Edinburgh Landscape

The Edinburgh Living Landscape is a partnership project that will create, restore and connect green areas of the city to make attractive and biodiverse landscapes, enjoyed by residents and visitors. Landscapes will be healthy, nature rich and resilient to climate change.

How a Living Landscape will look

For parks and greenspaces, Edinburgh Living Landscape will mean changes to how some of our outdoor spaces will look. The project involves a range of measures such as

• creation of floral meadows
• reducing how often some areas of grass are cut and allowing natural grassland to thrive
• mowing pathways through areas of longer grass so they can still be explored and enjoyed
• tree planting and creating woodlands
• increasing our use of herbaceous perennial planting

View examples of Edinburgh Living Landscape in the gallery. You can view additional examples on Edinburgh Collected.

Benefits of Living Landscape

Allowing grassland habitats to develop in a more natural manner in urban settings by reducing grass cutting or sowing flowering plants offers these benefits

• biodiversity will be increased as birds, mammals and insects are attracted to wilder or more natural areas
• costs of intensively maintained areas of grassland can be reduced
• planting flowering species will add colour to the cityscape throughout the seasons
• less regular cutting reduces CO2 release and helps lock-up carbon in soils.

Map of Living Landscape features

You can view an interactive map of living landscape features across the city from 2015. This year's map will be available soon. Search for features near you, and click on the coloured areas on the map to find out more. If you have suggestions for additional sites, please contact us.

Key partners

• City of Edinburgh Council
• Scottish Wildlife Trust
• Edinburgh and Lothians Greenspace Trust
• Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
• University of Edinburgh