In the Nordvest neighborhood of Copenhagen, Denmark, a derelict lawn in a social housing estate from the 1950s has been transformed into a climate park designed to manage vast amounts of water. Grønningen-Bispeparken is a masterwork of multipurpose design: it protects the community from flooding while increasing biodiversity and providing social and play spaces.
According to landscape architecture firm SLA, the 5-acre park is the city’s “most radical nature-based climate adaptation project to date.” In recognition of its forward-thinking nature, the park won this year’s International Rosa Barba Landscape Prize.
“Grønningen-Bispeparken … encourages us all to get to work, adapting our cities to a changing climate, with the clarity of [its] design process and a concept that is replicable, plus an outcome that is both transformative and beautiful,” said Kate Orff, FASLA, chair of the prize jury and founder of SCAPE.
SLA said the original green spaces, designed by famed Danish landscape architect C.Th. Sørensen, had “fallen into unsafe disrepair with no activities, use, or play areas for local kids and residents.” Lawns were “unable to manage or contain rainwater – resulting in ‘rainwater motorways’ during thunderstorms – while also being very low on plant variation, wildlife, and biodiversity.”
Their solution was to sculpt the flat lawn into sloping green areas that collect, contain, and infiltrate the 32,000-square feet of stormwater that hits the park and surrounding streets and courtyards.
They accomplished this through an “interconnected series” of 18 bioswales that serve both a climate and social purpose. The swales steer water in the landscape and provide a framework for “playful, nature-rich, and safe meeting places for community and togetherness.”
Bioswales create the boundaries of outdoor rooms with different functions. Some spaces are designed to collect water and are just for nature and wildlife. Others are designed not to accumulate water but to serve as play spaces, lawns for sports and farmer’s markets, and pocket squares. A disused underground Cold Water bunker forms the foundation of a new hill for lounging in the summer and sledding in the winter.
A path of gravel and yellow-tone pavers recycled from Copenhagen construction sites brings community members through the spaces. In parts of the park, the path is wide and in others it “dissolves” into the landscape and only visible by small lighting bollards.
The lawns were replaced with a diverse range of tree and plant species, which contributes to the long-term resilience of the park and community. SLA planted 149 trees from 23 different species and more than 4 million seeds of “specially crafted seed mixtures.” The landscape architects also preserved the park’s buckthorn trees.
“Solutions that support local biodiversity are fully integrated into the nature-based climate solutions,” said Sune Rieper, partner with SLA. “During the design process, we mapped existing flora and fauna and ensured the new planting schemes and water systems reinforced them – while also creating optimal conditions for new and more resilient biological life.”
There are also cultural layers woven into the new design. In the original park, Sørensen framed views of Copenhagen’s Grundtvig’s Church. SLA preserved those views with its new trees and park design. Also incorporated are new functional wood artworks by Kerstin Bergendal, crafted with landscape studio Efterland. The artist worked with SLA to integrate the structures into the park, making exercise and play spaces mini-destinations.
To lower the carbon footprint of the project, SLA reused on-site materials and surplus construction materials from the City of Copenhagen as much as possible, reducing transportation emissions. “All the soil and clay we used to shape the mounds and bioswales are from the site. We also retained several existing and quite old concrete retaining walls and used some of the concrete materials in new ways,” said Bjørn Ginman, senior lead designer at SLA.
“Granite stones from old stair treads were used as informal and rough paving in several of the bioswales. All the classic Copenhagen benches throughout the park are reused. And selected stones and bricks from the city’s many construction sites were placed and used for paving throughout the park.”
Ginman said “the [greenhouse gas] emissions agenda really accelerated during the 5-plus years we were developing the project. In hindsight, we probably wouldn’t have cast the new retaining walls in concrete. Today, we would use alternative materials like rammed earth or similar. However, we did manage to reduce several planned walls.”
Rieper hopes the park will spur on broader changes. “It is less about how the project looks and more about how it feels and how it functions. We hope the prize will encourage the entire construction industry to be even more ambitious in creating space for all life in our cities – social, biological, and cultural,” he said.
SLA explained that five days after the park opened in 2024, a major thunderstorm hit Copenhagen, flooding highways. But the rain only made Grønningen-Bispeparken “more lush and beautiful” and its surrounding buildings and infrastructure remained dry. All communities facing flooding need a smart, multilayered park like this one.
