Sustainable urban design: the vital part border edging has to play

With the UK seeing significant population growth, we’re unfortunately seeing a common trend in many of the major cities and urbanised areas – rapidly reducing green spaces and parks as developers and building designers attempt to cater for increasing demand.

However, with sustainability becoming a major focus for the built environment and urban designers and the creation of green spaces vitally important for not only the environment but also people’s health and wellbeing, border edging can play a critical role in sustainable urban design.

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Increased planting areas

For many years, building developers and designers have constructed buildings to house people without a great deal of thought to how they need to live or how they need to survive.

Now, we’re in a situation where we need to bring plant life into areas where perhaps it hasn’t been before to increase area desirability and resident wellbeing. However, it’s also imperative this plant life is given what it needs to survive.  

This, of course, is one of the biggest challenges of landscape design. When edging is made from systems such as concrete, a lot of the desired green space can be taken up by this material. Conversely, installing metal border edging, such as AluExcel, requires very little space, meaning planting areas are as large as possible and soil is created and secured to produce the best plants.

Water management

Driven by climate change, the UK’s rapid urbanisation and aging infrastructure that isn’t designed to effectively manage intense rainfall, flooding can create severe risks to cities and urbanised areas. In fact, high-density development can often lead to the use of impervious surfaces, such as concrete or asphalt, that can cause surface runoff, prevent water absorption and overwhelm drainage systems.

Well-designed and implemented landscape edging can act as a physical barrier that keeps all the important soil and mulch within planting beds. This prevents them from washing into storm drains or onto pathways during periods of heavy rain.

Furthermore, leveraging landscape edging in this way can direct rain and surface water toward rain gardens or permeable areas – recharging groundwater and promoting efficient infiltration.

Recyclable materials

With the built environment as a whole, but especially urban designers, tasked with lowering carbon emissions and building sustainably, the importance of specifying and utilising sustainable and recyclable materials cannot be understated.

By incorporating aluminium and steel landscape edging, architects and designers can significantly reduce landfill waste and lower any project’s carbon footprint. Furthermore, aluminium is non-toxic, meaning harmful chemicals are not leached into the water system or soil.

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Reduced maintenance and damage to soil

The creation of a permanent barrier through the use of landscape edging can prevent grass and weeds from encroaching into flower beds and hedgerows. In addition to reducing the need for pesticides and herbicides, delineating green spaces makes mowing and trimming faster and simpler – lowering the demands of regular maintenance.

Specifying high quality, durable and recycled materials, such as steel, also means fewer replacements are needed, which reduces long-term material waste.

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Health and wellbeing

Creating defined green spaces, in which plants and trees are able to grow naturally, can have a substantial impact on health and wellbeing in urbanised areas, not to mention the urban heat island effect.

For example, the implementation of tree canopies in busy urban areas and cities is a very effective way of filtering airborne particles through leaves, twigs and bark and absorbing gaseous pollutants through a process called stomata.

Similarly, utilising border edging to keep trees and plants neatly segregated allows tree canopies to prevent sunlight from hitting concrete and asphalt – minimising heat absorption and the associated re-radiation. By blocking up to 90% of solar radiation from reaching the ground, tree canopies can reduce the temperature of the shaded areas by up to 25°C.  

Border edging isn’t just something to add visual appeal; it is a hugely effective tool for the creation of urban green spaces that are low-maintenance, long-lasting and, above all, sustainable.