A new landscape design approach

With the growing awareness of the planetary climate crisis, our landscapes must take on a much more proactive role in adaption, mitigation and regeneration. What we design now will be crucial in stabilising our environment and making places we can still live and thrive in.

Green benefits of using natural systems

We all know that we appreciate seeing plants and trees in a city but space is scarce and it's not possible to move buildings or plant trees everywhere. Green infrastructure can take many forms such as green roofs, living walls and elevated gardens. Not only do these things mitigate heat or excess rain, they provide beauty, biophilia and biodiversity.

Taking our urban greening vertically

Cities are crowded, land is expensive, often there's no space for trees or planting beds. Living or green walls have the ability to provide massive amounts of green leaf with virtually no footprint. Such leaf area provides ecosystem services, biodiversity and beauty. Few things can rival the impact and effect of a well designed living wall, indoors or out.

Investing care in trees

Trees give us so much, we plant many new trees in our efforts to make better urban landscapes or to reforest, to capture carbon. What we don't do is give trees the programs of care and attention that they need when placed in the built environment. As many cities in the Middle-East grow rapidly, the planting of trees must be followed by the correct care. In an era of increasing temperatures, we need trees to keep us cool, give us beauty and biodiversity.

An experienced and forward-thinking green innovator

Mark Laurence has many years of experience as a landscape designer, living walls innovator, consulting arborist, sustainable landscape/ecosystem services designer, futurist/thinker/speaker.

Based in the UK, Mark works internationally in Europe, Scandinavia, the USA and especially in the Middle-East. He is a committee member of the Society of Garden Designers, with a speciality in Sustainability, a Chartered Horticulturalist and Professional Member of the International Society of Arboriculture. Since 2007, Mark has developed and pioneered the use of modular hydroponic living wall systems and worked with them in diverse places such as Chicago, Norway and Dubai. Some of the UK's most iconic green walls were designed by Mark. He is a systems innovator with a number of patents to his name, specifically in the realm of vertical greening.

The current focus is on the challenges of an escalating climate crisis, through the design of high-functioning urban landscapes that capture carbon, remove pollutants and mitigate local environmental stress. This work is increasingly being expressed in the Middle-East region.

Address details:

Mark Laurence Design Ltd
1 Manor Cottage,
Merston, Chichester, W. Sussex, PO20 1EE, UK
Mobile: +44 (0)7949 099195