Author: Jan Haenraets

Saving The Green City: Srinagar, Kashmir

In 1895 Sir Water Lawrence wrote about Srinagar and the Dal lake: ‘The willows change from green to silver grey and delicate russet, with a red tone on the stems and branches, casting colours on the clear water of the lake which contrast most beautifully with the rich olives and yellow greens of the floating …

The Silent Royal

I grew up amongst a handful of plane trees that looked like giants to a small kid. We played daily in front of our home on the grass square, that had nothing else but six of these trees. We used the trees as goalposts when kicking a ball, and when resting in the shade. These trees were …

Mount Auburn Cemetery in Spring

Mount Auburn Cemetery in Watertown and Cambridge, Massachusetts, was founded in 1831 and became a model for the American ‘rural’ cemetery movement. It was listed on the United States National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and received National Historic Landmark designation in 2003. In an earlier article on ‘A Landscape of Memory: Mount Auburn Cemetery‘, some …

Japanese Flowering Cherries, the standard book by Wybe Kuitert (free online book)

With the cherry blossoms in full bloom it is a good moment to point out that the standard reference book on Japanese Flowering Cherries by Wybe Kuitert, with Arie Peterse, with a foreword by Roy Lancaster, is now free and authorized available online. Japanese flowering cherries have inspired gardeners for more than twelve centuries. They are closely …

Nesting Instincts

This article highlights a winning Art + Habitat design by Atelier Anonymous in partnership with Mike Seymour, and which features in the Spring 2015 issue of Landscapes|Paysages, the Canadian Society for Landscape Architects’ journal. For Barn Owls (Tyto alba), life can be precarious. Indeed, in many areas of the world, including British Columbia, they are threatened or rare, in large part …

A Non-Urban Approach

The World’s Societies have become largely urban; nearly everywhere, land has been occupied or colonized. Where once identity and community were linked to the land and to natural systems, the landscape is being stripped away, new layers added. During this process of transformation, society has become accustomed to an ‘urban approach’: a reliance on interventions that …