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Sustainable Planting Schemes

allymountain13allymountain13 Posts: 68
in Garden design
Hi. Am starting MA in Landscape Architecture soon. Focus is on designing sustainable urban shared spaces. Any photos of great looking planting schemes for wildlife, drought/heat resistant, hardy, high thermal quality, etc gratefully received.  Please provide plant names and location, ie.   shade, water-logged, poor soil, etc. Doesn't matter if it's 2 plants that look good together or 10. Thanks.

Posts

  • ButtercupdaysButtercupdays Posts: 4,546
    edited August 2018
    You might need to clarify a few terms for us first!
    What does sustainable mean in Landscape Architecture?
    For me it means a plant that will thrive here without mollycoddling and without ambitions for taking over the universe. Not too much heat imput or unwanted restraining activity required. Most things that pass on the first, fail on the second!
    Plenty of 'hardy' plants aren't here, even when planted in a reasonably favourable spot, so if I say it it, it is :)
    How do  we assess 'thermal quality'? If it's 'blanket coverage' you mean , then ground elder is a winner ;)
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    I wouldn't say that the planting on the buildings in the picture looks very sustainable. The trees, maybe.
  • allymountain13allymountain13 Posts: 68
    Hi all. The idea is that many of us around the world live in Megacities (London is one) and that current infrastructure is unsustainable on all sorts of levels. How do we make this better for the people who live there, the wildlife who live there or close by. How do we design it so that we are far less reliant upon cars so that people want to walk, cycle or leave cars out of town and use electric public transport. The trees are planted all over buildings to improve air quality and shade.  Ideas like 'sky' parks (there's one in New York made from a disused elevated railway) where people walk in the sunshine on raised areas or in the shade below. Very futuristic but it is happening already in cities around the world. Some examples have been on Gardeners World. Like the tower block in Milan covered in trees. It's much more than this but you could Google UN sustainable development goals. The idea is to take all these into account when planning. Anyway, apparently some plants are great at keeping heat in so good to plant on walls of dwellings. But if you know you've planted a bee garden and 3 of the plants look really great together, those are the kinds of ideas I was hoping for. Hope this goes some way to explaining. In 2 yrs time, hopefully I'll be able to explain much better when I have the knowledge. Totally agree with Buttercup's theory too and yes, if a plant isn't happy where it lives, it's probably not sustainable or friendly to the local wildlife. Also, if it's not happy you'd have to start using water and chemicals. But it is also about pleasing people and having variety. Who says you can't have it all?




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