Episode 10: Vertical Meadows

As urban expansion quickly replaces natural habitats, façade engineer Alistair Law has discovered a new way to restore native ecosystems for pollinators and create natural spaces for us all within cities – by turning the walls of buildings into meadows.

Alistair has developed his “Vertical Meadows” as a way to combat biodiversity loss in the heart of cities like London. To do it, he’s targeting the vertical surfaces of buildings and installing seasonal living walls of plants that are native to the region, grown directly on-site. The engineering builds on existing systems so the plants thrive year-round with limited need for water, and installation remains simple and cheap. He gets his seeds from Donald Macintyre, who grows a wild array of native plants with the help of his daughter (and some Shire horses). Together, they hand-harvest each flower to provide a biodiverse mix of 50 different native species.

Alistair is joined by Scarlett Weston of BugLife at a vertical meadow in full bloom in downtown London. She’s monitoring bees visiting the meadow, and hopes more pollinators will use these sites as stepping stones across the city, helping to bridge gaps along larger corridors she’s establishing across the UK.