In the Dutch city of Utrecht, 316 bus stops are now planted with flowering greenery, inviting pollinators like bees to stop by and take a blossom break. The Netherlands initiated the project after learning that more than half of its 358 bee species are endangered, but it comes with other benefits, too, like storing rainwater and improving Utrecht’s air quality by capturing fine dust.

Pollinators and other beneficial insects are currently being decimated around the world by habitat loss, herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Even so-called “safe” pesticides could be accumulating to toxic levels in pollen. The University of Maryland reported that U.S. beekeepers lost 38 percent of their bee colonies last winter alone, and the current administration has upheld market use of weed-killing substances like glyphosate while also ceasing the collection of quarterly data on honeybee colonies.

Though honey bees get the most publicity, they’re just 1 of 4,000 native North American bee species, all of which are threatened. Bumblebees, carpenter bees and orchard bees are among the wild bee species that benefit from plentiful food sources in urban settings, along with other pollinators like monarch butterflies, leaf cutters, wasps, beetles and even bats, mosquitoes and flies (which are also disappearing at alarming rates.)

Their decline is a threat to human food sources everywhere. Pollination is needed for about three-quarters of global food crops, and bringing in domestic honeybee colonies or tiny pollinating drones can’t necessarily replace the benefits of wild insects lost as their habitats are destroyed.

Cities could play a key role in pollinator conservation, according to a recent study carried out by scientists at the Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds and Reading in the U.K. Part of this is due to where they tend to be located: in coastal and riparian areas where biodiversity would naturally be high otherwise.

Residential and community gardens can play a major role in attracting pollinators with plants like lavender, dandelions, borage, thistles and buttercups. The study encourages the utilization of public parks, medians, sidewalk strips and other public green spaces for pollinator-attracting plants and mowing less often so they have a chance to flower frequently. It’s also recommended to provide water sources, avoid pesticides and allow for some undisturbed areas where the insects can nest.

There needn’t be such a stark division between even the most modern urban centers and the natural world. At Frontiers, a group of ecologists argue that nature needs urban territory in order to survive, and calls for the creation of more “green infrastructure” like native landscaping, urban farming, access to nature, gardens that reduce flooding in urban landscapes and, in particular, pollinator-focused efforts, using the monarch butterfly as a prime example. The researchers studied the ways in which focusing on preserving the monarch can benefit urban wildlife habitats as a whole.

“Powerful urbanization trends have understandably been accompanied by a sense that nature has been displaced in urban landscapes and can only be found where cities don’t exist. On the one hand, urban life has been characterized as ‘distanced from nature’ accompanied by an ‘extinction of experience’ as people move to urban settings. On the other hand, the conservation community has achieved huge victories in places far from the urban world, and a side effect has been to reify the notion of ‘wilderness’ in the American mind. Large protected areas have “increasingly become the means by which many people see, understand, experience, and use the parts of the world that are often called nature and the environment.”

“Our results add to a growing body of literature showing that metropolitan areas matter for wildlife conservation. Despite being developed, these landscapes have high potential to maintain functional habitat for a variety of species, including migratory and threatened endemic species. Habitat within and between US cities can help connect the dots for monarchs, other pollinators, and birds along migratory pathways from Mexico to Canada and back.”

Individual cities around the world are taking initiative with projects like wildlife corridors, shoreline restoration, massive urban parks and integrated city planning that works with nature. And cities won’t do it themselves, perhaps a resurgence of guerrilla gardening is in order.

Construction is currently in progress on a new elevated linear park running along the river Thames. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, “The Tide” offers a multi-level landscape for running, walking, meditation and contemplation of large-scale public art on London’s Greenwich Peninsula. The initial phase of the project, opening in July, will offer the first of 5 kilometers of walkways (about 3 miles total) which rise from the landscape like waves, some standing as high as 30 feet off the ground.

The architects envision The Tide as a network of public spaces and gardens “embedded into the daily rhythms of Greenwich Peninsula,” with programming split across the ground level and the elevated walkways. Sunken gardens, benches, integrated greenery, a long outdoor table and bike paths will be included among the park’s offerings, and Damien Hirst’s sculptures Hydra & Kali and Mermaid will be the first public art to arrive on site. Photographs of the construction process by Luke Hayes give us a peek at how it’s coming along.

“The Tide is conceived of as a series of elevated, landscaped islands where the public is invited to slow down, linger, and overlook the life of the Peninsula. Each island is distinct, defined by unique trees and planting, and by their surrounding views and sounds. These elevated gardens are designed as clusters of structural supports that create elevated planter beds, containing soil and channelling both gravity loads and water down to the ground. The sculptural structure supporting The Tide gardens above also frames and shelters the path below, creating arched pavilions that mark thresholds and passages at the ground level public realm.”

Greenwich Peninsula is a hotbed of redevelopment at the moment, with entire neighborhoods and new landmarks on the way, including a 79-foot-high glass arcade by Santiago Calatrava that will represent the Spanish architect’s first major project in the UK. The new park will sit at the intersection of these emerging neighborhoods, “diverse ecosystems and distinct cultural institutions, connecting north to south, east to west, center to periphery, and city to river,” say the architects.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro is the same firm responsible for designing New York City’s High Line, as well as the controversial new “Shed” structure in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards.

In Long Island City, nearly 11 acres of continuous waterfront park have bloomed along a formerly abandoned industrial landscape, offering a buffet of recreational opportunities while protecting the shoreline from floodwaters. The second phase of Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park, which begins south of 54th avenue and wraps around Newton Creek, is officially open to the public, adding to the features completed in 2013. Architects Weiss/Manfredi call it “a new model for waterfront resilience,” an oasis of green that can act as a buffer in extreme weather conditions.

