Biosecurity and plant health is an awkward area for landscape architects to engage in: we tend to be generalists and biosecurity is a fast-changing and highly technical field with environmental, political and economic implications. Nevertheless, it’s an essential strand to what we do and understanding how our designs and actions affect biosecurity is a challenge.
Plant ecology
Right plant right place
Finding the right plant for the right place is one of the biggest challenges for landscape architects. Henrik Sjoman’s paper on matching the range of tree species to urban environments shows how to do this with trees, and with the recent publication of the BSBI’s distribution database, we can start to use UK data to help us. There are loads of potential applications for this, whether it’s drawing up plant lists for meadow restorations, highways verges, SuDS schemes, street trees and community woodlands…
Learning from Wharram Quarry
I visited Wharram Quarry earlier this week and whilst marvelling at the huge orchid display, I reflected on Thomas Rainer and Claudia West’s book and what lessons landscape architects can learn from places like this.
