A typical spring afternoon in Ann Arbor: a Frisbee whizzing through the air in the Arb; a lone student resting beneath a tree in the Diag, listlessly flipping through the pages of a worn paperback; open lawns scattered throughout campus dotted with hundreds basking in the sun.

Appreciated by most but understood by few, these green spaces of campus often go unnoticed by the University community beyond the spring and summer months. But for Ken Rapp, the University’s landscape architect, these areas of refuge are more than just a comfortable place to lounge when the sun reemerges in Ann Arbor after dreary, gray winters — they are his life’s work.

Rapp has been employed by the University for 23 years and has seen the campus evolve in a variety of ways.

“There’s not a place on campus where you can’t go to and turn in a circle and see something that I’ve done over that time frame,” he said.

His work, landscape architecture, refers to all aspects of the landscape — from the plants and trees, to the walkways and fountains — and the socio-behavioral and aesthetic outcomes of these outdoor spaces.

The University first made a major investment in landscape architecture in the 1960’s, hiring the firm Johnson, Johnson & Roy to guide the development of the University’s master plan in 1963. And since then, Rapp and his predecessors have been constantly planning, designing and redesigning the University’s landscape.

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Joan Nassauer, a professor in the School of Natural Resources, said the University’s landscape exists to make a lasting first impression and to please those who are on campus every day.

“We come here sort of with heightened expectations,” she said of the campus community. “(Landscape architecture) creates an opportunity to organize the outdoor spaces of a campus in a way that is essentially welcoming to people who are here for a brief time and that is stimulating in all the right ways for people that are here using their minds and growing their minds.”

She also noted that the landscape of a university’s campus is vastly different from other types of landscape architecture, such as at corporate buildings or malls.

“The type of environment that would be (stimulating for) people who are here engaged in a scholarly endeavor is different from the kinds of environment that would be stimulating for people who are, say, going shopping,” she said.

Subsequently, Nassauer added, the type of planning and research that goes into designing a university campus differs dramatically from other public spaces.

Mary Carol Hunter, another professor in the School of Natural Resources, said a campus environment is unique in that people actually live within the space rather than just observe it.

“For campus you want to have space for people to just be,” Hunter said. “So you don’t want to have it all shrubbed up and stuff like that. You want to have spaces that people can move in and out of and through very easily.”

For example, Rapp said the grassy knolls between Dennison and East Hall used to be lined with shrubs, but he decided to remove them to make the spaces more accessible. He said the small change has had a huge impact on how students use the space, which is now almost always occupied in the spring and summer.

“Sometimes it’s a big change and sometimes it’s a little change, where you just notice that this would be much better used if we were to rearrange this or change something — make it different,” he said.

Rapp said the University assigns three levels of priority to areas on campus. Some places on and around North Campus are classified as level three, and receive the lowest level of maintenance to preserve their natural state.

Areas like the Diag and the Law Quad, which are more trafficked and historically significant, receive top levels of maintenance. In selecting these areas — deemed “more iconic spaces” — Rapp said he thinks about what places are campus attractions.

“When we started developing the priority levels, we looked at where are the places on campus that are destination points,” he said. “Where do people come to see things on campus?”

As a member of the Midwest Landscape Architects and Ground Managers — an informal group that meets once a year — Rapp is looking to host this year’s annual event here at the University this June. He plans to give a tour of campus and explain University practices as they relate to architectural landscaping.

Many Big Ten schools are represented in the group, along with the University of Nebraska, the University of Missouri and other large universities across the country. When compared to other campuses Rapp has visited in past years as a member of the group, he believes the University’s is one of the best in terms of overall look and layout.

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Slightly removed from campus, Rapp’s office, along with that of the Grounds Department, sits in a building on East Madison.