When the temperature drops and most are hustling to get inside, Harlen Groe and his landscape architecture class are trekking around identifying plants.

Groe is the instructor of Landscape Architecture 222, a required class in the program, which he describes as a “traveling studio.”

“This is a course in plant material,” Groe said, who takes his class around campus to identify plants by their buds, bark, leaves, fruit and twigs.

By identifying the plants, students get a first-hand demonstration of the shapes, forms and colors of native plants and how they interact with other vegetation in the same space.

“Landscape architecture design is done a lot in texture, color and form,” Groe said.

Students inspect and sketch shapes and forms of the plants’ attributes, dividing them into groups such as “weeping, columnar or pyramidal branches,” Groe said.

“[The] outcome is they should be able to identify these parent plants, as well as some of their cultivars,” Groe said.

The visual forms of plants and the changes in colors throughout the seasons are important when designing a consistent space. In the future, Groe said the landscape architecture students may be required to do a “site inventory” of an area and will need to be able to correctly identify plants and how they will interact visually and aesthetically.

During some of the bitterly cold days, Groe said the class stays inside to work on projects or identify computer-generated “virtual plants.”

This winter’s unusually cold temperatures have put a damper on Groe’s bi-weekly three-hour field trips.

“The last five winters, we’ve been able to go out the second day [of class],” Groe said. “We would probably go out [Tuesday], but it’s a little cold. We kinda [want to] raise the temperature level to at least around 28 degrees.”

After being given a space, students are required to “use plants to help define that room,” Groe said. The project must have consistency and follow a theme, such as using plants with all dark green leaves or vegetation with showy red barks.

The spring class introduces plants of the Midwest, while the course in the fall focuses on non-native flora.

“[The students] know the backs, ins and outs of campus,” Groe said.