The Nature of Cities Festival

AIPH, as a proud partner of TNOC, is delighted to advance our shared vision for green cities by bringing two sessions to the TNOC Festival 2022.

Taking place from 29^th-31^st March, the TNOC festival focuses on facilitating transdisciplinary dialogue, small group workshops, arts engagement, and fostering a collaborative spirit around solutions for how to build greener cities that are better for nature and all people.

The AIPH sessions are: a seed session titled ‘Connecting Cities with the Horticulture Industry: Bridging the divide to harness the power of plants’; and a skills session titled ‘Planting the Seeds to Inspire a Global Movement for Greener Cities.’

For the 2022 Festival, TNOC is building an urban garden lobby space called Topia which is a platform aimed at facilitating virtual human interaction. All festival sessions, including AIPH’s seed and skills sessions, are accessible via this Topia world.

AIPH invites you to register for the TNOC Festival. Registration is free. Once you are registered for the TNOC Festival 2022, you can find these sessions in the festival programme and add them to your schedule. Thereafter, as a registered participant, you can navigate to the virtual rooms in Topia in which you will find the links to join the above-mentioned sessions.

To register and attend these sessions, visit: https://tnoc-festival.com/wp/registration/

Connecting Cities with the Horticulture Industry

“We can’t achieve greener cities without better consideration for plants and stronger connections with the horticultural industry. Do you agree?”

This was the question posed at the recent TNOC Roundtable, where AIPH invited responses from a diverse range of professionals. You can view the Roundtable here. These responses form the basis of the discussion for AIPH’s Seed Session at the TNOC Festival 2022 – ‘Connecting Cities with the Horticulture Industry: Bridging the divide to harness the power of plants.’

The session discussed the role of the horticulture industry in supporting the implementation of urban nature-based solutions. Seven of the respondents  joined AIPH’s Green City Consultant, Timothy Blatch, to present the outcomes of the Roundtable and further the discussion by exploring how plants have the power to deliver transformative urban nature-based solutions and how stronger connections between cities and the horticulture industry could enable this green transformation. The speakers, who shared their insights by means of a facilitated conversation, include:

• Peter Massini, Director, Future Nature Consulting, Robertsbridge, England, United Kingdom
• Maria Aragão, Technical Support to the Board of Directors, Portuguese Association of Landscape Architects, Pero Negro, Lisbon, Portugal
• Matthew Morrow, Director of Horticulture, NYC Parks, New York City, USA
• Andrew Grant, Founder and Director, Grant Associates, Bath, England, United Kingdom
• Ian Shears, Principal, Ian Shears Green Infrastructure + Urban Forestry, Victoria, Australia
• Darby McGrath, Senior research scientist, environmental horticulture, Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, Welland, Ontario, Canada

Watch the session on-demand

Inspiring Global Movement for Greener Cities

We are all advocates for greener cities, but what does this mean at a practical level?

AIPH’s skills session ‘Planting the Seeds to Inspire a Global Movement for Greener Cities’ will build on the Roundtable and seed session with a specific focus on the importance of careful plant selection in urban greening. Led by Dr Audrey Timm, AIPH Technical Advisor, the session will invite speakers from a range of disciplines and backgrounds to talk about the practical side of urban greening, such as how plants can deliver nature-based solutions to common urban challenges and maximise benefits for urban communities, and where these plants will come from. The session will seek to showcase the critical role of plants in effective project implementation and will share knowledge on how to equip practitioners with the know-how to harness their power in the urban context.

This session will take place from 15:00-16:30 CET on 30^th March in room WEST-07 of the virtual TNOC Festival’s Topia garden. AIPH invites you not to miss out.

In the Microtalk section of TNOC Festival 2022, AIPH presents “Safe Havens” This is an original song in the folk -contemporary genre, written and performed by Treve Evans, AIPH Senior International Relations Manager. The lilting tune and the uplifting lyrics resonate and echo the AIPH presence as the world’s champion for the power of plants. It is a song of reflection and love, and how we turn to nature and each other for refuge and restoration.