Regenerative Landscape Design within a Mediterranean context
HA Landscapes offers services in regenerative landscape design, consultation and management within a Mediterranean context. Regenerative landscape design is a broad term that encompasses best practise approaches within the fields of ecology, regenerative agriculture and landscape architecture. A given project may focus on a specific field or a combination of all three depending on the client brief and site requirements. Core project tasks will always seek to optimise sustainable water and soil management, conserve and enhance biodiversity, diversify agricultural systems, develop site appropriate planting schemes and integrate the human experience of the landscape at the centre of the design. The basis of services offered is derived from a deep understanding of the Mediterranean biome, it’s valuable botanical richness and intimately connected and complex land management practices.
Why Mediterranean?
The Mediterranean Basin is classified as a biodiversity hotspot. A biodiversity hotspot is an area of the planet that hosts unusually high plant species richness. In terms of its plant diversity, the Mediterranean Basin Hotspot is the third richest in the world, out of 36 hotspots. 25,000 plant species are recorded, approximately 13,000 (60%) of them classified as endemic and found nowhere else in the world. To put that into perspective 10% of all the world’s plants are found in the Mediterranean Basin, in an area 1.6% of the Earth’s land surface, or in other words, per unit area, three times higher species richness than China and four times higher than the Congo rainforest.
It’s incredible richness is due to a number of complex interactions, including it’s diverse geology and topography, it’s location at the convergence of the African, European and Asian continents, it’s function hosting glacial refugia and the long historic use of the land for habitation and agriculture, especially low intensity livestock management and transhumance. This botanical richness is little known in the public domain, however it’s integrity is under great pressure from a wide range of threats. In order to address these pressures a multi-disciplinary approach is necessary, with plant biodiversity at the heart of the creative process but also developing a sense of ownership over the land that promotes best practice multi-generational land management.
In summary Mediterranean landscapes occupy a unique position ecologically, culturally and agriculturally within the world’s biomes, offering significant opportunities for innovative design and management solutions, helping to mitigate current anthropogenic threats faced by this fragile biome, something we feel passionate about adressing.
