Evergreen Plants in Urban Parks and Their Importance Regarding Landscape Architecture, a Sample of Trabzon City

In botany, basically, an evergreen plant is a plant that has leaves all year round. In fact, deciduous trees shed their leaves usually as an adaptation to a cold or a dry season, which means there might be no reason regarding climate for being deciduous in some parts of the world. However, low nitrogen concentration in soil might also be a major reason for being deciduous in such places. Although the term evergreen firstly means pine, fir, spruce and some more woody trees to many people, it is quite possible to talk about many different evergreen plant taxa in different sizes, shapes, colors and textures. This variety and their attention getting characteristics make them very popular. Many landscape designers and amateur users often prefer evergreen species for landscape designs or plantations owing to their influential and conspicuous appearances through the year. In addition, when a functional plantation is done, evergreen plants can mean a stronger effect while deciduous ones could hardly be recognized in winter. In this study, four well known and heavily used urban parks of Trabzon city were chosen as the research areas. These areas were analyzed by using GIS techniques and field surveys so that their floral structures and user profiles could be determined. Then, evergreen species in the research areas were identified. After their ratios among all the woody species in the parks and their contribution to biodiversity were defined, a questionnaire was used to be able to get some social and cultural approaches of the users to evergreen plants.