19 minute read
GROWING GREEN CITIES
FLORIADE HORTICULTURAL EXPO SHOWCASES SUSTAINABILITY & BIODIVERSITY
BY KARINA SINCLAIR AND SCOTT BARBER
PRESENTED BY
Alivable city is a green city. It’s a place where biodiversity and sustainability drives innovation. In search of inspiration forCanadian landscape and horticulture professionals, Landscape Trades journeyed across the ocean to uncover the creative solutions celebrated at Floriade Expo 2022.
Every 10 years, horticultural greats and experts from all over the world unite at the Floriade International Horticultural Exhibition to present green solutions that make our cities more enjoyable, beautiful and sustainable.
Between April and October 2022, the seventh Floriade Expo welcomed 685,189 visitors from 96 countries to Almere, a suburb about 20 km east of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Within the theme “Growing Green Cities,” more than 400 national and international participants showcased their latest green innovations, solutions and applications: from stateof-the-art solar roof tiles to mesmerizing vertical facade gardens and from the best ways to grow tomatoes to the latest Niek Roozen pruning techniques.
“In a world where nature often has to make way for concrete, glass and steel, horticulture is the key to a liveable world,” Expo organizers explained. “In our view, those working in horticulture, from the gardener to the asparagus grower, to the technician in the greenhouse, are superheroes. During Floriade Expo 2022 we are giving these heroes the stage they deserve.”
Niek Roozen, the lead landscape architect responsible for the overall green structure of Floriade, explained the importance of this expo theme: “The theme is Growing Green Cities and I think it’s the best subject for this moment,” Roozen said. “How can we make our cities more livable?”
When Roozen and his green team of plant designers and tree specialists began developing the expo design in 2015, their first goal was to keep any existing tree that was in good condition. By saving roughly 3,000 mature trees, not only did their size help balance the aesthetics of the large, nearly added buildings, but they also maintained the biodivesity and temperature control that might have otherwise taken 40 or 50 years to achieve. During construction, roads and bridges were laid out to accommodate these existing trees, even if it created additional costs. The team also added 2,800 trees to the area and established an arboretum, organized alphabetically by botanical name. Once the living library of trees was in place, next came the ground cover and garden beds. Throughout Floriade, Roozen’s team planted about 200,000 perennials and 90,000 shrubs. To preserve and enhance nature, the garden beds are up to four metres wide alongside roads and border 192 building plots. Roozen thinks landscape architects and urban planners should work together, right from the start of any new real estate development. When properly planned, a green structure is a structure which will most likely be used for the longest time.
“Houses will disappear; be reconstructed, demolished or rebuilt again. But mostly, green structures will stay for another 100 to 200 years,” Roozen said.
Almere is the youngest city in the Netherlands. Up until the late 1960s, the area was roughly five metres below the North Sea. After the land was reclaimed, the fast growing city has maintained large areas of nature, greenery, and waterways for residents. The Floriade Expo, which closed in October, was designed to transition into a future green city district called Hortus. Residents of this new neighbourhood will inherit the paths, gardens and other green infrastructure that have been purposefully designed to take centre stage. continued >
The expo and its legacy beg the question, how much space does a community really need to have a sustainable ecosystem?
On the map of Floriade, you can see a large green footprint in the northeast corner. That footprint represents five hectares — the average carbon footprint of a Dutch citizen.
And as Roozen pointed out, the earth cannot accommodate its current population if everyone has a footprint that large. In fact, we’d need 4-5 more earths to sustain the current world population of eight billion people.
Floriade’s goal was to provide horticultural solutions to lead the way to a more sustainable future. The Landscape Trades team selected highlights from their visit to share with readers in Canada:
THE VOICE OF URBAN NATURE
With the “The Voice of Urban Nature” pavilion, the cities of Almere and Amsterdam came together to spotlight the importance of biodiversity. Dagmar Keim, a project leader with the pavilion, explained that creating green cities requires a shift in perspective.
“We don’t say that in the city of Amsterdam, we have 850,000 inhabitants and in the city of Almere there are 250,000 inhabitants,” Keim said. “We have trillions of inhabitants because it’s not only the people that are important; nature is also key to a healthy city. We want to change this way of thinking.”
The pavilion challenged visitors to consider the question: How do you build a city with nature as your equal partner? For the pavilion designers, that meant using 100 per cent bio-based materials. The entire building was created from locally sourced reclaimed wood and was stained with linseed oil and carbon. The walls were clad in an insulating coating of hemp lime, which was coloured with madder. Crushed oyster shells lined the walkways. The garden areas, which created habitat and food sources for wildlife, were left to naturalize.
