Spring is officially here. Across the country, frost is finally melting, flowers are starting to bloom, and birds are returning from their winter journeys. As the days grow longer and the weather continues to improve, more and more people will be drawn out of their offices and homes to reconnect with nature. In cities and suburbs, these natural settings are generally confined to parks, public gardens, and other green spaces.
Whether you experiencing nature by taking a morning jog or relaxing on a park bench, green spaces are designed to engage the senses and inspire feelings of tranquility and equilibrium.
Holistic, Sustainable Approaches to Creating Green Spaces
This year, at the NY Build Expo, hosted at the Javits Center in New York, Banford Weissmann, founder and principal landscape designer of Banford Landscapes, exhibited her holistic, sustainability-minded approach to green-space design in a presentation titled, “Design, Ecology and Sustainability for Public Spaces.”
“The thing I like about working in public spaces is their democracy and accessibility — they’re for everyone, anyone can go to them at almost any time of day,” she said. “Those of us who work in the public-space realm are fortunate because we get to connect people to nature.”
For Weissmann’s landscape designs, sustainability serves as one of her guiding principles. “Sustainability is what happens when you create balance. We all seek balance in our lives, in our work, with our families, and with our health,” she said, adding, “When systems lose their equilibrium, bad things can happen.”
Throughout the presentation, Weissmann spoke extensively about climate change, noting how it’s not only hurting natural ecosystems, but humans as well. “According to the Rainforest Trust, almost 90% of diseases that we know about can be treated with prescription drugs that are derived from nature. So if we are losing plants, then we could be losing medicine that could save lives or alleviate pain and sickness.”
Adding that traditional land management practices are inherently flawed and damaging to the environment, she said, “Our land management practices over the last 75 years to respond to population pressures in both urban and suburban communities have disrupted and, in some places, fully demolished the web of connections that have maintained our planet for the last 65 million years.
“When we develop land, we strip away the topsoil, which is where the seeds germinate and the root structures for plants form. It’s also where most of the invertebrate life exists, which supports the food chain,” she explained.
The Challenge of Creating Green Spaces in Urban Settings
Weissmann went on to point out how maintaining natural spaces in urban settings can be particularly challenging.
“[In] urban areas all over the world, we have concrete and asphalt as far as the eye can see, and there are little pockets of green here and there. Keeping nature alive is becoming more challenging every single day.” In New York, for instance, the tall buildings cast massive shadows, making it difficult for plants to grow.
While Weissmann discussed many serious subjects, such as rising sea levels, she also spoke about her ideas for solving these pervasive problems. “The situation isn’t hopeless. We just need to be smart and engaged with our long-term planning and each of our projects. We’re all primarily in the reconstruction business. When we reconstruct a built area, we have to have a holistic approach with sustainability as our guiding principle.
“Each project that any of us takes is a golden opportunity for us to restore some of the ecological equilibrium that has been lost through the unenlightened land management practices of the past.”
In order to achieve this, Weissmann recommends, “bringing nature into our projects as much as we possibly can. When we create healthy spaces, we enhance the quality of life. In the design process, we have to ask how we can maximize the opportunity to create these green spaces. I’d like to suggest that we think of each one as an integral link in a wildlife corridor.
“If we look at it through the wildlife corridor lens, we’ll be able to achieve the highest in sustainability goals.”
Greener World, Greater Balance
Ultimately, for Weissmann, sustainability is all about finding the balance between existing nature and new projects, and, in doing so, finding balance in our own daily lives as well.