Climate resilient planting

Climate change has brought more frequent hot and dry weather to the UK in recent years, that can last for weeks at a time in the summer months. Temperatures also rise a lot sooner in the year, meaning that wildlife is seeking food when most native British plants are still dormant. London has its own particular microclimate owing to the urban heat island effect, with temperatures always slightly higher than in the rest of the country and reducing the chances of frost.

Designing for climate resilience is multi-faceted and a fully climate resilient scheme will be the product of considered collaboration between all design disciplines. The approach to designing spaces should consider setting, connectivity, redundancy, process, diversity, scale, and people. There are also clear implications for ensuring planting schemes are resilient to future changes in climate.

The ideal climate resilient planting scheme is a site-specific question, but as a starting point, we can take inspiration from drier regions across the globe to see what grows and what doesn’t.  While native plants should not be disregarded, numerous trees commonly used in planting schemes, such as beech, birch, rowan and Scot’s pine, have failed in particularly dry summers. It is therefore important to think about enhancing the genetic diversity of tree supplies and diversity of plant species to overcome such challenges.

For example, native oaks are very likely to adapt to climate change. This adaptation could also apply to native oaks used commercially, if genetic selection was organised to test and retain the most adaptable specimens. This could also apply to the native silver birch, Betula pendula, which could be crossed with genetics from Spanish relatives, where these trees had to adapt to heat thousands of years ago.

More than adapting to the heat, it is also important to limit heat reflection in new developments. There is often pressure to include hard landscape so that spaces are flexible and hardwearing, however, paved surfaces provoke a consequential rise in temperature, as well as exacerbating other climatic problems, such as flooding. Creating climate resilient landscapes means integrating a maximum number of vegetated surfaces, such as green roofs, green walls and heavy tree canopies when paved areas are necessary. Green surfaces that require frequent watering, such as lawns, should be replaced by resilient, rich vegetation comprising many layers.

At fabrik, we have in-house planting experts, who make sure that our designs are delivered with resilient and adaptable plant species that will thrive in this future.