Completed in collaboration with landscape architect Thomas Balsley Associates, the park is set along the main retail corridor of Hunter’s Point and offers a beautiful spot to gather, stroll, bike, picnic, walk dogs, play basketball, launch kayaks and more. The park serves as a gateway to the new Queens West waterfront development, which is working to transform the larger, formerly contaminated industrial property along the East River into a thriving community with 11 residential buildings, retail, public streets, utilities and two public schools.

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The site of the park is a former railroad ‘cut’ that divided the neighborhood, Balsley explains.

“At Vernon Boulevard, a long sweeping curve defines a generous crescent of lawn, a contemporary village green that is a social gathering place for locals and a respite for shoppers. Court games—basketball, handball and racquetball—are accommodated in the divided spaces along the park’s length.”

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“An imaginative children’s play area at the western end allows the park to effectively address the needs of a cross section of ages and activities. Functional partitioning is provided by a system of low, curving walls and architectural fences. The southern edge of the park is defined by a high wall whose character changes along its length with penetrations of colored glass block and stainless steel panels. This lively, linear backdrop serves as a strong unifying element for the park.”

The new section features wetlands, pedestrian paths and a land art installation called ‘Luminescence’ by artist Nobuho Nagasawa depicting the phases of the moon. The sculptural cantilevered platform lets visitors gaze at the bustle and glow of Manhattan across the river. If Instagram is any indication, locals are eager to make use of all these new features in their neighborhood.

Set within the beds of small white Japanese pickup trucks known as ‘kei,’ these gardens are so lush and complex, they look like they’ve been established for many years. In reality, each one had been in place for just a few hours before these photographs were taken. The miniature gardens were created for the annual Kei Truck Garden Contest held by the Japan Federation of Landscape Contractors, held at the Nagai Botanical Garden in Osaka on April 29th and 30th. Thirteen companies participated, each one creating their own interpretation of the theme.

Other than the simple instructions to build a living garden within the truck beds using standard landscaping materials, the contest has very few rules and directives, and the participants are free to design whatever kind of garden strikes their fancy. As this year’s entries show, the results range from formal Japanese tea houses to more American-style gardens complete with decorative wagon wheels. Some integrated furniture, fencing or water features, and one even boasted its own glass-walled pond.

The judging criteria looked for “planning ability, expression power, design, enforcement and consideration of the environment.” First place went to a lush mossy garden entitled “Clear Flow Drifting in Autumn” by Landscaping Co., LTD, which features a dry creek bed and a softly hilly topography (top image), while the indoor/outdoor space with shoji screens called “Nishiki of Autumn Leaves” nabbed second prize and the mysterious “Secret Base of Green Tea” with its cave-like roof structure won third.

The contest is a fun twist on the “portable park” concept sometimes seen in cities like San Francisco, which reclaims parking spots as green space for urban residents. To see more, check out this PDF from the Hanshin branch.

Why scrap a decommissioned tank or self-propelled gun when it can easily be re-purposed as playground equipment, asked nobody ever. ALMOST nobody, that is.

This pair of colorful ex-Soviet Army tanks are permanently caught in the crossfire, so to speak, in front of the Great Patriotic War Museum in Kiev, capital of the Ukraine. The orange tank is a T-55, produced in the tens of thousands between the end of World War II and approximately 1980 while the blue tank appears to be a T-72, first produced in 1973. Flickr members Colin Bourgeois (Colin Edmond) and Paul Honig snapped the popular (with kids, especially) display in 2010.

Can you “spot” these former war machines? Somebody sure did – these images from Flickr members Jason Risley and plutogno date from July and November of 2013, respectively, shortly after the tanks received a cosmetic makeover.

Spit & Polish

You’d think Poland, where tanks battled time and time again during the Second World War, would be awash in disused tracked vehicles. Then again, rebuilding a nation’s economy requires plenty of scrap metal. Evidently the small village of Holubla in eastern Poland’s Masovian voivodship didn’t rate an actual tank so local playground builders had to fashion one of their own. Flickr member porrectus caught this sharp-looking playground fixture in June of 2012.

Tanks for the Memories

There’s no shortage of tanks in Israel after fighting major wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967. The multicolored tank at top is a T-34-85, likely captured from invading Egyptian Army forces during the Six Day War in 1967. The colorfully painted tank at top, snapped in 2005 by Flickr member Loupiote, has open hatches that allow children to enter the turret and even swivel the gun using a hand crank – Soviet engineering at its finest. The second image of two pastel-tinted self-propelled guns was taken in 2008 by Flickr member matull. One for the girls and one for the boys?

Ominous in Omsk

This smartly painted T-34 tank dominates a playground in the village of Chernoluchye, near the city of Omsk in southwestern Siberia. I triple-dog-dare anyone to touch their tongue to this old warrior’s skin on a wintery day. Flickr member Bron Pancerna captured the retired war machine in May of 2016.

Omsk became a major tank-producing center after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in 1941. The city’s location straddling the Trans-Siberian Railroad was ideal for the distribution of new tanks to the front lines hundreds of miles to the west.

Not all tanks left Omsk, however – or perhaps, a few returned to their birthplace after being retired (re-tracked?). These hulking playground fixtures were snapped by Flickr member Stephen Powell (The Axarquian) in 2008 and by the website English Russia in 2012.

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