Step 2: Study urban novel ecosystems
The second step for planting design using spontaneous vegetation found in urban novel ecosystems is to simply study them. The goal of studying spontaneous vegetation found in urban novel ecosystems is to gain an understanding of their ecological processes, species composition, aesthetic beauty, and spatial qualities. Urban novel ecosystems can be easily studied because they occur all around the city if one simply begins to recognize them. The notion of studying a natural landscape for planting design inspiration is not a new idea. Often, native landscapes far from the city and heavy human disturbance are studied to develop species compositions for urban planting designs (Robinson, 2004). Ecosystems such as the boreal forest, oak savanna, or native prairie are regularly used as precedents for developing urban planting palettes. However, because most precedent sites studied for native landscape plantings do not contain influences of heavy human disturbances, they often struggle to survive in urban sites. Studying spontaneous vegetation found in urban novel ecosystems typically creates a plant palette better suited to urban site conditions because the palette was created based on species found in an analogous urban condition. For example, one can study the natural flora found in a street novel ecosystem to develop a plant list for a boulevard planting. Utilizing analogous sites to select plant palettes will create resilient urban plantings because the species used have naturally evolved with the disturbance of the site being planted. In addition, studying urban novel ecosystems can generate plantings in non-traditional spaces. For example, the species found growing spontaneously in cracks of parking lot can be used to spark inspiration for a planting design strategy where half-inch saw cuts are used to provide space for plantings and rainwater infiltration in parking lots. During the summer of 2015, I obsessively observed, researched and collected field notes of spontaneous vegetation found in urban novel ecosystems of the Twin Cities. The field notes were collected to aid a projected novel ecosystem planting design capstone project to be conducted during the Spring 2016 semester during my third year in the Masters of Landscape Architecture program at the University of Minnesota. Urban novel ecosystems that were studied included bridge underpasses, freeway banks, boulevards, sidewalks, storm drains, curb and gutters, parking lot medians, asphalt parking lots, drainage ditches, abandoned railways, active railways, bike trail right of ways, vacant sites with building rubble, vacant paved sites, and various marginalized urban sites. 44
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