In 2012 Greenstone Design was newly launched in New Zealand. Founder, Gayle Souter-Brown, had a dream to build a team of passionate people to serve the needs of communities across Australasia. She had started with Greenstone Design UK and was keen to use her experience of UK, Europe, and Africa at home. First though, she needed to get the message out that we need to re-evaluate the landscape component in our development schemes. New housing, affordable housing, schools, hospitals and care homes have been designed and built with low cost amenity strips that do little to lift mood, alleviate social isolation, raise aspiration. Some people would say there was no money to do anything else. How could a garden, a patch of grass or a tree do anything other than look pretty, let alone boost health and well-being? Gayle Souter-Brown would say "you don't need a bigger budget, you just need to think a little, to see the connections and create the opportunities". 

After a lengthy scientific peer review process of the book proposal, in November 2012 a contract with Routledge Press, London, was signed. It detailed that a book would be researched and written, within 12 months, explaining to academics and practitioners why it was worth their while rethinking their approach and their expectation of what was achievable. It had to be 100,000 words long and include 200 full colour images, +/- 10%, or the contract would be forfeited. The title took a while to finalise but the editor decided the more key words the more likely it was that people would find the book, read it, and act. Landscape and Urban Design for Health and Well-Being: Using Healing, Sensory and Therapeutic Gardens was delivered as a manuscript, late, on the 6th January 2014. 

It took 8 months of Routledge Press's editing, copy editing and typesetting, checking and double-checking, to bring the book to fruition as a 318 page paper and ink reality. On 6th August 2014 it was released into the European market. 6 weeks later it was printed simultaneously in New York and Toronto and released in Canada, the US, NZ and Australia. 

Meanwhile, the real work has continued. The design team has grown. Greenstone Design UK has flourished, with new projects in Russia, Tanzania and of course, nationally around the UK. Enquiries for an eco resort project in Azerbaijan are responded to with as much dedication as a small London charity in need of a community space. Greenstone Design in NZ has grown to become recognised as providing leading research-based design and review services. Public space - the gritty streetscapes, hospitals, schools, dementia care and aged care, Early Childhood centres and social housing have all been subjected to the Greenstone Design signature salutogenic design appraisal. Examples from these projects fill the book, sitting alongside research and discoveries from the world's greatest thinkers.

There is a blog by Gayle Souter-Brown, about Salutogenic Design, on Routledge's website . Biophilia, bio-diverse planting, planting for health and well-being, soft landscapes and sensory-rich spaces are all part of the recipe for a healthy dose of Landscape and Urban Design for Health and Well-Being: Using Healing, Sensory and Therapeutic Gardens. 

Today I blogged about natural play in schools. Biophilia and living cities rely on us as designers and you as clients to work together to create natural play opportunities so young and old can connect with nature. If we are to effect social, economic and environmental change we need opportunities to create landscapes for health and well-being, in schools and early years settings, around social housing, and in public gardens. Children, and their parents, need accessible, convenient nature connection points. 

Sustainable, playable, urban design can be used to create resilient communities. Urban trees, street trees and natural play opportunities combine to protect and enhance the mental health of our people. We cannot stop the hubris of the modern world, but we can design environments that afford spaces for quiet contemplation, places where we can pause and reflect.

Over the years I have set up a variety of blogs. Some are updated more frequently than others. The Blogger blog is an oldie but a goodie. Rather than rewriting today's post here I thought I would just share the link. I hope you enjoy it. 

...after the important business of the election Hurricane Sandy is now being seen not as a political event but for what it is, a symptom of climate change.  

Perhaps if more people paid more attention to sustainable design principles, and understood the importance of sustainable urban design, green space would be seen for the buffer it provides, the carbon sink, the natural urban drainage system, the free mental health prescription that comes from time spent in healing gardens and urban forests.

Life on the planet is all linked. We can not afford to act in ignorance and arrogance. "To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." - G.K. Chesterton.

Tomorrow I'm meeting with Christchurch's city arborist. We're going to discuss the role the urban forest can play in the health & well being of a redeveloped Christchurch. In the UK GPs are already prescribing a 'green' treatment for early stage depression, whereby people are given a prescription not for expensive medication but for a walk in a forest for 20 minutes, 3 times a week.

Landscape architecture has an important role to play in the sustainable design of the city. Sensory gardens are those gardens that are designed to stimulate the senses, to do more than just look good, but to function on a human scale, providing food, shelter, habitat and employment. Urban forests can be the ultimate sensory garden, when planted with mixed natives, fruit and nut trees, and designed for year round interest, to attract native birds and invertebrates.

Urban trees represent an irreplaceable asset for cities, and unlike most municipal infrastructure a trees’ value will increase over its life span. In technical terms, an urban forest refers to the trees located within a city’s limits, whether planted or naturally occurring.

Check out the link to the Danish Architecture Centre's article on Edmonton's trees.

ITALY 2010: 9 million tons of edible food in the garbage, in the whole food value chain the amount goes to 20 million tons - an economic waste of €13 billion

How we define waste is part of the problem. What is 'waste' to one person may be a valuable food source for another. Establishing efficient connectons between the food services industry and people who would value cheap or free food (students, the urban poor, the elderly) or community gardens requiring compost, local animal feed users needing vegetable peelings etc is one way to reduce waste from landfill.

Composting food waste, collected kerbside from residences and street-side as part of the city's waste collection service is another important way to keep it out of the 'garbage'. The local authority needs to have clear goals for the food 'waste' to become plant food for the next crop of fruit and vegetables. It has to be a self sustaining system, so that the cost of collection is met by the production and delivery of product back into the community.

However, lack of knowledge of how to handle food / how to prepare leftovers as a tasty nutritious meal, is a big part of the problem, within the domestic setting, as well as within the food industry. Yes, use-by dates are there to protect us, but we need to know when they are a guide and when they must be adhered to. Cooking shows and recipe-based blogs are popular. They could do more to encourage a sustainable lifestyle if they show cased low cost foods, recipes for 'left overs', and garden to table initiatives.