Cityscape took green infrastructure as its theme, tackling the inter-connected challenges facing the urban public realm – social, economic, environmental – and looked to the improvements that urban green space could deliver by encouraging walking, meeting, playing and relaxing, and creating a closer sense of community.

It also looked at green infrastructure’s role in delivering environmental benefits:

• mitigation of the urban heat island effect
• improving air quality
• reducing noise
• flood management
• local food production
• woodland crops for energy production
• protecting and enhancing biodiversity

This was described through an imposing cube of green walls built to illustrate the different systems available for large-scale urban installations and designed by Chelsea Flower Show gold medal winner, Patrick Collins, in association with Capita Lovejoy, the land planning division of Capita Symonds. A new and innovative component of urban green infrastructure, green walls reduce temperatures, increase evaporative cooling as well as reducing rainwater run-off and enhancing biodiversity.  

A variety of green walls, ranging from the more traditional trellis systems to the very latest in living wall technology, were on display, demonstrating their use in conjunction with architectural products, particularly UK grown and FSC certified timber cladding.

Planting within the walls included a range of indigenous and ornamental evergreen perennials, grasses and ferns, showing the variety of colour and textural effects that can be achieved and illustrating how the biodiversity of a site can be enhanced through the use of living walls.

Visitors were able to access Cityscape via decked footpaths and paved areas lined with a series of bespoke seating elements of timber and stone.

green walls were provided by:

            

The green walls gave way to a thought-provoking interior space in which visitors could learn about other aspects of green infrastructure through a series of videos and presentation materials set out by Natural England.