Travis Beck is author the newly published Principles of Ecological Landscape Design, which I recently reviewed. He kindly agreed to an interview so I could ask him some questions about his book, what inspired him and his views on the current state of Landscape Architecture. What inspired you to write this book? For a long time I [...]
The City of Vancouver, in British Columbia, has a successful Green Streets program where residents adopt a corner bulge or traffic circle. The gardener then designs, plants and maintains their adopted garden for as long as they like which can be a single month or multiple years. I found this to be a fascinating project, [...]
In the northeast corner of Illinois you can find the city of Round Lake and the Round Lake Area Public Library. The courtyard at the library has been landscaped and is a certified wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. I recently contacted the library to find out more about their habitat and Debbie Allen, [...]
The Pollinator Pathway is planned along a one-mile stretch in Seattle from Seattle University to Nora’s Woods replacing grass strips with pollinator gardens. The brainchild and creation of Sarah Bergmann, the Pollinator Pathway currently consists of two installed gardens with another 16 planned and has 20 total homeowners signed up to participate. I visited one [...]
The Nighthawk is a bird that used to be abundant throughout the US but has been in decline in recent years. There are many potential reasons for this, among them is a change in the construction of roof tops. Nighthawks have been known to nest on roofs with gravel tops, but since most roof construction [...]
In Cardiff Bay, Wales there is a new housing installation aimed at birds and bats. Gitta Gschwendtner, a German-born, London-based artist worked with ecologists to create the new housing in Century Warf containing 1,000 different boxes. The wall sits along a public river pathway, backed by a residential development. There are some good articles about [...]