Designing for Life: From Verge Gardens to National Landscapes

17 Nov

UDLA’s Walyalup studio recently hosted an evening of conversation exploring how design can nurture biodiversity across scales – from neighbourhood verges to national landscapes and long-term ecological experiments. The event brought together community educator and Valley Verges founder Dave Broun, and UDLA Project Director Chris Johnstone, who presented a living lab project in Newcastle and a nationally significant arboretum in Canberra.

Dave opened the night by introducing the verge garden he established on Hope Street in White Gum Valley in 2019. What began as an expanse of compacted turf has, through patient effort, become a vibrant 350-square-metre native garden containing more than 700 plants. As one of the catalysts behind the Valley Verges movement, Dave spoke about the way collective stewardship can slowly rebuild soil structure, restore habitat and bring neighbours together over shared patches of land.

Once he had taken us through the process of transforming verge lawn into functioning habitat, Dave shifted the conversation to what happens after the plants take hold: the return of endemic invertebrates. He shared photos – ranging from the unexpectedly sweet to the mildly terrifying – of the insect species he has become increasingly captivated by documenting through iNaturalist. Their return says a great deal about the biodiversity recreated at the scale of a garden, but it also gestures to a deeper provocation. If we consider every garden bed, verge and spare patch of earth as the site of hourly, daily and seasonal interactions involving millions of living creatures, might we design differently? Dave’s work suggests the answer is yes.

Chris then introduced the Delprat Phytoremediation Garden in Newcastle, an experimental research landscape built on contaminated former steelworks land. At Delprat, soil is treated not as a passive substrate but as a toxic archive – something to be studied, tested and slowly healed. Different planting zones function as living laboratories, providing real-time data on how species absorb or tolerate heavy metals. The project demonstrates how incremental learning, rather than rapid construction, can remake a damaged site.

The evening concluded with a shift to a vastly different temporal scale at the National Arboretum Canberra. Here, the growth of 44,000 rare and endangered trees unfolds over centuries, not seasons. Chris reflected on the patience required for forests that will not fully mature within our lifetimes. Their slow becoming offered a striking counterpoint to the rapid, urgent lifespans of the insects in Dave’s garden – one world measured in decades and centuries, the other in weeks and hours.

Across all three projects, themes of time, soil and biodiversity bound the conversation together. Whether tending a verge, remediating toxic ground or stewarding future forests, each project shows that designing for life requires attentiveness, generosity and a willingness to engage deeply with the living systems that shape our landscapes.

Thanks, as always, to our speakers; to Ezra Jacobs for sharing reflections on the place where we gathered; to Cole Baxter for the great photos; and to everyone who joined us. Let us know at hello@udla.com.au if you’d like to receive an email about our next conversation.

Links to more information:
Delprat Phytoremediation Garden
National Arboretum, Canberra
Valley Verges
Species spotted at Hope Street on iNaturalist