“A green, healthy and safe city for everyone requires a different relationship with all those others around us,” Keim said. “If we want to green the city in a way that’s for people and for animals, we have to change our perception of nature. We have to change our attitude but also our aesthetics.”
Floriade Expo provided the ideal backdrop for students at Aeres University of Applied Science. The school launched its state of the art “Green Lung” campus on the expo grounds. It will remain a permanent legacy of the event as the area transitions into a green community.
“This university of applied sciences is part of Flevo Campus, and together with the Food Forum pavilion of the province of Flevoland, is a physical place where education, research and science come together,” Expo organizers explained. “Not only for students and researchers, but also for residents of Almere and beyond to get to know and think about the urban life of the future. The Green Lung has been awarded the Circular Award 2022 and embodies the central theme of Floriade. It is a leader in the field of climate adaptation, circularity and health. As more and more people live in cities, more questions arise in the areas of nature, livability, provision of food, water and energy. What is needed to keep growing cities livable worldwide, is knowledge. That is why Aeres University of Applied Sciences Almere trains students to become future-oriented green changemakers.”
Green Lung staff member Marije Harpe toured the Landscape Trades team through the facility, pointing out its key features.
“This building really portrays what our students here focus on: green cities, because this building itself is very green and sustainable,” Harpe said. “You can see all the plants on the rooftop. We have a beautiful green wall with places for insects, birds, bats even. It also collects rainwater. When the water falls on the solar panels, it goes underneath in an underground water tank and we can collect 20,000 litres of water there. That’s how we water our green wall automatically through a smart system.”
BDG Architects, the firm behind the innovative design, explained the facility features a triple solar energy roof and highquality insulation on the facade. The facades feature different qualities depending on the position and orientation. The west side has PV panels as solar shading and to generate energy. The east side has a dense green facade, which changes colours along with the seasons. The green roof is partly a ‘tropical roof’ to generate energy, with a number of trees and with water retention. The plants and other greenery on and around the building are watered with the rainwater collected on the roof. This rainwater also serves as a heat and cooling buffer. Many of the construction materials were reclaimed from around the Netherlands, such as wood planks from ships.
THE GREEN HOUSE
In the Green House, visitors were taken on a journey through greenhouse horticulture: from seed or cuttings to tasty fruits and vegetables to beautiful flowers and plants. The latest innovations and developments in the field of, among other things, circular agriculture, climate adaptation, biodiversity and food supply were also showcased.
The Green House was home to the High Tech greenhouse where demonstration crops of strawberry, pepper, gerbera and potted anthurium showed what innovative and sustainable cultivation looks like.
Greenhouse manager Maurice Wubben gave the Landscape Trades team a tour of the High Tech greenhouse, pointing out some of its most innovative features. Wubben showed off “PATS,” a small autonomous drone that works in tandem with a camera system to seek and destroy moths in the greenhouse without the use of insecticides.
“What happens is when (the cameras) detect a moth, mostly by night, they send the drone to it from the platform to the moth directly. They fly with the propellers, but at the same time, when they are in the neighbourhood of a moth, the moth is sucked into these propellers. It will die, protecting the crops.”
Wubben also highlighted small bags located in and around crops in the greenhouse. “Here we have an example of biological crop protection,” he explained. “In these small bags there are tiny insects. In nature, every insect has its natural enemy. And for these gerbera crops, there can be a lot of pests like aphids
Dagmar Kiem
Maurice Wubben
Sipke Terpstra
Jacqueline van der Kloet
Simon Bos
Marije Harpe and spider mites. And so we have brought their natural enemies here to provide protection.”
This enabled the Floriade greenhouse to grow crops using some 90 per cent less pesticides, Wubben explained.
The greenhouse will also likely contribute to the legacy of the expo. Wubben explained that many organizers and planners of Floriade were working to ensure the greenhouse remains to benefit members of the future community on the event grounds.
“This greenhouse is very special,” Wubben said. “It’s a really high tech greenhouse and I really hope that this greenhouse will stay for the people who are going to live here after Floriade because there are 600 houses and apartments being built here. And I hope that people can use the greenhouse to grow their own vegetables and plants.”
WILD AT HEART
Healthy ecosystems for insects, bees, butterflies, birds and other animals are important to keep cities livable. At the Wild at Heart garden by Lageschaar Vaste Planten, visitors discovered what such an ecosystem looks like and what people and animals need. The best of both worlds is united in the garden: a combination of all kinds of plants, wildlife and native vegetation to increase biodiversity in a natural and colourful garden that remains beautiful all year round.
