Current brain food: The One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka.

There’s surely a direct link here to Gilles Clement and James Hitchmough…

(Source: jaspermiddelberg.com)

Naturalistic planting by James Hitchmough, Sarah Price and Nigel Dunnet, showcased at the Olympic park. Not quite as exciting as the athletics, but pretty great nonetheless.

Had a great day yesterday at the Landscape Resource Centre at Leeds Metropolitan University, listening to the globe trotting Prof James Hitchmough talk about his research in naturalistic sowing and planting for urban landscapes. He is responsible for much of the planting in the Olympic Park and it was fascinating to hear about the rigorous process of research that preceded it. Mr Hitchmough has spent his whole career travelling the world, observing floral communities in nature, conducting experiments in test conditions that seek to replicate and manipulate these plant communities for use in urban landscapes in this country. He works mainly with complex seed mixes that can be affordably and simply applied and maintained on a huge scale.

I particularly liked his anti-‘good taste’ stance. He cited ‘randomness’ as the key element in naturalistic planting (sowing) both visually and functionally, ensuring longevity, biological diversity, ecological flexibility and more ‘floral events’ over the course of the year…and less gaps.

It takes some balls to pioneer this way of working for probably the most public event in the world, so i’ll be crossing my fingers that we have sun for the games next week or it’ll be back to grass and trees for us all.

(Source: landscape.dept.shef.ac.uk)