Landscape and urban design

Landscape design, particularly for larger developments and urban areas, can provide great benefit to native wildlife and biodiversity making healthier environments for all. We are working with landscape designers, planners, architects and ecologists to make the UK bat friendly alongside delivering better landscapes for us all.

BCT has published a guide called Landscape and Urban Design for Bats and Biodiversity, authored by Kelly Gunnell, Gary Grant and Dr Carol Williams. Landscape and Urban Design for Bats and Biodiversity presents simple but effective measures designers, consultants, developers and planners can use to enhance biodiversity on sites of all sizes with a focus on bats. Written, edited and reviewed by experts and practitioners the content covers landscape design features such as urban woodlands, trees, urban wetlands, green roofs, walls, linear features, eco-passages and lighting from a bat ecology perspective. It also includes a useful plant species list categorised by features such as rain gardens, green roofs, living walls and bed and borders based on plants that provide benefit to bats.

Reviewers from The Ecology Consultancy have said, “The guidance is great and packed full of useful information. We really like the format and the amount of detail and how it’s presented – and this will definitely be a well-used reference!”

Austin Brown of Arup Ecology says, “In all this is a most impressive document. This type of document is vitally needed to convince developers that biodiversity must be valued and promoted at all levels.”

The guide also includes a Foreword from the Landscape Institute.

Landscape and Urban Design for Bats and Biodiversity is available as a free (non-printable) download from the Bat Conservation Trust website.