Today I have been mostly thinking about urban bio-diversity. Strange you might think, and a thought pattern that has been stimulated by an unexpected source. I have been reading Waterlog by Roger Deacon which, if you haven't read it, is a gentle and cleansing read around swimming in natural surroundings and the heritage of this. I'm avoiding the use of the phrase wild swimming as it seems superfluous and a media attempt to make swimming in the sea an extreme sport. It's a lovely book which rightly challenges our lack of connection with the natural landscape and the fear that has developed around doing things like swim in a river. It also talks about a lot of local history and it was here that I first experienced prickings of discomfort.
As a history graduate and lover of vintage, I regularly look back at other eras and look at some of the beauty and culture that we have lost along the way, however I never lose sight of the fact that I would not have wanted to be born in the 1920s because I would not have had any of the opportunities I have now. The change in our world which I would hesitate to call progress does mean we lose things along the way but does also mean wins that few would argue aren't a boon. I'll give you an example, we can look back at village life through rose tinted spectacles but in reality many of those people would not have had access to the education, length of life and basic standards of living that they have now. I see so many examples of people going back to a 1940s existence of living in the country and being self-sufficient but this is not achievable for all of us and there must be another way.
Linked with my interest in gardens and garden design, this has prompted a personal desire to research and educate myself on how we can make cities more ecological and bio-diverse with appropriate strategies for urban life rather than a River Cottage style retreat. I decided to start with the Heem parks which came to my attention while reading about the gardens created for the Olympic village.
So, Heem means habitat or home and these urban spaces started to be developed in the 1920s for wildflowers that were disappearing. They were meant to be places of education and still are, however over time the emphasis has changed to being places to appreciate. Several Heem parks are situated in a suburb of Amsterdam called Amstelveen and the most famous is the Jac P Theisse park designed by the landscape architect CP Broerse. Theisse or Thysee was a great Dutch conservationist and ecologist and his ideas were the inspiration behind the park's design and ethos. The park is 24 hectares and initially was to provide a green corridor along the edge of Amstelveen. In comparison to the traditional manicured and ornamental appearance of British parks, the Heem parks use the distinctive native flora of area in its natural surroundings. I looked for a photograph to show you what they look like but the design is so natural as to look like a wild park. They have however been strongly engineered to look this way. As you walk through the park you walk through different 'rooms' of habitats and species, however in comparison with British botanical gardens the effect is strikingly natural.
The concept of a green or blue corridor is vital with urban biodiversity, linking green areas of the city to allow free movement of flora and fauna and simply to give it space in the cluttered urban tapestry. Green corridors are usually woodland or wetland and can also have an important part to play for drainage, particularly as so much of our urban space is now sealed. An area as seemingly unimportant as the embankment of the cycle path and the railway line at the end of my street can have far-reaching implications for the city's health and ecological wealth.
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