Join us for an illuminating conversation between two innovators at the intersection of horticulture, ecology, and design.
John Little and Peter Korn bring their unique expertise to discuss how built and planted landscapes can respond both beautifully and resiliently to environmental challenge.
Peter Korn: Growing in Sand
Peter will share insights from his “Growing in Sand” work, demonstrating how dry, sandy, or otherwise difficult soils need not limit creativity or biodiversity. He’ll discuss how site conditions, plant selection, bed structure, and maintenance can be orchestrated to produce year-round interest with minimal irrigation, turning limitations into assets.
John Little: The Potential of the Complex
John argues that structure, topography and dead stuff are more important than plant choice when designing for biodiversity. With climate change upon us surely we should look to more micro climates and niche to give nature a chance to adapt. Our most important places for wildlife are always our most complex.
Speakers
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Peter Korn
Peter Korn
Ever since he started growing plants, Peter has tried to understand what it is that makes a plant establish in the specific place where it occurs in the wild, and then translating it to garden conditions. He has travelled to numerous places with climates similar to Sweden to see how plants grow in their natural environment. The trips, combined with great curiosity and own growing experiences, have given him an unusual understanding of what plants want – no matter how specific their needs are. Peter uses this knowledge in his landscape and garden design with great success and gives regular lectures on growing conditions, creating habitats and naturalistic plantings. Nature is always his greatest source of inspiration. A planting should solve problems, not create them.
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John Little
John Little
John argues
Put the best gardeners in the poorest places
Move money from capital into care
Understand that gardened places are best for biodiversity and people
Move novel landscapes higher up the BNG metric
Understand that a modern public space gardener is much more than a horticulturist
Question our obsession with specifying topsoil in all new projects, especially on highways and new developments
Keep waste on site and use it to make places beautiful and biodiverse
Put soil and plants on roofs
After 18 years looking after social housing greenspace he has started carenotcapital.org, a ‘not for profits’ to train gardeners in everything other than straight horticulture.
In 2008 he launched a range of small green roof shelters including bike and bin storage. greenroofshelters.co.uk
John can be contacted on Instagram @grassroofco
