Dragonflies are a little more difficult to design for than butterflies or even birds because they require a permanent water source because nearly every period in their different life cycle is spend in or around water. This makes it more difficult to plan for dragonfly habitat in an urban setting, but not impossible. Dragonflies get [...]
A new roof garden was recently officially launched at Liverpool University in England. The roof was developed by the Liverpool Guild of Students “with the intent to provide students, staff and the community with the opportunity to participate in a sustainability initiative.” Components on the roof include garden planters, a bird box, wildflowers for wildlife [...]
This is a very exciting upcoming competition addressing the issue of wildlife crossings. (See the right hand column on this blog for many links on the issue.) The competition website by the ARC states the following about the competition. ARC will engage the best and most innovative international, interdisciplinary design teams—comprised of landscape architects, architects, [...]
The Woodland Park Zoo and adjacent Green Lake is a bit of an oasis in that area of Seattle with no other green space close by. Being such an oasis they get a number of migratory birds stopping by along with other residential birds all of which they keep track of on their website. The [...]
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 [...]
Butterflies are a very popular species for gardeners and there are many resources on the subject. One of the best books on the subject is called Butterfly Gardening: Creating Summer Magic in Your Garden and it’s published by The Xerces Society and The Smithsonian Institution with an introduction by E. O. Wilson. Many books about [...]
A new study published in Nature has discovered how spider webs are able to catch water and create the amazing sight that I caught in the photograph above. Many times we only think about mammals and birds when we consider habitat but there are many insects that are easily overlooked that also provide many benefits. [...]
There are some new resources on the right hand side of this blog that are worth checking out if you have never seen them before. Rain Garden: Handbook for Western Washington Homeowners is an excellent guide for planning a rain garden from the WSU Extension Service. Adding water to a landscape is one of the [...]
By contrast to the previous post, here is a design by the firm BAM that takes an existing building and creates a green roof dedicated to birds in lower Manhattan. The roof is designed as a ‘refueling station’ for migratory birds along the Atlantic Flyway and is an intricate design aimed at maintaining insect populations [...]
A very large green roof is being designed by the firm Samoo Architects & Engineers in Seoul. This will be a massive project and the roof will be turned into a large park. This is becoming more and more common in many countries and it has fantastic possibilities for ecology such as reducing the urban [...]
Celebrate Urban Birds often has contests and the previous contest was to send in images of nests in funky places. There are hundreds of entries to browse through on their website. When confronted with naysayers who announce that an urban setting will never be friendly to wildlife I simply point out how resilient nature is. [...]
It is estimated that 100 million birds are killed every year in the United States alone through collisions with buildings – NY Audubon There is a very good resource from NY Audubon called Bird Safe Building Guidelines. Every aspect of design and planning should think about the impact of that design on surrounding wildlife. While [...]