Managing an Urban Landscape for Biodiversity
BSLA is proud to be a longtime partner of Grow Native Massachusetts and their “Evenings with Experts” series.
1.5 LA CES HSW
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Step 4: Receive certificate!
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FEATURING
Rebecca McMackin, Director of Horticulture, Brooklyn Bridge Park
(Recorded March, 2021)
SESSION DESCRIPTION
Habitat stewardship is a vital component of creating enduring and ecologically healthy landscapes, particularly in dense urban settings. But traditional landscaping practices rarely take biodiversity into consideration, and there is a dearth of effective guidelines to inform this goal. For horticulturist Rebecca McMackin and her team that cares for the native woodlands, wetlands, and meadows at Brooklyn Bridge Park, cultivating habitat is central to their work. Join us to learn how they are using ecological insight and experimentation to develop new management strategies— and why careful observation and documentation of the insects, birds, and other wildlife in the park has been so crucial to their success.
Rebecca McMackin is the Director of Horticulture for Brooklyn Bridge Park, where she manages 85 acres of diverse parkland with an eye towards habitat creation for birds, butterflies, and soil microorganisms. She is also the Vice-President of the Metro Hort Group in the New York tri-state region.
Learning Objectives:
• Learn how Brooklyn Bridge Park was designed to be both sustainable in a changing climate, and to ecologically rejuvenate a formerly industrial area.
• Understand the management systems that horticultural staff at the Park have instituted over time to keep this built landscape thriving.
• Learn how Park staff have applied ecological knowledge as well as observations of the wildlife present in the Park to create effective management techniques that help foster biodiversity.
