URBAN WILD LAB

Americans can’t live without their lawns—but how long can they live with them?

By Elizabeth Kolbert, July 14, 2008

In 1841, Andrew Jackson Downing published the first landscape-gardening book aimed at an American audience. At the time, Downing was twenty-five years old and living in Newburgh, New York. He owned a nursery, which he had inherited from his father, and for several years had been publishing loftily titled articles, such as “Remarks on the Duration of the Improved Varieties of New York Fruit Trees,” in horticultural magazines. Downing was dismayed by what he saw as the general slovenliness of rural America, where pigs and poultry were allowed to roam free, “bare and bald” houses were thrown up, and trees were planted haphazardly, if at all. (The first practice, he complained, contributed to the generally “brutal aspect of the streets.”) His “Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening” urged readers to improve themselves by improving their front yards. “In the landscape garden we appeal to that sense of the Beautiful and the Perfect, which is one of the highest attributes of our nature,” it declared…. Read more.

Swiss art curator Klaus Littmann has planted 300 trees in a football stadium in Austria as a “memorial” to the environment in the anthropocene era. For Forest is replica of a European forest that has been transported to Wörthersee Stadion in Klagenfurt, where visitors can enjoy the spectacle of the leaves changing and falling during autumn.

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Allowing degraded natural forests to re-grow is a more effective, immediate and low-cost method for removing and storing atmospheric carbon than planting new trees.

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The team published an article in CITYGREEN issue 17.

‘Rewilding urban green spaces refers to transforming manicured landscapes to an intentional and managed state of wildness – one with a balance between planted and spontaneous plant growth, promoted to develop ecologically rich landscapes through selective human interference. As the first in a series on urban wild initiatives, this article highlights the ecological benefits of wilder urban green spaces focusing on habitat enhancement for biodiversity through observation of landscape changes in three rewilded green spaces in Singapore…’

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A long-running campaign encouraging councils to let neatly-mown grass verges become mini meadows where wildflowers and wildlife can flourish appears to be building up a head of steam.

Since 2013, Plantlife has been telling authorities the move could help them save money and boost their green credentials.

Several have taken the message on board. An eight-mile “river of flowers” alongside a major route in Rotherham was widely praised on social media recently and roadside meadows have also popped up in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Birmingham, Newcastle and Sheffield.

So are we likely to see more from the “meadow movement” in the future?

To read the full article, click here.

Manicured urban greenery is the norm in Singapore, but this approach to landscape obstructs the accommodation of ecosystem dynamics, and misses an opportunity to benefit from the region’s tropicality. Based on an understanding of floral succession gleaned from pilot tests and perception studies that identified factors in the preference for wilder landscapes in Singapore, this article proposes intended wildness as a novel approach to designing and managing urban green spaces. More specifically, it advocates a stepwise application of strategies that promote diverse and spontaneous growth of urban green spaces and public acceptance for them. Promoting spontaneous growth through management and maintenance can lead to floral and faunal diversity at nested scales, address social concerns and demands within a compact city, and provide a strong ecological incentive that works in harmony with the region’s characteristics.

To access the full article for the first 50 readers, click here.

There aren’t many corners of the world left untouched by humanity. Recent research has highlighted that just 23% of the planet’s land surface(excluding Antarctica) and 13% of the ocean can now be classified as wilderness, representing nearly a 10% decline over the last 20 years. And more than 70% of what wilderness remains is contained within just five countries.

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Global conservation policy must stop the disappearance of Earth’s few intact ecosystems, warn James E. M. Watson, James R. Allan and colleagues.

A century ago, only 15% of Earth’s surface was used to grow crops and raise livestock. Today, more than 77% of land (excluding Antarctica) and 87% of the ocean has been modified by the direct effects of human activities. This is illustrated in our global map of intact ecosystems (see ‘What’s left?’).

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It isn’t on any official map – but make your way through a soggy bed of leaves and tall grass off Telok Blangah Road, and a gleaming body of water emerges, filled with creeper plants and littered with dry leaves and twigs. Built in the shadow of Mount Faber, Keppel Hill Reservoir, as it was then known, is in fact less than 20 metres long and two metres deep – no more than one-third the size of an Olympic swimming pool

Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/mt-faber-sentosa-heritage-tour-secret-reservoir-fort-serapong-11519702Read the full article.

1. The world’s biodiversity is vanishing fast

2. Among the biggest threats to wildlife are habitat loss, climate change and pollution

3. Animals and plants are disappearing and so is the land they rely upon for natural habitat

4. Habitat conversion drives biodiversity loss

5. Some of the last great rainforests are being wiped out

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