“We decided to focus on the role of beauty,” explained Maria Landoni, ASLA, PLA, founder of Sur Landscape Architecture and curator of an online discussion organized by the ASLA Climate & Biodiversity Action Committee.
Beauty plays an important role — it helps people emotionally connect to landscapes. Through that connection, people are more likely to value the biodiversity that make places beautiful and functional. And then they are more likely to invest in protecting and restoring landscapes.
Uli Lorimer, director of horticulture with the Native Plant Trust, understands the beauty of wild landscapes and wants to bring that to more American public spaces.
He views this as a critical effort because 30-40 million hectares of native vegetation in the U.S. has been lost to development. “This is equal to all national and state parks combined,” he said. Much of that land has been covered with more than 63,000 square miles of lawn.
Despite this loss of native landscape, the U.S. is still an ecologically rich place. There are more than 20,000 native tree and plant species that provide a range of ecological functions — from habitat for pollinators to stormwater management.
To bring more of these beautiful and functional native plants to more people, Lorimer called for applying “ecological horticulture.” This approach involves collecting wild seeds and growing plants from seeds, not cuttings. It supports the genetic diversity of plants, ensuring non-uniformity, resilience, character, and climate adaptation. “Look at skunk cabbage that grows in the wild — no two flowers are the same.”
At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York City, where Lorimer once was a gardener, the team designed a garden based on the New Jersey Pinelands, a unique 1.1 million acre ecosystem designated by UNESCO as Biosphere region. They used ecological horticulture and transfered some of the wild beauty of the pinelands to the garden in Brooklyn, a space surrounded by tall buildings.
“We intentionally planted small trees, which establish themselves better. We brought in a combination of ruderal and annual plant species, including milkweeds, ashers, and goldenrods” — some of which were cultivated from seeds from the pineland landscape.
Lorimer highlighted the project to raise a key point: “There is a big disconnect between beauty and diversity in the wild and what you can purchase for projects.”
Plants can be propagated from seeds or cuttings. Large-scale nurseries find taking cuttings faster and easier. Seed-grown plants result in diverse sizes and are therefore seen as riskier. “Most plants are cultivated to be pretty, not for ecological function. These plants do next to nothing for pollinators, like the 4,000 species of bees in North America, 25 percent of which are specialists that rely on particular plants.”
The Native Plant Trust, where Lorimer currently works, grows all plants from seeds. Three-fourths of seeds are collected from the wild. They produce 50,000 plants from 300 species each year, but Lorimer said this is just a very small portion of the total number of plants produced each year. “In some areas of the U.S., like California, there may be many native plant nursery options, but in other areas nothing.” Demanding high-quality, seed-grown native plants will help more people understand their value.
“For a long time, I suffered from plant blindness,” said Dawn Dyer, ASLA, PLA, principal, Studio-MLA. “It’s easy to have a lack of awareness about different types of plants. We are taught in school about animals but not plants.”
The project that helped her see is the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, where Studio-MLA collaborated with museum scientists, curators, and educators to design multiple gardens to serve as spaces for students, teachers, and visitors. The landscapes’ 14 garden zones offer “tangible experiences” of different Californian habitats.
The gardens were designed to be beautiful but also provide food or shelter for birds, butterflies, spiders, insects, and lizards. Dyer focused on four zones Studio-MLA designed: the transition garden, living wall, urban wilderness, and commons. Each garden has a unique plant community.
In the transition garden, silk floss trees attract birds and butterflies. The crevices of the living wall are planted with native dudleya plants and “create microhabitats for lizards and spiders,” and rosemary and grape vines grow along the wall. “Pollinators and birds love it. And people keep stealing the dudleya.” In the urban wilderness, native willows and oaks surround an “ephemeral stream,” providing refuge for a range of species. “When I saw a hawk there, I knew we were successful.”
Studio-MLA planted more than 600 new plants from 200 species and more than 140 new trees. The new trees helped increase the shade canopy by 50 percent. Approximately 70 percent of the plants are native. “The gardens have led to an increase in biodiversity — naturalists have made more than 11,000 observations of more than 800 species.”
The project is designed to help others not be blind to plants. “The hawks, monarch butterflies, and bees show what the plants can do.”
