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This document discusses the importance of plants and their consideration in site planning and development. It notes that plants are vital for human life by providing oxygen, food, habitats, preventing erosion and regulating water and soil fertility. However, plants are often ignored in planning decisions. The document advocates for understanding plants as living organisms and recognizing that native plant communities best support wildlife and require less maintenance. It stresses the need to survey existing plants on a site and in the local area to inform appropriate planting that fits the natural environment.
This document discusses the importance of plants and their consideration in site planning and development. It notes that plants are vital for human life by providing oxygen, food, habitats, preventing erosion and regulating water and soil fertility. However, plants are often ignored in planning decisions. The document advocates for understanding plants as living organisms and recognizing that native plant communities best support wildlife and require less maintenance. It stresses the need to survey existing plants on a site and in the local area to inform appropriate planting that fits the natural environment.
This document discusses the importance of plants and their consideration in site planning and development. It notes that plants are vital for human life by providing oxygen, food, habitats, preventing erosion and regulating water and soil fertility. However, plants are often ignored in planning decisions. The document advocates for understanding plants as living organisms and recognizing that native plant communities best support wildlife and require less maintenance. It stresses the need to survey existing plants on a site and in the local area to inform appropriate planting that fits the natural environment.
not exist without plants, yet their importance is persistently ignored by government, their officials, developers and individuals when they make decisions about
Plants are vital to human life because:
They provide oxygen we need to breath
They provide food we eat
They provide the habitats to support wildlife and
domesticated animals
They provide the soul from erosion
They control the rate at which rainwater is made
available to the soil and underground water supplies
They make soil fertile by providing humus and
returning nutrients to the soil and influencing soil structure
They make the climate more moderate locally and
they also have major impact through the great forest on world and regional climates
Plants are fragile living organisms and if
too many are removed it can lead some areas to environmental catastrophies.
Until recently plants were given a low
priority by those involved in site development. Now, it is at least partly recognized that the conservation of plants where possible, should apply on all sites.
Particularly in cities it has been regarded
as justifies to eradicate plants totally from a site.
Only recent have site planners and
developers begun to understand that plants are more than decorative elements in cities for they have too often been seen as useful in improving the visual quality of the city. Now people are becoming aware that plants have an even greater influence over environmental health in the city than they have over the visual environment.
They perform many functions which
make life in the city more bearable. For instance they modify:
Microclimate
Reduce glare
They create shade
They influence the movement of air through
the city and through its unbuilt areas
They remove dust particles and cleanse the
air of other impurities
And increase the possibility of privacy
In addition, through the wildlife they
support, plants provide signs of the link between man and nature which, as the Urban Wildlife movements of many European countries attest, is seen as of growing importance by city dwellers in the developed countries. Perhaps because in the modern industrial city populations are furthest removed from ultimate man or nature interface of having to work the land for food, they seem to be seeking to renew the link with nature in a new way within the city.
PLANTS AND SITE
PLANNING
Site planner must collect very detailed
information about the plants that grown on and around the projects area so that they can understand the role that plats do and could play in the site layout proposal.
The site planners has to understand the role of
plants in the environment:
That plants can never be neglected by any
site planner intent on producing an environmentally sensitive layout.
That plants selection can never be arbitrary
because all plants are site specific in their requirements for growth and survival.
There are sites where the use of plants is
inappropriate but, to be able to identify where these are, the planner has to understand how plants are used in a wider areas than that covered by the project and, therefore, must always look beyond the immediate area of the site.
The decision to preserve existing plants or
to induce new ones should be arbitrary. It should relate to the area in which the site is located as well as to the character of the project. The positioning of the planted areas, the species used, whether the plants are native or exotic, will be determined by the site plan design. The
PLANTS ARE LIVING
THINGS
Within development projects plants
have rarely been understood as living elements in the landscape.
Too often trees are regarded as
sculptures, which will survive whatever happens around them. It appears probable that this lack of understanding of the trees, as a living elements requiring certain conditions for survival, is a reason for every high death rate among newly planted trees in recent development schemes .
Planting is often carried out in totally
unsustainable soils, wit no proper preparation of the ground and with no aftercare. Perhaps due to the increasing public understanding of the natural environment, the way site planners and developers regarded plants to be changing. Public and political attitudes, however, need to change faster, if the continued erosion of natural vegetation and particularly decline in the number of mature trees is to be halted.
PLANT COMMUNITIES
To those unfamiliar with plants is
often appears that plants grow haphazardly. this impression of randomness is emphasized in Britain where, because of the mild climate, plants from all over the world flourish in parks and garden. In is generally only when, as site planners, we become concerned to conserve nature and the integrity of a landscape, or to keep the cost of landscape maintenance to a minimum that we realized the
Where it is the intention to conserve
nature or produce a naturalistic landscape, it is necessary to work with plant communities. Native vegetation will support the greatest range of native wildlife. It also has the added advantage that if fits the local landscape, it looks right-its form(shape) is characteristic of local landscape, its colours blend with the local landscape, it is appropriate to use the native species of plants.
In addition, native vegetation has
the advantage of being more resistant than exotic species to the plant growth problems associated with local fungi, aphids and plant disease. It is, therefore, sensible to use it where possible to minimize the long-term management cost associated with the care of all landscapes.
Major Factors influencing the
characteristics of plant community
In a small country like Britain there
are distinct vegetation changes in different parts of the countryside. These vegetation changes are because plants only tolerant of a certain range of conditions, some a wide range others a narrow range. Survival are determined by local climate and soil and influenced by the way in which people have tended the land in the past and present.
Plant Communities are change by the
past and present actions of urban and rural populations.
Woodland felled
Wetland drained
Agriculture has been mechanized
Artificial fertilizes used
Grazing regimes change
Towns built
Bogs drained
In order to produce natural-looking
landscapes and to conserve the local wildlife, the site planner has to know:
the range of plants that are locally important and
to understand how they can be grouped together in communities, to function as support for different types of wildlife.
Needs to recognize the scarcity of natural and
semi-natural vegetation in various parts of the world and to ensure that any areas worthy of retention as a scarce resource occurring within the project site are conserve.
Also need to consider the impact of development
within the project area on any adjacent or nearby areas of rare vegetation or plant communities.
For these reasons a detailed survey
of plants immediately around the site is required. This information also gives the site planner who is working on the plantless site an idea of which plants might be appropriate in relation to the local natural environment.