Ecological Design

 In the reading, “Ecology of Difference,” Gette starts out by giving scientific names of plants and their origin that were growing across the city of West Berlin. As the reading continued, I began to think that the origins of these particular plants were not a part of the original landscape of West Berlin. It is quite intriguing that most plant species we think are original to a landscape because of the abundance, are not native to that particular geographic area. Gandy states in a quote, “Although Tuxen and other nativist botanists sought ‘to cleanse the German landscape of disharmonious foreign bodies,’ the greatest biological threat from invasive species was actually to be found in the more distant colonial landscapes that had been disrupted through the expansion of European conquest and control.”

I understand European conquerors would bring their native plantings with them to new areas, however, overtime these non native plantings began to do more harm than good to the landscape. Bringing what is familiar to an unfamiliar landscape to a certain person is logical but it is better to understand the landscape you are in before introducing new plantings to the area. For instance, one would not plant crops like plants in an urban city. In the following reading, “The Making of an Urban Ecology.” Jens Lachmund, expresses ecology in the urban landscape setting. Lachmund states, “Ecologists argued that nature in the city was not only to be preserved for its own sake, but also for creating better conditions of life for urban citizens.”

I agree with this statement on some conditions. One, there is obviously a problem with pollution in cities creating bad air qualities for inhabitants. However, similar to Gandy in the first reading, the planting that is used in these cities should be native so that problems are not formed as more of these plants are grown across the city landscape.