Kelly D. Norris, plantsman and artist, said we have a limited vocabulary when trying to describe the beauty of landscapes. “We need to expand the language of aesthetics and create a pattern language. Designing landscapes is a process: It’s not just about the components of the design but about time; how landscapes change over time and be resilient.” He said the role of the designer is to “align aesthetic intent with ecology.”
Designers will benefit from spending time in nature, reading the landscape. He offered an example of a landscape that had a “collision” of two gradients, which led to different soils, amounts of water, and plant communities. These kinds of collisions inspire Norris — they show that “landscapes aren’t single entities but strands of greater ecological cloth.”
Norris showed how he studies the spatial arrangements of plants in the wild to understand how plant density and dispersion changes over time. These quantitative analyses help him create a model for distributing plants in designed landscapes — a model that results in beauty and ecological support. “Resilient plantings emerge when aesthetic principles align with ecological processes,” he said.
“Planting is an act of disturbance, in ecological terms. But when we plant with intention, we can have a significant impact on the landscape. We can profoundly change a place.” And in the case of replacing a lawn, change it for the better.
He said “many designers oversimplify because of a fear of complexity.” But designers can lean into the complexity. They can bring density and a diversity of species together, creating visual and ecological complexity. They can create zones that are “aesthetically intricate” but also characterized by “fineness and subtle contrasts.”
Showcase the best of landscape architecture—ASLA’s 2026 Professional and Student Awards calls for entries are open.
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COP30 Has Big Plans to Save the Rainforest. Indigenous Activists Say It’s Not Enough, Grist, November 14
The government of Brazil launched the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), which aims to provide greater financial incentives to countries to protect their tropical forests. To receive funds from the TFFF, countries will need to pass on 20 percent of what they receive to Indigenous communities. Indigenous groups argue what’s really needed is stronger land rights for Indigenous peoples and greater recognition for the key role they play in managing carbon sinks and biodiversity.
Deadly Heat Worldwide Prompts $300 million for Climate Health Research at COP30, Reuters, November 14
Heat-related deaths have increased more than 20 percent since the 1990s, reaching half a million each year. And wildfire smoke was linked with 150,000 deaths last year. To scale up solutions to extreme heat, air pollution, and climate-sensitive infectious diseases, the Rockefeller Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and more than 30 other foundations have formed the Climate and Health Funders Coalition, which seeks to accelerate new research, policies, and innovations.
Car-dominant Texas Needs More Public Transit to Meet Mobility Demands, TxDOT Report Says, Texas Tribune, November 11
Texas is developing its first statewide multi-modal transit plan, with new goals for public transportation for rural and smaller urban areas and intercity rail. In a poll commissioned by the department, 86 percent of Texans said it’s “at least somewhat important” to improve the state’s public transportation network. While the plan is viewed as a major step forward, there is skepticism about whether the tens of billions needed for new infrastructure will be budgeted.
The Ground Beneath Our Feet Is the Next Carbon Battleground, Architect, October 30
Meg Calkins, FASLA, professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at NC State, talks about her new book Details and Materials for Resilient Sites: A Climate Positive Approach. It provides landscape architects with strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and incorporating “resource-efficient materials” and mixes for stone, concrete, asphalt pavement, aggregates, brick, wood, metals, and plastics. “As more than 80% of the life-cycle emissions come from the production, transport, maintenance, and disposal of construction materials, we must radically shift the way we design and detail these sites and infrastructure,” Calkins said.
Biodiversity Gets Its ISO Moment: Nature Accounting Arrives, Forbes, October 20
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released a new standard – Biodiversity for Organizations: Guidelines and Requirements – which firms and investors can use to measure, manage, and report on their biodiversity risks. “Until now, there has been no globally agreed standard for integrating biodiversity into strategies and operations. That lack of a common framework has led to fragmented approaches and growing confusion as nature-related risks and expectations increase,” said Noelia Garcia Nebra, head of sustainability and partnerships at ISO.
Delegates will highlight the key role of landscape architecture strategies in increasing resilience for people and communities
ASLA will be represented by three delegates at COP30 in Belém, Brazil. This is the fourth year ASLA has been an NGO observer to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP) process.
