feels like a pre-fab environment.

The landscaping choices around a budget hotel near the airport always feel like they’ve been optimized to look as good as they can from about 100 years away, balanced against being able to thrive entirely under the care of an automated sprinkler system. Up close, it feels like you’re too close to the movie set and can see the artificiality of the matte painting. While the plants are alive, they have this unnerving blandness that feels slightly hostile. “No one lives here, please move along.” It’s not precisely that these landscaping choices feel liminal; their limited palette of bright colors feel aposematic. Danger: Poison, don’t bite.