Designing Resilient Ecosystems
The Future of Landscape Design
What is the role of plants today in the design of parks, gardens, and green spaces, and how does the choice of species contribute to environmental, social, and landscape functions?
The profession of the landscape architect and the forester has moved beyond the concept of design intended as pure aesthetic embellishment. Today, we no longer design static scenographies or simple urban furnishings, but true ecosystems and living infrastructures that perfectly fit within the framework of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS)* defined by the United Nations.
Plants represent the most complex technology available to humans to tackle the challenges of climate change and regenerate cities. Today, aesthetics are the final outcome of a rigorously functional process operating on three integrated levels: Environmental Function (The Green Infrastructure): Vegetation must deliver measurable ecosystem services. This includes mitigating the urban heat island effect through evapotranspiration and the capture of particulate pollutants, water management through rain gardens and bioretention cells (SuDS) to prevent flooding, and supporting biodiversity by abandoning monocultural lawns in favor of complex plant matrices for entomofauna and avifauna.
Aesthetic Evolution and Dynamism: contemporary aesthetics embrace the temporal dimension and the life cycle of nature. Design takes into consideration the dynamism of the seasons (the Fourth Turn): from autumn chromatics to the architecture of dry winter stems, enhancing leaf textures and moving volumes.
Social Value and Reconnection: Plant diversity stimulates public health by reducing stress and promoting concentration (Attention Restoration Theory). Furthermore, greenery heals the bond between city and countryside, protecting the Genius Loci and the historical memory of the territory.
*NBS are defined as “actions to protect, conserve, restore, sustainably use and manage natural or modified terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems, which address social, economic and environmental challenges effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously providing human well-being, ecosystem services, resilience and biodiversity benefits.”
Green spaces respond to recreational, sports, industrial, or urban needs. What are the differences in the design and botanical approach based on the intended use?
The guiding principle of contemporary landscape design is performance-based design. There are no standard replicable formats: the green space is a custom-built structure that must absorb specific ecological, human, and management loads. The intended use dictates the project constraints (construction budget, maintenance, foot traffic, pollution, safety), which in turn scientifically determine the botanical selection and the engineering and agronomic choices. Here is how we differentiate our approach across the main operational scenarios.
Urban Environment: the city represents a critical context for plants due to compact soils, reduced root spaces, pollution, and the heat island effect. To survive and thrive, urban green design must become technological and resilient.
The Design Approach: the goal is to maximize ecosystem services, such as shade creation, fine dust filtration, and stormwater management, while optimizing reduced spaces. Advanced solutions are deployed, such as soil cells to allow root development beneath paving; support systems like underground water basins, invisible anchors, and protection grids.
Botanical Selection: Species selection focuses on pioneer and highly adaptable plants capable of resisting drought and pollution (e.g., Celtis australis, Ginkgo biloba, and Zelkova serrata). High-canopy trees are favored to facilitate pedestrian and vehicular traffic while excluding species with fragile branches or slippery fleshy fruits.
Recreational Areas: Safety, comfort, and social greenery come first.
The Design Approach is conceived to withstand high foot traffic; greenery must be inclusive and guarantee visibility for public security. Paths are designed to direct flows and prevent turf degradation, organizing the space into play zones and shaded resting areas. Wide-canopy trees (Platanus, Quercus, Tilia) are chosen to maximize shade and capture dust, prioritizing species with low pollen emission. Toxic plants (Nerium oleander, Taxus baccata), thorny, or allergenic species are discarded. Lawns require rustic, foot-traffic resistant mixtures (Festuca arundinacea).
Sports Facilities: Biomechanical performance and high technology. Here, aesthetics give way to soil engineering (drainage, precision irrigation systems, and draining sandy substrates) to avoid soil compaction. Hyper wear-resistant grasses with rapid regeneration are exclusively utilized, differentiated by climate (e.g., Cynodon dactylon and Paspalum vaginatum for warm zones; Lolium perenne and Poa pratensis for cool climates). This requires continuous and intensive maintenance.
Industrial Complexes and Infrastructure: Mitigation and Naturalistic Engineering. In this case, greenery plays a technical and remedial role (preferred over concrete structures) through buffer zones to reduce noise, odors, and visual impact. Phytoremediation and phytodepuration techniques are used to clean up degraded water and soils. Rustic and fast-growing plants (often native) are employed. Heavy metal hyperaccumulator species (Salix, Populus) and dense shrubs (Viburnum, Cornus) find space to filter the air and eliminate noise. Maintenance is kept to a minimum (low-maintenance).
