Designing for Biodiversity and People

Landscapers, professional gardeners, designers and urban planners: learn about designing for biodiversity and people with Dr Zoë Metherell.

There is extensive knowledge in ecology and related fields that can inform biodiversity-positive design and management in Australia and beyond. The challenge lies in translating this knowledge into practice.

Join us for a webinar with landscape architect Dr Zoë Metherell to share some key ecological design concepts that can be used to redesign sites for biodiversity and people. Zoë will discuss her research adapting the ‘pattern approach’ to foster communication between scientists and designers. She will also present two recent projects - the design of a country garden, and a mini-forest play space in an urban school - that demonstrate how this ecological design approach can support nature-positive design in practice.

This event is free for members of SGA's Green Gardening Professionals program. You can become a GGP member here: https://www.sgaonline.org.au/seeking-professionals/ggp-membership-benefits-and-join/

About Dr Zoë Metherell:

Dr Zoë Metherell is an experienced landscape architect and ecological designer with a PhD from the University of Melbourne. Her practice and research interests include nature-positive design, urban greening, water-sensitive urban design and children's landscapes.

For her PhD research, Zoë took the ‘pattern-approach’, which was invented in the 1960s to support participatory urban design, and adapted it to foster communication between scientists and designers. In collaboration with landscape architects and urban ecologists at the City of Melbourne, Zoë co-wrote 80 ‘patterns’ for biodiversity-positive design in urban streets. These were collated in an Ecological Design Toolkit that supports Council staff to implement the biodiversity strategy Nature in the City.

Through her research, Zoë has developed new interdisciplinary design methods and resources for ecological design. In practice she explores novel ways to enhance local urban communities and design landscapes for biodiversity.

Sustainable Gardening Australia (SGA) is a not-for-profit non-government organiation dedicated to achieving a healthy biodiverse planet.

Its driving purpose is to:

• Encourage, educate and enable home and professional gardeners to adopt sustainable gardening practices to protect or enhance the natural environment;
• Provide information, education and undertake research about the natural environment;
• Reconnect people to the natural world through gardening; and
• Ensure an understanding of the impacts that gardening decisions about chemical and resource use have on the natural environment well beyond their neighbourhood.