Latest news with #sustainable gardening
Times
6 days ago
- General
- Times
How crushed concrete is growing Regent's Park
It is not a material that is synonymous with royalty or sustainable gardening. But when Regent's Park in London tasked its gardeners with creating a new climate-resilient garden to commemorate the life of Queen Elizabeth II, they came up with a novel method for helping plants to grow: crushed concrete in the soil. The garden, which will open next April, aims to transform a disused service yard in the royal park into a two-acre landscape filled with plants that can cope with the UK's changing climate and deliver a 184 per cent net gain in biodiversity. Crushed concrete will be re-used across the site to create low-carbon paths — but more unusually, it will also be incorporated beneath the surface as part of the soil structure. The park is already conducting a live planting trial to test how mixing crushed concrete with soil can support 'climate-resilient' plant growth. 'Crushed concrete, when mixed with soil, creates a free-draining, low-nutrient environment that encourages plants to develop deep, resilient root systems. It improves drainage, boosts aeration and slowly releases minerals like calcium and potassium — all of which help plants adapt to hotter, drier conditions and out-compete weeds,' says Matthew Pottage, head of horticulture and landscape strategy at the Royal Parks. 'By repurposing construction waste onsite, this method transforms concrete rubble into blooming beds — the ultimate urban rewilding — and offers a sustainable, climate-resilient model for public parks.' He revealed that the plans were sent to Buckingham Palace and there has been 'an interest' in the project from the King: 'There has been an interaction, and it's been positive.' When the garden opens next spring, on what would have been Elizabeth's 100th birthday, Regent's Park will become the first known public park in the UK to mix crushed concrete into its soil on such a scale. • Read more expert advice on property, interiors and home improvement While the material has already been used in high-profile international projects such as New York's High Line and Singapore's Gardens by the Bay, the application in a London park is 'pioneering for the UK public realm', according to the Royal Parks. According to Pottage, the idea of using crushed concrete came about because the site of the garden previously housed a horticultural nursery in greenhouses that were 'at the end of their useful life'. He says: 'We had this two-acre site in the middle of the Inner Circle of Regent's Park which needed a new vision — a new lease of life. Traditionally, we would have cleared away the concrete, put it in a skip and shipped in fresh topsoil. But trying to be sustainable, we challenged ourselves to keep it and use it in the garden.' Mixed with soil on a 50:50 or even a 60:40 basis, the crushed concrete 'acts like a sieve', preventing the soil from holding as much moisture and forcing the plants in the garden to grow more slowly, Pottage explains. 'The plants put down a lot more roots, because they're exploring, looking for more water and nutrients.' Species set to be planted include amsonia, a sky blue flowering plant native to the North American prairies; Myrtus communis, an evergreen Mediterranean shrub with small white flowers; and Euphorbia myrsinites, an alpine plant with silvery blue leaves and lime-green flowers that is often grown in rock gardens. • We had to restore a 100-year-old garden before we could build a home While they may not grow as lush or as tall as they would in moisture-rich soil, plants with deeper roots have more resilience to drought in the summer and wet weather in winter, he says. 'With roots that are deep and widespread, a plant can access what it needs but is never in a position of excess: it never has water standing around it.' This also prevents its leaves from ballooning with water, making the plant less prone to bursting and freezing in winter. 'It is hardier and more tolerant to cold weather.' The downside of mixing concrete into soil is that it increases the soil's alkaline levels. 'But it's surprising how many plants will tolerate that high pH levels — there will be plenty of perennials in the garden that people will recognise, like asters, geraniums, agastache and heleniums,' he says. 'It will still look very pretty.' As well as re-using the concrete salvaged from the site, steel from the old glasshouses has been melted down and will be turned into pergolas for climbing plants. A redundant water tower will be converted into a rainwater store, bat loft and nesting site for swifts and swallows. As well as a large pond, a 2,000 sq m wildflower meadow will be planted in the innovative soil, in an effort to improve the diversity of the habitat for pollinators. 'Although these meadows look great in the first year, normally, what goes wrong is that grass species outcompete wildflowers, which have a weaker constitution and are not very robust,' Pottage says. 'We know, from other parts of the park where we've done meadows on our clay soil, that we end up with cow parsley and really vigorous grass.' Using crushed concrete in the soil will be a gamechanger, he predicts. 'There won't be enough nutrients in the soil for the grasses to go ballistic, but wildflowers live longer on poor soil — so this should be a very diverse and long-lived wildflower meadow.'