Tourist, Historic, and Representative Spaces: Scenography and Identity.The focus is on enhancing the Genius Loci and the scenographic (“Wow”) effect. The design requires high architectural details and significant management budgets to guide the visitor experience. Plants act as “actresses on stage.” Curated forms, continuous blooms, and the rediscovery of botanical rarities are preferred (e.g., recovery of Lemon Houses and Rose Gardens in collaboration with Botanical Gardens). Space is given both to traditional topiary art techniques (Buxus, Taxus) and modern naturalistic plantings with perennial herbaceous plants.
How do designers respond to the themes of water resilience, biodiversity, and plant adaptation in the face of climate change?
The design manuals of the past fifty years are now obsolete. Extreme events and prolonged droughts are the new normal; therefore, we design adaptive systems based on ecological resilience.
Water Resource Management: The “Sponge Cities”: Rainwater is no longer waste to be disposed of in sewers, but a resource to be retained. Through SuDS systems (rain gardens, bioswales, floodable squares), water is integrated into the landscape using “amphibious” species capable of withstanding both flooding and drought periods. In Mediterranean climates, xeriscaping is replacing irrigated lawns with very low water-demand gardens.
Species Adaptation: “Assisted Migration”: The rigid concept of the “native” plant must be recalibrated. To guarantee the survival of urban greenery in 2050, we select species from similar, warmer climates (e.g., North African or Iberian latitudes) and specimens with phenotypic plasticity (deep root systems, leathery leaves). Simultaneously, we combat the uncontrolled introduction of invasive alien species lacking ecological value.
Biodiversity as an “Insurance Policy”: The monocultures of the past proved vulnerable to lethal pathogens. The solution is functional redundancy: designing multi-specific and stratified urban ecosystems. This way, if a pathogen affects one species, the green structure and its ecosystem functions remain safeguarded.
Greenitaly represents a meeting point between production, innovation, and design. How fundamental is it for professionals to find new solutions, technologies, and plant varieties in a single trade fair?
Working in silos is over. Multidisciplinarity is the norm: landscape architects need nursery availability, while nurserymen must understand the evolution of landscape architecture. B2B events like Greenitaly are true technology and cultural transfer hubs; historically, we have often suffered from a temporal mismatch: the architect drew a masterplan on paper only to discover during the construction phase that the nursery market did not possess the required calibers or quantities. Meeting in a single hub aligns demand (large urban forestry projects) with the strict biological timelines of supply. The producer ceases to be a mere final supplier and becomes a consulting partner from the preliminary phases of the project. Contemporary green management is data-driven. Planting is no longer enough; one must guarantee establishment, calculate soil and water volumes and costs, and monitor ecosystem services over time, optimizing increasingly tight maintenance budgets. At a single event, professionals can simultaneously analyze new engineered substrates, structural cell systems, smart irrigation systems (SCADA), and the software we use daily like Revit, landscape-applied BIM, and LIM (Landscape Information Modeling). Being able to observe and discuss live with breeders the new drought-stress-resistant cultivars, the highest-performing rootstocks for compacted urban soils, or the optimal varieties for phytodepuration is invaluable.
The GreenItaly fair becomes a formidable accelerator for introducing ideas and experiences into our urban planning and design sectors as a whole, overcoming the inertias/unpreparedness/fears of public administration and encouraging the updating of academic knowledge together with end users.
Beyond the exhibition aspect, Greenitaly presents itself as a place for cultural and professional discussion on the themes of nursery production, design, and the realization of green spaces. What value can this type of exchange bring to the professional growth of sector operators?
Debate moments and technical panels within events like Greenitaly represent the true engine of capacity building for those operating in the field. This horizontal exchange transforms the profession in three crucial aspects.
Contemporary greenery, understood as a complex infrastructure, no longer permits working in silos. The landscape architect must understand the biological constraints illustrated by the agronomist; the hydraulic engineer must comprehend the root needs explained by the forester; the nurseryman must assimilate the spatial vision of the architect. Cultural exchange at the fair creates that “common language” indispensable for moving from the mere overlapping of professionals to true integrated design.
Furthermore, discussing complex topics publicly—such as the application of CAM (Minimum Environmental Criteria) for public greenery or environmental certification protocols (like LEED or SITES)—allows operators not to suffer regulations as a mere bureaucratic obstacle. Finally, it must not be forgotten that on paper, many Nature-Based Solutions work perfectly. But what happens to a rain garden five years after its realization, with often lacking public maintenance? Professional forums allow the analysis of construction site feedback and long-term management, spreading adaptive management practices and preventing the entire supply chain from repeating the same design errors.
Dr. Mario Rossi is Managing Director of ambientStudio LLC, with offices in Cairo, Florence, and Dubai.
