News
- Bees buzzing at city haven:: “A wildflower haven created earlier this year beside one of the city’s main roads is proving to be a blooming success for bees.”
- Richard Mabey: in defence of nature writing:: “Not since John Clare lambasted Keats for metropolitan sentimentality has there been such an unwarranted attack on the integrity of nature writers.”
- Urban Habitat Project at the Central Terminal:: “We can take urban spaces, make them beautiful, and at the same time help with stormwater runoff, protect pollinators and other valuable urban wildlife.”
- New Orleans already taking steps to use rainwater to help residents, the environment and the city, officials say:: “New Orleans already is taking steps to adopt or implement sustainable strategies to deal with the city’s surplus stormwater, including developing rainwater storage areas on abandoned lots and developing new zoning regulations…”
- Living Roof Research Blossoms At Melbourne University:: “The Biodiversity Roof is designed as a garden requiring minimal human intervention, with the aim to provide a protected space for experimentation with Australian native plants as urban habitat that encourages colonisation and supports biodiversity.”
- Boxed In – The Rivalry between Architects and Landscape Architects:: “Running in parallel lines, architects and landscape architects are co-existing, but should we be focusing on co-creating?”
- Adapting the Urban Ecosystem:: “Our designs for future urban structures should support the ecosystem types we have accidentally constructed not attempt to create new natural spaces.”
- Turtles Flourishing in Golf Course Ponds:: “New research shows that golf courses can be havens for turtles, and may even attract a richer mix of species than ponds in seemingly more natural settings.”
- Nature in Our Alleys:: “Alleys represent one interesting place to insert or re-grow nature, and several cities have made impressive strides here.”
- Creating Insect Conservation Sites in Cities:: “Urban green spaces are not just areas for plants and trees. They are habitats and conservation sites for animals too, most commonly, insects.”
- Let the garden go to seed? Gladly:: “The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds wants us to be idle gardeners for nature’s sake.”
- Green Roofs: We Must Demand Better:: “Green roofs can and do fail or underperform, but that may be because we have imposed inadequate demands on the industry.”
- City Slicker or Country Bumpkin: City-Life Changes Blackbird Personalities:: “The origins of a young animal might have a significant impact on its behaviour later on in life.”
- Urban Nature, Land of Opportunity:: “If sustainability has to begin at home, urban nature may well be the new land of opportunity.”
- Back gardens are full of incredible wildlife activity:: “It doesn’t matter how tiny your garden is – with minimum effort you can have an eclectic bunch of visitors and their daily business is an extraordinary affair.”
- RSPB aims to tackle housing crisis with plans to build one million homes in the UK:: “Giving Nature a Home urges the nation to provide a place for wildlife in their own gardens and outside spaces.”
- RSPB urges British public to create 1m ‘homes for nature’:: “The RSPB is urging the public to create 1m new “homes for nature” in its most ambitious campaign to date, prompted by an unprecedented study of UK wildlife in May which revealed that 60% of all species are in decline.”
- The Pollinator Pledge:: “Take the Pollinator Pledge, and pledge to do just one thing to help our hard working bees and other important bugs.”
- Fatal attraction: moths find modern street lights irresistible:: “They say moths find white light or slightly bluish light irresistible and will exhaust themselves by flying around the lights rather than mating or searching for food.”
- We Are Hardwired for Loving Nature:: “Committing to the concept of biophilia is more than a corollary stating “nature is good,” but asserting that natural systems are a component that should be carefully designed into more (if not all) of our building and planning projects.”
- Green Highways: New Strategies To Manage Roadsides as Habitat:: “From northern Europe to Florida, highway planners are rethinking roadsides as potential habitat for native plants and wildlife. Scientists say this new approach could provide a useful tool in fostering biodiversity.”
Resources
- Pollinator Week – “Bee” a Part of the S.H.A.R.E. Movement:: “In celebration of Pollinator Week on June 17-23, 2013, the Pollinator Partnership (P2) is asking everyone to join the S.H.A.R.E. (Simply Have Areas Reserved for the Environment) program.”
- Rain Garden Handbook for Western Washington: A Guide for Design, Installation and Maintenance (PDF)
- Urban Landscape Design and Biodiversity (PDF):: “This chapter focuses on the urban biodiversity and the opportunities and conflict of improving urban biodiversity.”
- Eco-revelatory Design (PDF):: “Eco-revelatory design is an ecological design concept in the field of landscape architecture means “a design strategy that attempts to enhance site ecosystems as well as engage users by revealing ecological and cultural phenomena, processes and relationships affecting a site.”
- Urban River Landscapes (PDF):: “Understanding of floodplain resources, principles for an ecologically sound riverfront design, baselines of urban water rehabilitation and some samples of urban river landscape throughout the world.”
- Ecological Landscape Design (PDF):: “Design is a consequence of how things are made, and the world has been shaped by the designers.”
- Integrating Ecosytem Landscapes in Cityscape: Birds and Butterflies (PDF):: “Such eco-friendly urban gardens increase people’s appreciation of nature, which can be a source of pleasure, and also make it possible for the behavior and ecology of these species of wildlife to be studied.”
- Top tips for making your garden wildlife-friendly:: ” It is quite possible to do things throughout your garden that help wildlife without compromising everything else you want your garden to be.”
- Thoughts on Noel Kingsbury’s contribution and a review of his latest book with Piet Oudolf:: “Naturalistic planting design is still a relatively small world, but Kingsbury’s influence is hard to underestimate.”
- What is Urban Ecology?:: Timon McPhearson from the New School New York explains in this video.
Design
- Thomas Heatherwick reveals garden bridge designed for River Thames:: “The idea is simple; to connect north and south London with a garden.”
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Bird Brick by Aaron Dunkerton:: “Bird Brick cavity is made of five handmade, clamp-fired bricks which can be built into new buildings or garden walls to encourage birds to nest in urban areas.”
- Architect Jeanne Gang threads nature into urban landscapes:: “I’ve never been one to think about nature in a pastoral, picturesque way. I think of it as a potent force that can be harnessed. Wildlife is technology … Suddenly having nature in the middle of a city can be exciting.”
- High Line Offers a Walk on the Wild Side:: “When the third and final section of the High Line opens next year, it will represent a sharp aesthetic departure from the first two sections: Instead of modernistic benches and showy perennials, there will be rusted tracks overgrown with Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod.”
- Vaulot & Dyevre Create ‘Insectopia’ Modern Shelter For Bugs:: “In an effort to promote biodiversity in urban areas, “Insectopia” was created and installed in Paris. Ultimately, it is a tree trunk with hundreds of wood blocks individually crafted and grouped together to create a type of hotel for bugs.”
- Wildlife Project: Building an Insect Hotel:: “One of our spring projects was to give a gift to pollinators and a boost to the ecosystem by building an insect hotel.”
- Google wants to incorporate wildlife into new office project:: “Rather than “completely separate” the building from its surroundings, the design “invites people to come out of their hermetically sealed box and become a part of what’s outdoors,” said Ryan Mullenix of Ohio-based NBBJ, the architecture firm hired by Google.”
