Issues of landscapes from a climate change point of view
The emergence of the idea of resilient planting is a response to a number of different pressures which all have one underlying cause – climate change. Whatever the cause – and I’ll get on to that later – I see it as the most exciting change to the way we design our gardens and landscapes.
NOTE: This article was first written in 2006, so some aspects have been updated to reflect current realities. Biomembranes is a term I’m borrowing from biology (the structure bounding a cell) to describe the outer skin of future self-sustaining buildings. I have stated elsewhere that I believe that for the built environment – and therefore
This article was first published in 2007 and has been updated 2018. Future gardens will be an integral part of a living bio-system that is part house, part garden, an energy conserving and production environment. It will also be a resource for water retention and cleansing, food production area, biomass and environmental haven. Above all,
A problem, or an opportunity for a new landscape paradigm? I was recently working on a tree project in Abu Dhabi when I came across a derelict site which intrigued me with it’s range of exotic self-seeded, non-native plants. The site was next to the Corniche and sandwiched between the Formal Park, my hotel and
I’m pleased to have launched a new website and blog dedicated to this aspect of my work. Over time the blog will become a useful resource to all those interested in the care of trees in the Middle-East. My focus and experience has so far been within the UAE but the tree range is similar
On my most recent trip to Dubai, I enjoyed walking through some of the new landscapes that emerge as projects are completed. The UAE, along with most regions of the Middle-east has a rather limited palette of plants to work with (although that is growing as new plants are tried). What struck me, however, was how poor the quality
UPDATE September 2022: Given the increasing urgency of climate change and the overwhelming stresses this will place on our civilisation for the near, medium and long-term future, I now doubt this scenario will ever come about. A glimpse of what might have been, maybe, had we taken climate seriously and managed to move through that
Almost all urban landscapes are contrived and designed, due to their artificial nature and short timescales of development and use. We see increasing use of mature rootballed trees and extensive hard landscape and this is normal for intense inner urban areas; I do get concerned that the increasing complexity of urban planting systems divorce trees particularly
We are now a decade into the explosion of living or green walls. There have been many successes and some notable failures along the way, some of of which may be system-induced and some caused by inadequate or inappropriate maintenance regimes. Assuming we now have systems that work at least reasonably well, what is required by
Is there a “next place to go” for green/living walls? Absolutely there is – there’s probably two next places to go – in opposite directions, seemingly. First we have a growing need for the mitigation of environmental factors which are largely of our own making; air pollution, rising temperatures, storm and waste water management and
