This new video from the ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architecture) is “an animation that explains how to transform your property into a real wildlife habitat. Learn how native plants and designed structures provide what nature needs.” It’s great to see the Landscape Architecture profession starting to raise awareness on urban habitat design. They have also [...]
This week’s Friday Film features a look at a series of rain gardens designed to capture water from a roof. This video is presented by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust as part of their ‘Step by Step Rain Gardens‘ series. In this installed garden, the rain falls down the downspout, across into a raised, circular planter filled [...]
Today’s Friday Film features green wall designer, botanist and author Patrick Blanc, perhaps the best known designer of green walls. His book, The Vertical Garden: From Nature to the City is getting a revised and updated edition which will be out in April. This video is part of the Greenroofs.com Greenroofs & Walls of the World Virtual Summit 2011, which [...]
Last year when I wrote about the Northwest Flower and Garden Show I talked a lot about how the gardens didn’t feature wildlife habitat, but could have easily done so and I featured specific examples. I also expressed hope that a nature organization would partner on a display garden. This year, my hope was realized [...]
This is an excerpt from my latest post at the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog. Click the link below to visit the full post. Landscaping for Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest It seems that any time I talk with somebody about landscaping for wildlife or make a book recommendation, this is the first one [...]
There are over 3 million gardens in Greater London which offer an ‘untapped potential’ to make the city more resilient to climate change and better for wildlife, according to the London Wildlife Trust. How do we begin to exploit this potential? According to LWT’s expert gardener Elaine Hughes, gardeners should be a ‘bit less tidy’. This [...]
Wildlife habitat certification is offered through many organizations as a way of creating, improving and monitoring wildlife habitats both nationally and regionally. They also come in a variety of settings from backyards to commercial sites to golf courses and entire communities. Some programs offer incentives and assistance while others offer tips and advice and yet [...]
This past summer produced a large number of wildlife species on my city balcony. I’ve briefly written about my balcony in the past, but this year I had more plants, the older ones were more established and I surveyed the wildlife with a new hand lens. You can read some of my past balcony posts [...]
As the 2011 Integrated Habitats Design Competition is getting launched, I’m looking at the winning entries from the 2010 competition in a series of posts. Edge Hill Halls was the overall winner of the 2010 Integrated Habitats Design Competition. Designed by Maria-Cristina Banceanu, the site is a brownfield which previously accommodated a rail depot, the Edge Hill railway station, located [...]
As the 2011 Integrated Habitats Design Competition is getting launched, I’m looking at the winning entries from the 2010 competition in a series of posts. Matripolis, which won the runner up prize, is a designed community for 500 people created by Paul Jones and David Dobereiner. The design is based on terracing of an old industrial shipyard sitting along [...]
Today is Landscape Architecture awareness day dubbed ‘Your Environment. Designed.’ by the American Society of Landscape Architects. There are many common misconceptions in the general public about what a Landscape Architect does, many people believing they are gardeners or landscapers. I heard this many times during my education in the Landscape Architecture program. Granted, the [...]
As the 2011 Integrated Habitats Design Competition is getting launched, I’m looking at the winning entries from the 2010 competition in a series of posts. The Seed Catalogue, by the team of Susannah Hagan, Silvio Caputo and Mark Gaterell, won the “Highly Commended” award. This brilliant idea creates a catalog of options for post industrial cities to manage degraded [...]