Creating Beautiful (3) Preserving green spaces in our cities .. AT MY ROSE GARDEN

In the 3rd in our series on Creating Beautiful, we explore the benefits and value of preserving green spaces in our cities and urban centres.

While many of us live in densely populated areas, either in our cities or in outlying urban areas, green space is premium.  This is reflected in housing prices, where urban and inner city areas with mature plantings of trees and parks fetch a premium on the housing market.  And yet we often don't appreciate the value that these vestiges of green bring to our busy, often frantic daily lives.

In cities well established with large parkland, such as Sydney's Hyde Park, or New York's Central Park, large tracts of green space are integral to the health and lifestyle of the city and it's inhabitants. In fact, as someone who worked in the city for large periods of time, it would be impossible to think of Sydney without also thinking of it's large park and green spaces that run down to the beautiful foreshore of Sydney Harbour.  

Photo sourced from MattLauder.com.au gallery

Only recently when teaching at Sydney University I recall hearing foreign students exclaim over the beauty of the city; their amazement at hearing birds and being able to see blue sky and walk in large tracts of green parkland.  These things maybe taken for granted by long-term inhabitants of Sydney, such as myself.  Yet, hearing these delighted exclamations by first-time visitors I was reminded of how important an asset our city parks and green spaces are. 

Apart from a lovely place to sit and reflect, parks and inner city green space also support populations of native fauna. I discussed this in my previous post on supporting our local bees and birds.  In addition, they contribute significantly to the well-being of local residents and visitors.  



Trees with mature canopies provide shelter and shade, reducing temperatures reflected by hot pavements and hard surfaces and helping to reduce air pollution.  By modifying temperatures trees and green spaces also reduce the amount of cooling needed.  Similarly, green surfaces minimise water run off that washes litter and pollutants into our waterways and ultimately into our harbours and oceans.  And parks also provide important social spaces as well, where special occasions are celebrated.  

And while these benefits are fairly obvious, there are subtler benefits that we may not recognise.  The sight alone of green spaces can rest our minds. My research is based on environmental psychology, where viewing green spaces can assist our emotional cognition to rest from anxiety and stress filled thoughts without any effort on our part.  Just being near a park or green space can help us re-focus our thinking into a state of calm and ease.  In short, our well-being is improved  if we are able to access green spaces in our daily, every-day lives, even when we don't acknowledge or notice them. That is, green spaces are integral to our health and well-being as individuals and to the health of the cities we live in.  

So how can we contribute to ensuring our green spaces are preserved in our city and urban areas?

First of all, if we're limited by space we can fill pots with plants that we enjoy. These could be herbs that we regularly pick to flavour our food, salad vegetables, and flowers we enjoy.   

Or join a community garden.  Not only will this add to the green spaces in our city but it helps to strengthen our local community by sharing experiences and produce with each other.   There are numerous examples of how this builds community and well-being in densely populated areas.

With other residents or co-workers plant a green roof on our building. Or green your balcony with vertical gardens. Imagine if every balcony sprouted a curtain of green! There's lots of evidence that shows this helps to cool our cities and contribute to the green spaces available for relaxation and recreation.  

And importantly, we can be vigilant in regard to any development that would infringe on our green spaces and parks, or remove trees or remnant vegetation on our city and urban fringes.  

Finally, we can take advantage of the beautiful parks and green space that are publicly available and share these with friends, family and visitors to our cities. 

If we see our green areas as an asset and benefit to our every-day lives, we are more likely to look after and protect our parks and green spaces.  And ultimately, we all benefit!

Creating Beautiful (2) Supporting our bee & bird populations .. AT MY ROSE GARDEN

In the second in a series on 'creating beautiful' we look at another simple way of incorporating beauty into our every-day; (2)Supporting our bee & bird populations ..

While many of us believe in preserving bee and bird populations, we are not always aware that there are some simple ways of doing this.  Even if we live in high-rise apartments we can still help to sustain our local bird and insect life.  

One of the key aspects of ensuring our local bee populations are supported is by providing fodder for them.  Yes, just as cows (in an ideal world) naturally graze on pasture, honey bees also rely on local plants within a 3 km range for food. And essential food sources for honey bees are flowers that have not been sprayed with pesticides or other toxic chemicals, such as fungicides.  

So planting flowering trees, shrubs and flowering perennials and annuals in our gardens is one way to ensure that local bee populations have access to nectar and pollen.  Another way is to allow any vegetables and herbs we grow to flower, so that bees can access pollen and nectar from your vegetable garden.  

This is also helpful in ensuring vegetable plants are pollinated by visiting bees, providing a mutual benefit for us and for them.  Even growing a few pots of flowering plants, herbs and vegetables on our balconies contributes to providing bee fodder.   Vertical gardening ensures an even larger space for plants to grow, producing more flowers in a small area.  

Native bee populations are also important in maintaining diversity in our local bushland fringes around our cities and urban areas.  And planting flowering trees and shrubs help support our native bees, particularly during times of drought when flowering may be diminished in natural forests and bushland. Ensuring that we minimise disturbance of any vestiges of native forest or bushland is another way of supporting our native bee populations. 



For example, the pretty, fluffy little Australian blue-banded bee (Amegilla cingulata) is a solitary bee that lives in hollows and holes near or in the soil. These solitary little bees also buzz pollinate, unlike the common honey bee, which makes it an important bee for agriculture where buzz pollinators are essential to crop production (for example, tomatoes need buzz pollinators).  

However, studies in the United Kingdom and America have shown that many plants sold as bee friendly plants in some popular garden centres have been saturated with pesticides, detrimental to bee populations.  So ensure your plants are purchased from reputable nurseries that can show their flowering plants are pesticide free.   Or better still, buy plants and seeds from organic sources.  

Similarly, with bird populations it is important to provide food and shelter for local native birds.  I don't advocate putting out seeds for visiting parrots, or meat for kookaburras as this can inadvertently become an unreliable food source. Providing lots of trees, shrubs and flowering plants ensures birds are able to forage safely, particularly small nectar loving birds.   And of course, if your garden has an abundance of insects, birds will help keep pest populations in check, providing a symbiotic benefit for both native birds and human inhabitants. Placing bowls of fresh water within the cover of shrubs and small trees helps too, particularly in hot, dry weather.  And it's a lovely little ritual that helps to slow us down, if only briefly, to take in the sights, scents and sounds of our natural environment.  

It doesn't take lots of time, money or energy to create little pockets of safe habitat, just a little planning and deciding on purpose to plant a flowering shrub or two.  Or planting a lovely tree that will help shade the hottest side of your house as well as provide habitat for birds and insects.  Or growing a vine across a pergola, or on your balcony, to provide shade and shelter for human and local bird and insect populations.  

The opportunities are endless and the benefits incalculable.  And it's also fun.   So how will you provide some safe forage and habitat for your local bee and bird populations?