ASLA’s delegates:
And the landscape architect delegate of the Government of Thailand:
“Brazil has hosted this COP at the gateway to the Amazon rainforest because they know climate and nature are interconnected. Landscape architects also know that the problems and solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises must be addressed together,” said ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Conneen, Hon. ASLA. “This is the year when we need to scale up investment in nature-based solutions that increase our ability to adapt to climate change, create gains in biodiversity, and lead to economic growth.”
“Landscape architecture helps ensure nature-based solutions provide even greater adaptation and resilience benefits for urban, suburban, and rural communities,” Calkins said. “There are now so many smart, proven design approaches worldwide that show how these solutions reduce flood, storm, and heat risks; store carbon; increase biodiversity; and generate economic value. Landscape architects around the globe have proven ability to work with policymakers and communities to design these solutions to create stacked economic, ecosystem, social, and health benefits.”
At COP30, ASLA will co-host From Shoreline to Skyline: Resilient Infrastructure, Buildings, and Coastal Planning for a Changing Climate, a session in the Resilience Hub, organized by the Government of Peru, in the Blue Zone on November 13, 7:30 – 8:30 AM EST. The event is co-hosted by Arup, the World Green Building Council, and Centre for Climate Change and Environmental Research (C3ER) at BRAC University.
During the session, Calkins and Voraakhom will outline how landscape architects design nature-based solutions to increase resilience while maximizing the economic and other co-benefits of these solutions at the same time.
Landscape architecture delegates will also present at these blue zone sessions:
Nature at Work: Advancing Climate Resilience through Ecosystem-Based Solutions
Government of Thailand Pavilion, Blue Zone, November 11, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM EST
Highlights Canadian and Brazilian leadership in landscape-based adaptation, showcasing cross-sector approaches that integrate biodiversity, infrastructure, and local livelihoods for resilient development.
Presenters:
Undoing the Damage, The Retrofit Urban Revolution with Nature: Action Pathways for Livable, Thriving, and Resilient Cities
Government of Thailand Pavilion, Blue Zone, November 11, 2025, 9:00 to 10:00 AM EST
Explores how urban landscapes can be redesigned to restore ecological function, reduce emissions, and enhance community well-being.
Presenters:
Sustainable Amphibious Home: Achieving 13 SDGs in Climate-Vulnerable Bangladesh
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Pavilion, November 11, 1:20 to 2:20 PM EST
Presenter:
Discussant:
Water as Leverage
Government of Thailand Pavilion, Blue Zone, November 13, 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EST
Organized in collaboration with Dutch and Southeast Asian partners, this interactive session will explore how integrated urban water projects can catalyze climate adaptation and equitable urban transformation.
Presenters:
Paris at 10: The 10th Anniversary of the Paris Agreement
Government of Thailand Pavilion, Blue Zone, November 19, 11.30 AM – 12.30 PM EST
Fosters discussion on how ambition, implementation, and equity have evolved over the past decade and what the next phase of global climate cooperation demands.
At COP30, Calkins, Kubo, and Voraakhom will also share the vision outlined in the recently released Landscape Architecture 2040: Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan. They will explain how landscape architects design nature-based solutions to create multiple benefits for people and communities:
1) Strengthened Resilience
Healthy, biodiverse landscapes that store carbon in trees, plants, and soils increase communities’ ability to adapt to climate impacts – such as extreme heat, flooding, drought, and sea level rise. Nature-based solutions can be designed for urban, suburban, and rural communities to bolster resilience over the long-term.
2) Going Beyond Net-Zero
Landscapes are the most efficient way to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and store carbon. Through smart planning and design, landscapes can achieve zero emissions and double sequestration by 2040.
3) Increased Biodiversity
Nature-positive landscapes are the foundation of terrestrial ecosystems and efforts to achieve the goals of protecting and restoring 30 percent of ecosystems by 2030 (30 x 2030). Biodiverse landscapes are more resilient to climate impacts and better at storing carbon.
4) Improved Health and Livability
Accessible public landscapes, such as parks and recreation areas, provide proven physical and mental health benefits that reduce healthcare costs and increase community cohesion. All communities should benefit from nature-based solutions in an equitable way.
5) Expanded Investment and Sustainable Livelihoods
When woven into communities, nature-based solutions become resilient assets that lead to increased investment in housing, infrastructure, and public amenities, and create sustainable local livelihoods. In the U.S., investments in parks and green space can generate between $4 and $11 for every dollar invested, due to increased tourism, improved property values, and enhanced community health.