How should I map area with decorative plants but which isn't garden?

Garry_Patchett · 2019-06-27T11:54:07.000Z

I would like to make a local map more complete by filling in some blank areas but I don’t know how best to map these areas without having to put every detail in. To get an idea of these areas please look at the linked image: https://pixabay.com/photos/entrance-office-building-city-299762/

The areas are usually outside the front of office buildings and they are comprised of footpaths, bushes, seats, flower beds, planters, paved areas, trees and other ornamental garden-type things. At the moment there is a large gap between the buildings and related roads/grassed areas and I would like to fill this gap to show that it’s not just empty space. However, I don’t want to have to add every single detail as this would take too much time.

What can I do to fill these areas quickly without using Tag:leisure=garden, which seems a bit too formal and/or misleading for what I need?
Or, on the other hand, should I be filling these areas? Are they best left blank/empty?

SK53 · 2019-06-27T21:15:54.000Z

There are (slightly odd) tags of landuse=flower_bed which could be used here, and man_made=planter for the raised features. Ultimately I think we need some kind of way to map soft landscaping & garden features.

Garry_Patchett · 2019-06-28T09:16:26.000Z

Thanks for your reply SK53.

“landuse=flower_bed” (or “landuse=flowerbed” as is used sometimes) is probably better than anything I’ve yet come across (even if it’s still just proposed) but it’s not ideal.

I was going to map these using areas of grass with a note to say that they should be reclassified but I’m not really comfortable with that as someone might assume that the areas could be traversed whereas they are generally impassable (except for the paths).

I think one of the problems I’m having is that I don’t know what this sort of land is called. It’s garden-like but not something I’d call a garden as gardens are usually private or at least enclosed in some way. It’s managed land but there’s probably no specific manager. It’s public but not somewhere that the public would normally be as that would look odd (and security would probably be called). They don’t just have one kind of plant in them so ‘flowerbed’ doesn’t really say what it has to but I can’t find anything better.

Since most of the land is impassable by people I thought about using barrier=hedge but that doesn’t seem right to me either.
I agree that more “soft”/mixed landscaping features should have tags. Maybe something like “landuse=vegetation” could be a more generic catch-all.

SK53 · 2019-06-28T14:10:53.000Z

The land itself should have the same classification as the building, which looks to be an office building, so landuse=commercial. This should include the building, parking & associated soft landscaping (the garden-type features). There’s no harm in having additional landuse polygons (grass, flowerbed) inside (or on-top-of the main landuse category: it is up to consumers to resolve these issues, and although fiddly can be done (I gave a paper on this subject 8(!) years ago at an OSM conference).

I would certainly avoid landuse=grass for non-grass-features because such areas may well be treated as walkable areas. I also see no particular reason to avoid using leisure=garden (you always need an access tag as people use it for private gardens as well as public ones and ones which can be visited for a fee). However, it is not strictly a garden, but garden elements in a slightly different context. Other than the flowerbed we don’t have a consistent way of mapping garden & other soft landscaping elements (flowerbeds, planters, raised beds, shrubberies etc) & we could do with one. Somewhere I have a half finished list of such features. Obviously trees & hedges can be mapped.

Garry_Patchett · 2019-06-29T09:02:00.000Z

Thanks for the extra info’.
I’ll keep my eyes open for examples which I might be able to copy. (There’s a good chance someone has already solved the problem in a nice way.)
Or I might just have to bite the bullet and do the details. (It’s not a massive amount of extra work, just more than I would normally want to do for some office buildings which I have no affiliation with.)
Either way, thanks again for your help.