With the improvement of urban construction level, a large number of urban green spaces have been built, management input and maintenance costs have become higher and higher, and low-maintenance and sustainable plant community construction has gradually become the focus of garden construction. The new naturalistic ecological herb planting design is based on the principle of ecology, and the herbaceous plants are combined in a quasi-naturalized form to form an organic and stable development of the community planting design, which can take into account aesthetics, ecology and sustainability. This plant breeding method has been popular in Europe and the United States for many years and is used in various venues; In the mainland, due to the needs of modern landscape gardens for plant landscapes, in recent years, they have increasingly appeared in people's field of vision.
London Olympic Park
Beijing Yanqing Shiyuan Park Master Park "New Silk Road"
Origin and development of naturalistic cultivation
Simulating natural plant landscape construction is very common in the history of the mainland, and the traditional gardens of the mainland emphasize the technique of "although it is made by people, it is like opening from the sky". However, neonaturalist cultivation methods originated in Western Europe in the 19th century.
William Robinson (1838-1935) first proposed the design concept in his 1874 book Wild Garden. In the early 20th century, the famous German horticulturist Karl Foerster (1874-1970) proposed a combination of herbaceous plants that imitated nature, encouraging designers and horticulturists to bring wild plants back to the garden for cultivation and promotion.
Since the early 1990s, Piet Oudolf, a master of eco-landscape planting design, has begun to apply a large number of herbaceous communities grown in a natural way to his plant landscape design. In the 21st century, Professor James Hitchmough and Professor Nigel Dunnett of The University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom have become representatives of the research of the concept, further studying and developing new naturalistic cultivation methods, and proposing the consensus of the public on new cultivation, that is, (1) relatively low maintenance costs; (2) must have the highest possible sustainability; (3) Rich variety of plants; (4) Rich seasonal variations; (5) Serve as many native animals as possible. It is proposed that alien species can be applied to pseudonatural herbaceous plant communities as native species under similar ecological niches.
Where is new naturalism?
1. Different beauty
In terms of appearance, this cultivation method is more "wild" and closer to the plant community in nature; However, due to the need to meet the aesthetic needs of urban plant communities, they are often more ornamental than natural communities. It can be said that this is a relatively eclectic way of planting, and this wild nature of "ornamental and rhythmic" is also in line with contemporary aesthetic trends. Compared with the planting methods such as flower fields and flower beds, the cultivation of new naturalistic plants will present plant landscapes with different temperaments and give people different tour experiences.
On the other hand, traditional plant communities often only show strong ornamentality in a certain season, and the overall appearance does not change much during the year; The New Naturalistic Herb Community, on the other hand, shows a rich variety of appearances throughout the year and continues to bloom.
Natural Herbaceous Communities: Baihuashan Meadow, Beijing (Source Network)
Traditional flower landscape - tulip flower sea
Neonatural herbaceous community – Chicago's Lourie Gardens
2. Unusual ecological richness
In addition to the ornamental effect, the more important connotation of neonatural cultivation is that this planting method has a high degree of richness in plant species, attaches importance to the use of plants that meet ecological needs, plants with suitable community structures, and uses plants that attract insects, birds and reptiles. This makes the species diversity of the community as a whole greatly increased compared to the traditional plant landscape.
Traditional plant landscapes – low species diversity
Neo-naturalistic cultivation – high species diversity
3. High stability and low input
High community stability is another important feature of Neonaturalism cultivation that distinguishes it from traditional plant landscapes. In order to maintain their ornamental effect, artificial plant communities such as flower fields and flower beds need frequent irrigation, insect removal and weeding, and plastic pruning; At the same time, due to the fierce competition between species, its landscape needs to be updated in 3-5 years. This requires a lot of manpower and material costs, on the other hand, insecticides and herbicides will also cause certain harm to the ecology. The competition intensity between species in neonaturalistic communities is low, and the communities are relatively stable, which can greatly extend the update time, effectively reduce the cost of conservation and management, and reduce the negative impact of artificial communities on urban ecology, and improve the sustainability of plant communities.
Case study: New Silk Road
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Located in the Master Park of Yanqing Shiyuan Park, the garden was inspired by the dry grasslands of central China on the Silk Road.
The garden adopts a neo-naturalistic planting method, planting dozens of grass flowers in the form of seedlings, which together with the tree species planted on the site constitute the entire garden, and cover the bark to reduce the competition of autophytes. The garden is divided into five specially created environmental types: canopy, understory herbaceous communities, forest edge herbaceous communities, drainage depression herbaceous communities, and full-light drought-tolerant herbaceous communities. Each community has its own plants, and some adaptable plants run through the entire garden, becoming a clue to the whole garden. The garden adopts only very simple maintenance and management measures, and the flowers bloom continuously in spring, summer and autumn.
Research related to naturalistic planting around
A team of researchers at Beijing Forestry University conducted an ongoing follow-up survey of plant communities in a new naturalistic garden. The garden is planted in the form of seedlings, which together with the tree species planted in the field make up the entire garden, and cover the bark to reduce competition from the autophytes. The entire garden adopts only very simple maintenance and management measures, and the flowers bloom continuously in the spring, summer and autumn, and three main results are obtained through data analysis:
1. The plants in this community can be divided into three layers according to height. Among them, the lowest layer is dominated by low plants covering the surface, and the highest layer is dominated by clumps of ornamental plants. The middle layer is encroached upon by the highest plants in the growth period and the lowest plants in the flowering period, so the number of plants is small.
2. The community horizontal structure conforms to the stochastic distribution model, and the distribution does not change much during the two growth periods.
3. The overall species richness, species diversity and community uniformity of the community were higher, and the fluctuations of the above three indicators were small. This indicates that the community has good ecological benefits and high stability.
The small garden attracts all kinds of animals to stop here, providing a natural garden in the city for the small animals. In the garden, a variety of animals, birds and insects such as hedgehogs, bead-necked doves, grasshoppers, citrus butterflies and so on have been observed. The above results show that the new naturalistic planting method is in line with the needs of modern landscape gardens for plant landscapes.
Sample survey records
It is believed that in the future when the process of urbanization is accelerating and people's requirements for plant landscapes are increasing, neonatural cultivation will show greater charm.
About the Author:
Zhao Yuchen is a gardening student at the College of Landscape Architecture, Beijing Forestry University
Gao Jianzhou is a lecturer at the College of Landscape Architecture, Beijing Forestry University
Typesetting: Sun Jiayu