As landscape architecture increasingly converges on ecological and environmental interests, rewilding offers an expressive potential that challenges conventional modalities. Rewilding posits that nature is a dynamic, complex system of biological and cultural factors, not simply the arrangement of plant species. It is a progressive approach that contributes to habitat expansion, brings back wildlife and reconnects people with natural processes.
A major tenet of rewilding is to promote native plants—the foundation of the local food web and keystone species that support a diversity of other wildlife. Research by a University of Delaware biologist indicates that for a landscape to be healthy and resilient, it must have at least 70% native plant species; below this threshold, wildlife populations decline and ecosystems unravel.
Rewilding also recognises that human-designed landscapes can play a role in ecological regeneration, even in cities and suburban areas that have been severely degraded through economic development. Projects use regenerative strategies that can be applied at urban and regional scales. To find out more about how Residential Architects London can help, visit a site such as www.rbddesign.com/architects-design/residential-architecture-london
Rewilding can be as simple as mowing less or as complex as replacing invasive plants with native ones, but it always demands careful consideration of how the landscape will be used. It is as much about memory as it is about reconstituting a landscape type, leveraging the associations that humans have tenaciously imprinted on and internalised in their relationships to wildness.
