If, like me, you are concerned about the future, then I strongly recommend reading  “2052 – A Global Forecast” by Jorgen Randers.

This book should be compulsory reading for all students, teachers, business people, civil servants, government organisations and in fact – I would go so far as to say for anyone with an IQ higher than a vegetable.

I am not being unkind to vegetables, plants are some of my best friends and I believe plants should be everyone’s best friend!  And while you may think that plants and the year 2052 have nothing in common, I invite you to reconsider.

Jorgen Randers is world renown as a scientist, an economist, a writer, a global collaborator and of course, for his exceptional “Limits to Growth” which forever sets a new baseline. His new book, stimulated me into thinking, “What will Hanging Gardens look like in 2052”?

Well, as Jorgen says, the trend is clear. Creating resilient and bio-diverse urban environments is something, without which, humans will not be able to survive. So, it does not require rocket science to realise that “vertical gardens” are inevitable.

What form they may take, will surely be different to what we have today, but they will be around. Up the sides of buildings, incorporated into the buildings and on top of the buildings.

There may still be people who still believe that architecture and town planning are not about nature, but about people. However, one thing we have learnt over the last forty years, it is that people are part of nature.

At Hanging Gardens, we are utterly determined to do something to create a better world for future generations. All our effort is focused on what we can do, right now, to improve the planet.  We cannot do many of the things in Randers book, but we can do something. Going up the wall with hanging gardens is the best thing we can do to make an immediate benefit to urban environments. This is not green bling, this is a result of a great deal of thought about how we can protect our biodiversity and use plants to improve human life.

So I invite you to read “2052 – a Global Forecast” and then do something positive – even if it means going up the wall!

Leigh Nicholson