Our innate need for close contact with Nature
On my most recent trip to Dubai, I enjoyed walking through some of the new landscapes that emerge as projects are completed. The UAE, along with most regions of the Middle-east has a rather limited palette of plants to work with (although that is growing as new plants are tried). What struck me, however, was how poor the quality
UPDATE September 2022: Given the increasing urgency of climate change and the overwhelming stresses this will place on our civilisation for the near, medium and long-term future, I now doubt this scenario will ever come about. A glimpse of what might have been, maybe, had we taken climate seriously and managed to move through that
Almost all urban landscapes are contrived and designed, due to their artificial nature and short timescales of development and use. We see increasing use of mature rootballed trees and extensive hard landscape and this is normal for intense inner urban areas; I do get concerned that the increasing complexity of urban planting systems divorce trees particularly
We are now a decade into the explosion of living or green walls. There have been many successes and some notable failures along the way, some of of which may be system-induced and some caused by inadequate or inappropriate maintenance regimes. Assuming we now have systems that work at least reasonably well, what is required by
There is something incredibly exciting about living walls. Stacking green plants on the vertical plane on buildings, where you’d think they just should not be, goes against the odds. Yet nowadays they are almost commonplace, and most people have encountered one somewhere. They cling to life with extraordinary tenacity, usually in a growing medium only
I am working as a consulting arborist in the UAE for a couple of large projects. Whilst there, I have been observing the broad state of the art and there is a long way to go in bringing across current best practice to the Middle-East, and I suspect that is so for many parts of
I’ve got to admit it; plants do something to me. When in their proximity, either indoors or out, things feel different. It could be because they change the air, giving me oxygen, removing pollutants and humidifying the atmosphere. It could be because they give me a subtle but direct contact with Nature. Maybe they talk
