I ARCHITECTURAL REALM
Experimental techniques Are landscape architects in the region playing it too safe with planting palettes? By Charles Lamb The extreme climatic conditions experienced in the UAE presents a challenge for those creating plantings in the public realm: how to manage the competing elements of commercial clients for a ‘green’ landscape, whilst also considering the environmental implications of continual irrigation requirements. Yet the native flora of the UAE can provide a solution to this dichotomy, enabling a climate appropriate planting palette which, if coupled with sensitive design and a certain degree of re-education, has the ability to create public realm plantings that provide moments of seasonal delight, a more environmentally sustainable maintenance regime, and planting that intrinsically speaks of the place it is from and situated in.
14
That doesn’t mean that landscape architects and designers are limited to UAE natives, rather they can draw on a planting palette from areas of similar climatic conditions worldwide to create highly ornamental, yet more sustainable, public plantings. To fully understand the structure and ecological function of varied plant communities, there is no better way than exploring their natural habitat. Since the UAE is home for us and we have an abundance of native flora and fauna, we will start here. The recent heavy winter rains provided ideal conditions for exploring plant communities in the wild and we saw an explosion of wildflowers as a result. The wadis around Jebel Jais in Ras Al Khaimah have been carpeted by soft pink flowers. These expanses of Erucaria hispanica, erupting from a dormant seed bank, provided not only a seasonal spectacle but also inspiration for temporal elements of the landscape that could, with imagination, be re-created in the