“We want to show a lot of possibilities with native plants,” designer Sipke Terpstra explained. “I think this is quite an innovative concept because we used native plants in combination with non-native. So you have structure and beauty for 12 months in the garden, and by doing so, people can see that you grow native plants in your garden and still be beautiful.”
Terpstra said the garden elicited strong reactions from visitors. And that was by design.
“There were some people who thought it was a little bit wild,” he said. “However, the positive reactions were many because a lot of people noticed how many different insects were present in the garden. They understand that wildness is something that we should go more into. That’s more or less our mission, to make the world more green.
FRANCE PAVILION
With the theme “back to the future,” the French pavilion aimed to create the city of tomorrow by combining old knowledge and solutions with new innovations, in harmony with nature.
The pavilion was created by using traditional methods paired with modern sustainability best practices. The goal was to create a space that fits perfectly into the city of tomorrow: green, inclusive and scalable, but drawing on three pillars: Bio-inspiration, Bio-economy and the Circular Economy. To accomplish this, the building incorporated solar panels and collected rain water, and was constructed in a way that it could be easily dismounted and reused for other purposes.
“The public in general still needs to learn a lot about climate change and especially the urgency which is involved with that change and the scale of the challenges that we are facing,” Simon Bos, an organizer with the France pavilion explained. “The only way to achieve this is to get people together to talk about the problems, but not only talk about problems, but we also have to talk about solutions. And what we also know is that in the coming days there is not just one person or group who is going to have the solution, but there are lots of people who are specialists in specific areas and they have to combine their knowledge and skills to make better solutions and to achieve real results in practice.”
Garden designer Jacqueline van der Kloet said the garden utilizes the French parterre style, with patterns including large borders with repetition of plants. She said one of her favourite parts of the garden were the canopy structures called corollas that provide a platform for climbing plants to create shady, tree-like structures.
“I think they’re very impressive and last year they were installed and the plants were planted in them and now already some of the climbers have gotten so far that they almost covered the whole structure,” van der Kloet said. “Instead of having actual trees, which take a very long time to grow, you could have structures which can be full in two seasons with fast-growing climbers.”
Bos said he hopes visitors to the French pavilion gained a new perspective that we need to challenge and build off our old ideas.
“I would like to challenge people to rethink every step that they take when they are creating a landscape,” Bos said. “At every step, they should think about what they are going to do, because we all tend to do what we have been doing for years, but we need to challenge all common practices.”
“It’s our duty to change where we have the possibility to improve,” Roozen said, adding that he hopes landscape professionals of the future will not only use flowers and trees for their aesthetics, but for their ability to improve working and living environments. “I hope that people will be inspired by what they see [at Floriade], and that they will believe in a beautiful future.” LT
GROWING GREEN CITIES:
FIND MORE PHOTOS AND VIDEOS AT landscapetrades.com/growing-green-cities
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CREATING A GREENER CANADA
MPP David Piccini, federal Minister of Labour Seamus O’Regan, Mark Cullen and former Canadian Govenor General David Johnston celebrated the completion of the Highway of Heroes Tree Campaign at Fork York in Toronto, Ont. on Nov. 2, 2022.
Trees for Life supports tree planting initiatives across the country
The Highway of Heroes Tree Campaign was inspired by the Canadians who gave the highway its name: those who served in the Canadian Armed Forces, plus Silver Cross Mothers, families, and friends. We are delighted to announce that the world’s largest living legacy is now complete with the recent planting of our two millionth tree. A special thank-you goes to Landscape Ontario and its member nurseries, growers and planters; without their support this achievement would not have been possible.
With a genuine concern for climate change, we knew we had to continue this initiative to connect groups with shared values to plant trees. This led to the next chapter of our story, which we are now writing through Trees for Life (TFL).
Trees for Life’s primary objective is to mobilize and enhance the capacity of community-based tree and shrub planting initiatives in Canada’s more populated communities. We support like-minded organizations through partner outreach and advocacy, funding and fundraising tools, and access to expertise, resources, and education. The importance of including private landowners in the urban green process cannot be overstated so Trees for Life works with several community-led organizations to achieve leafy canopy goals.
