Clydebank, Scotland, where Ian McHarg was born and raised (and where he received education through high school) produced one of America's best known design ecologists. Before his first move to the United States, McHarg had attended two colleges in Scotland and spent eight years in the British army, including active battle service in World War II. He entered the army as an enlisted man, after four years attended Officer Training School, and was demobilized in 1946 at the rank of major.

That same year, McHarg entered Harvard University to study landscape architecture, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in landscape architecture 1949 and a masters in the same subject, one year later. He returned to Scotland for a short while and then earned another Harvard degree, a master's, in city planning (1951). For...