CBC
17-06-2025
- Science
- CBC
From roundabout gardens to park meadows, how cities across Canada are encouraging pollinators
Social Sharing It's taken a lot of work to rehabilitate the tiny patch of land at the centre of the small roundabout on Glen Drive and 10th Ave. in Vancouver, but for Katie Berlinguette, it was a labour of love. "I live in an apartment, like a lot of Vancouverites, and I don't have a patio or a yard," she said, adding that when she went looking for space in a community garden earlier this spring, she found the wait list was long — about three to five years on average. "During my internet search, I found the Green Streets Program, which is the next best thing." Soon, she had adopted the roundabout near her apartment that had a single overgrown rosebush that was almost six feet high. Now, the space she passes every day is a pollinator garden, filled with native plants like red-flowering currant and lupine, as well as edible plants and herbs. She also installed a solar-powered fountain. She wanted to fill the space with drought tolerant plants, a huge priority, because it's difficult to get water to the space. "And then being environmentally conscious with native plants is very, very important, and it's also what people in the neighbourhood have asked for." For the past few weeks, Berlinguette has been documenting her journey on TikTok in hopes of encouraging others to find ways to garden in the city. "It's a very busy cycle route and people are stopping every day that they see me and saying thank you." Small changes make a difference to urban spaces To Kaushal Rathnayake, a pollinator biologist at the University of New Brunswick, protecting the habitat of pollinators like bees, butterflies and moths is crucial to protecting our own well-being. Pollinators are an important part of healthy ecosystems, with almost three-quarters of the world's plants relying on pollinators. "We are destroying their habitats and we are destroying their food sources and we are creating inhospitable environments for these insects," he said. "Climate change is a big driver for their extinction, therefore, we have to conserve them and we have to take action to improve their well-being." No-Mow May, where residents are encouraged to let their lawns grow for the month so pollinators can thrive when they come out of hibernation, is an idea that's caught on across Canada, as have pollinator gardens like the one Berlinguette tends to. But to properly support pollinators, experts say biodiversity is key, and that requires longer-term change on a larger scale. That's the heart of Jens Ulrich's work as a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia, where he just wrapped a three-year study showing that even small changes to urban green spaces — such as adding a small meadow in a city park — can make a huge difference for pollinator diversity. WATCH | Jens Ulrich on the importance of pollinator meadows: UBC study shows 'park for bugs' increased wild bee and hoverfly diversity in Vancouver 1 month ago Duration 3:56 A new study from UBC shows planting wildflower meadows and reducing mowing in city parks increased wild bee and hoverfly diversity. The findings from so-called 'parks for bugs' are shaping city planning to make urban spaces more pollinator-friendly. Danielle Piper reports. Ulrich has been collaborating with the City of Vancouver to see how park management impacts pollinators. Eighteen parks were surveyed over the course of the study, with half maintained as they normally would be. For the other parks, Ulrich and his team created pollinator meadows by reducing mowing and adding wildflower seeds. They chose areas within the parks that had less foot traffic so the meadows would be less disruptive for those using the parks. Oak Meadows Park, one of the nine areas that the team modified with pollinators in mind, now includes a meadow beside a soccer field. It features some taller vegetation, including some native plants like lupine. The results of the study, published in Ecology Letters late last year, showed that the meadows had a huge impact. Many pollinators, such as bumblebees, sweat bees, honey bees, miner bees and hoverflies, came to the parks once the meadows were introduced, and stayed over the course of the three years. "I believe we estimated that there's about maybe 60 species per park in the parks with the meadows, versus closer to 30 species per park in our conventionally managed spaces," said Ulrich. The success of the project has resulted in the city keeping the nine meadows, and expanding the project to include meadows in more parks as well. Vancouver Parks Board landscape architect Jack Tupper, who worked with Ulrich, says that the city intends to change some of its six million square metres of lawn into a more beneficial habitat. "This is something that every city should be doing," said Tupper. "We found that the meadows that we've implemented between 2020 and 2023 were significantly beneficial to our city's ecology." He said that the soil beneath the meadows retained moisture and stayed cooler — it also acted like a carbon sink, an area that absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases. They also found that the fungi and earthworm communities increased in the parks with meadows. "We're finding that the meadows are much more balanced environmentally and ecologically, which is really important through our summer months," said Tupper. He says seven per cent of the city's lawns — around 42 hectares — have been transitioned to meadows, with the goal being to transition 10 per cent by 2030. The city has also shared its findings with municipal colleagues across the country in the hope that they will do the same. The importance of public pollinator spaces Rathnayake, the pollinator biologist in N.B., first saw an uptick in pollinator gardens in the province around 2019. He has since seen municipalities, and the province, take initiative to create pollinator spaces. Because there are more backyards than city parks, Rathnayake thinks both cities and individuals can help. His dream is to create a vast network of pollinator gardens and meadows that can be used to encourage pollinators in urban settings. He says every municipality has a responsibility, "not only to have beautiful landscapes, but to support local biodiversity." He says Fredericton is doing a good job of setting an example and educating the public. "If you go to the city and go to every roundabout, you would see that they are planting a lot of pollinator plants and they're giving a little example for the people passing by every day that we need to take action." Rathnayake, who is also a volunteer educator for the Fredericton Botanical Garden, stresses that striving for biodiversity doesn't have to mean sacrificing esthetics by leaving a whole yard left unmowed. Through this volunteer work, he teaches people what plants to use to create and maintain spaces in their own yards. "You only need to have a little dedicated patch where you can have a nicely arranged pollinator garden." WATCH | It's not just bees that benefit from what you plant this spring: How to please a pollinator 1 month ago Duration 2:36 Moths, beetles, hummingbirds and flies are all pollinators — along with bees, of course — that can be helped by planting pollinator gardens.