Environment Hamilton and the Hamilton Naturalists’ Club are recipients of funding from Trees for Life. These funds help them to provide trees at no cost to Hamilton residents through their Trees Please program. The program was created to improve Hamilton’s overall air quality and urban forest health. The trees will add shade throughout the city for the summer months and help them to achieve their leafy canopy coverage goal of 40 per cent. “Encouraging private landowners to plant trees on their property is integral to helping Hamilton achieve its canopy goal,” said Jen Baker, Land Trust Manager, Hamilton Naturalists’ Club.“ In 2022, the Trees Please program had another successful year, getting 700 trees in the ground, bringing the total number of trees to over 3,500 since the program’s inception.” Another TFL partner doing great work in urban spaces by engaging private landowners is LEAF (Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests).
In 1996, Janet McKay founded LEAF and has planted tens of thousands of urban-based native trees and shrubs since then. The goal of LEAF is to work at the community level to improve the urban forest, both with homeowners and with larger plantings on municipal and private lands. Through their enthusiasm, leadership, intelligence and tireless energy, Janet and her LEAF staffers and volunteers have mobilized thousands of community members in Toronto and beyond to plant and care for their trees.
In partnership with several municipalities in York and Durham Regions, LEAF hosted a multitude of planting events in 2022. With the help of almost 700 volunteers and community members, well over 3,000 native trees and shrubs have been planted and mulched on public lands this year.
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Trees for Life partner LEAF organized a tree planting event at Budweth park in King City, Ont. in September 2022.
A stand-out quality of LEAF is their education and awareness programs, which turn homeowners into tree champions, volunteers, and community leaders who pay it forward with their knowledge and energy, and their robust commitment to the urban forest canopy.
Integral to the success of any tree-planting effort is good quality tree stock. We are fortunate to work with several growers and nursery partners who share our vision.
One such nursery partner is St. Williams Nursery and Ecology Centre. They specialize in growing source-identified Ontario native plants specifically to help support the conservation of Ontario’s natural biodiversity.
St. Williams sees a future where the health of our economies, cultures, and natural environments co-exist in a sustainable and mutually beneficial way. “People and nature thriving together has been and will always be a big inspiration for our business. That’s why we work with Trees for Life,” said Allan Arthur, President, and Sr. Ecologist. “They are making real and lasting change by supporting communityled tree planting groups to get trees in the ground while reinforcing the importance of native species to help them build back their local tree canopies and ecosystems. They are part of the solution, as habitat loss can only be reversed by many people collectively taking action.”
Pineneedle Farms, another Trees for Life partner, is run by a third-generation grower specializing in native deciduous and evergreen tree species seedling stock. “We have always supported efforts to protect the environment and to be a part of something bigger than ourselves,” said Paul Richardson, owner. “We are pleased to be included in the 2 Billion Trees program through our partnership with Trees for Life. Working with David
[Turnbull] and the Trees for Life team has streamlined the process. We are pleased to be a leading supplier of seedlings to urban and near-urban project partners of TFL. We are looking forward to continuing to help green up municipalities throughout Ontario and beyond over the coming years.”
Dr. Rebecca Stovel plants a tree during a Trees for Heroes event at Sunnybrook Health Sciences.
Photo by: Shane Russell
While the Highway of Heroes Tree Campaign is finished, we were inspired by the groundswell of support we saw for honouring heroes with living tributes. This motivated Trees for Life to launch a Trees for Heroes program. Through this campaign, we will continue to plant trees to honour many kinds of heroes in our lives: frontline, first responder and health workers, teachers, those we lost to COVID, and the people who make Canada a better place for all. The only thing better than planting a tree is planting a tree that is dedicated to someone special.
Our first Hero Grove planting was completed this fall at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, honouring frontline health workers who have bravely led us through the pandemic and who work tirelessly for our health and well-being. Located in the heart of Toronto, this event added 600 new trees to the health facility’s grounds to be enjoyed by patients and staff. We also provided trees in honour of some of those who lost their lives to COVID at a special memorial at Beechwood Cemetery, Canada’s National Cemetery in Ottawa.
Trees are the lungs of the planet, so it is fitting that we are planting them to honour those who have fought against an illness that is known to attack our respiratory system.
Trees for Life facilitates planting native trees to fight climate change, support biodiversity for future generations, and help to restore nature in all its complexity and beauty. We have to work together to get this done for them. This is why we will continue asking our Landscape Ontario friends for help. If you are a horticultural trade professional that can spare a crew for a day or two to come out and help us or our partners plant trees, provide soil, compost, or a load of mulch, or if you can donate trees because you’re a grower or you have an of excess inventory, we would welcome your participation. Please visit TreesforLife.ca for more information.
