News
- ASLA Releases Guide To Health Benefits of Nature:: “The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has created a terrific and handy collection of studies that all demonstrate the positive impacts the natural environment has us.”
- Zombies vs. animals? The living dead wouldn’t stand a chance:: “Next time you’re lying in bed, unable to fall asleep thanks to the vague anxiety of half-rotten corpses munching on you in the dark, remember this: if there was ever a zombie uprising, wildlife would kick its ass.”
- Lovefest: Landscape Architects and Restoration Ecologists:: “Landscape architecture and ecological restoration are really different disciplines, but increasingly these fields are working together in fascinating ways.”
- Everyone Has Contact with Nature but that Nature Is Not the Same:: “what can be learned from a smaller city in the midwest United States — an average city?”
- How to track animals in the city:: “The city teems with wildlife, writes Rob Cowen. You just need to know how to spot it.”
- Two thirds of UK homebuyers would consider paying more for a house with a wildlife-friendly garden:: “A survey has revealed that seven out of 10 people in the UK would consider paying more for a property that has a wildlife-friendly garden. “
- Portland hopes to deter building-crashing birds:: “Portland’s City Council will examine crafting rules that would encourage more bird-friendly designs for the city’s buildings.”
- The Urban-Nature Continuum: Different ‘Natures’, Different Goals:: “What are these different kinds of urban nature, and can they exist together?”
- Greening Berlin: The Co-Production of Science, Politics, and Urban Nature:: “Jens Lachmund opens Greening Berlin with the image of the Südgelände, a former railroad yard in the district of Schöneberg that has been transformed into an urban park, nature preserve, and art space.”
- Cities do not have to destroy nature:: “City planners at the recent GreenurbanScape Asia Conference in Singapore say that out-of-the-box thinking and involvement of people at the neighbourhood level, can help buildings and trees co-exist in harmony.”
- Daylighting Rivers in Search of Hidden Treasure:: “How unexpected, then, that over the last twenty or thirty years, cities have been destroying land to make room for water.”
- To See Biodiversity Downunder, Visit a National Park…or a City:: “Over the short time that it has taken New Zealand to become a nation there has developed a dichotomy between cities and towns and “wild” landscapes. Nature is not in the city but “out there” in the mountains. We (humans) live in cities — nature resides in the mountains.”
- Cohabitation:: “Cities are one of the fastest growing habitat types for people—and wildlife. And increasingly diverse urban ecosystems are inspiring creative living arrangements.”
- Using Biodiversity as a Predictor of Urban Health:: “But even in manmade Rotterdam, there are countless species of flora and fauna that work together to facilitate natural events like plant pollination and water filtration.”
- Green Future: Plotting a New Course:: “In the shadow of a guard tower and an electrified fence at the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women in Jessup, a simple patch of wildflowers blooms.”
- Making Way for Urban Wildlife:: “Though it may be too soon to call it an urban wildlife movement, initiatives focused on urban biodiversity seem to be catching on.”
- How The Homegrown National Park Project Is Greening Toronto:: “Instead of making an actual park, this project appointed park rangers and set them loose in the city to create green spaces hiding amid the urban environment.”
- A Dose Of Nature Helps City Dwellers Fight Their Need For Instant Gratification:: “An experiment shows that even a simple photograph of greenery can push the brain to better consider the long-term future.”
- The problem is the solution: Attracting beneficial bugs to your garden:: “Bugs can be pests. They can also be predators that feed on the pests. To make a connection between the two, gardeners need to know which plants attract the predators, where to place them, and how to care for them.”
- The Biophilic City: urban innovations for closing the fiscal gap:: “Darren Bilsborough explores biophilic urbanism as a way of increasing quality of life without increasing tax for Architecture Australia’s 2013 Dossier on urbanism and sustainability.”
- A Matter of Scale: Connecting Human Design Decisions with Decisions Made by Wildlife:: “Often, planners, landscape architects, engineers, architects and other built environment professionals adopt these ecological principles into their designs of regions, cities, and individual developments. But do these designs function as originally intended?”
- Urban Wallpaper:: “Found anywhere and everywhere expect for the deep sea, lichen is easy to ignore, especially in London.”
- Green Infrastructure Surges Across the U.S. – Illinois Reaching for Policy Lead:: “Recent actions by both Congress and the State of Illinois are bringing Green Infrastructure (GI) closer to becoming the preferred stormwater strategy to control runoff by sustainable, cost- and ecologically effective methods.”
- ‘Homes for Nature’ – a new habitat for wildlife in the capital:: “This environmental project is part of London Underground’s series of celebrations to mark its 150th year, and will see 150 ‘Homes for Nature’ created across the network.”
- In Midwest, Bringing Back Native Prairies Yard by Yard:: “Across the U.S. Midwest, homeowners are restoring their yards and former farmland to the native prairie that existed in pre-settlement days.”
- Dancing by the Marsh:: “In order for me to locate myself in a new place, I need to wrap my head around its natural history.”
- The Sabbatical:: “Woodruff, the St. Louis garden designer best known for his traffic-stopping seasonal displays at projects like the Bank of Springfield in Illinois, has spent much of the last three years quietly studying the work of the world’s leading designers.”
- More Cities Bring Buried Streams Back To Life:: “New urban waterways are making a come back. Cincinnati is following the lead of Seattle, Kalamazoo, Mich., and other cities by bringing back a buried stream that has been underground for a century. Uncovering these streams have environmental and economic benefits.”
- Bird Friendly Buildings Could Save Millions:: “The infrastructure that provides people with essential services sometimes has a surprisingly large side effect on other species. Seemingly benign buildings may be one of the deadliest serial killers.”
Resources
- How to make a solitary bee hotel:: “But you can use any container and any combination of these materials, as long as it protects the bees from rain, the wood is untreated and the holes are no bigger than 10mm in diameter.”
- Certified Wildlife Landscaping Professional Network:: “National Wildlife Federation is piloting an initiative to certify professional landscapers to assist their clients with creating wildlife-friendly gardens.”
- Studying the preoccupations that prevent people from going into green space:: “That urban green space can provide opportunities for psychological restoration which could prove valuable in promoting public health now seems relatively well established. What is less clear is whether many of us will continue to avail ourselves of these opportunities.”
- Wildflowering L.A.:: Wildflowering L.A. is a native wildflower seed sowing initiative throughout Los Angeles County by artist Fritz Haeg.
Design
- Garden Building for Humans and Butterflies:: “The GBHNPCB is a house for butterflies and other insects, birds and people. It also houses working spaces for a woman-run design-atelier located in a central area of Cali.”
- Urban Hedgerow:: “Urban hedgerow suggests that we, Humans are also “nature” and the project inspires all of us to be a little more tolerant and a little more natural.”
