SGD launch Manifesto for Sustainable Gardens & Landscapes
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Image: Tracy McQue MSGD
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SGD Manifesto for Sustainable Gardens & Landscapes
The Society of Garden Designers (SGD) has published a Manifesto for Sustainable Gardens & Landscapes to present its declaration of intent and to establish principles and methodologies that encourage its Members and Affiliated Business Partners to create gardens and landscapes where sustainability comes first.
The SGD Manifesto follows on from the Society's hugely successful Symposium earlier this year, where members and experts gathered to consider how to design and specify gardens with a lighter footprint, that sequester carbon, provide healthy ecosystems and offer diverse habitats to help to reverse the decline of biodiversity which has accelerated over the last 50 years. It will be accompanied by a longer Manifesto Support Guide offering practical advice and ideas on how to work more sustainably with contributions collated from the SGD members and experts who attended the Symposium.
The SGD Manifesto and the Manifesto Support Guide together with associated information sharing sessions and online resources launching in October 2022, are part of a longer-term SGD strategy, set out in its Environmental Action Plan, that has been adopted to address both the environmental crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Lynne Marcus MSGD, Chair of the SGD said: "It is hard not to feel paralysed by the enormity of climate change and the implications of the tragic loss of biodiversity that humans are responsible for, but depend upon. As garden and landscape designers we are privileged to have the opportunity to make a difference. While it is sometimes easy to take the path of least resistance, we must all be crusaders in this urgent campaign."
The SGD is asking all of its Members and Affiliated Business Partners to pledge to support the Manifesto and to commit to adopting responsible and regenerative practices for future projects. The Manifesto Support Guide will be updated annually, and the Society would like to hear from Members, Partners and related industry experts who have any additional guidance and advice that they believe would be relevant to include in the document.