Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

Various types of naturalisation can be implemented in the city’s green spaces, with the aim of strengthening their plant structure to enrich their biodiversity.

At the same time, this is an opportunity to provide flora and fauna with a quality habitat, to make their management more ecological by moving towards a greener model of managing Barcelona’s parks and gardens, which favours natural processes and more balanced, more resilient ecosystems (soil, water, flora, fauna, environmental management and so on).

Naturalisation initiatives consist in:

• Switching from lawns to natural meadows or grasslands
• Low-intensity mowing in flower meadows of particular use for biodiversity
• Creating mixed hedges to help biodiversity
• Enriching the edges of allotments with plants that favour biodiversity
• Planting groups of shrubs and fruit trees on lawns
• Removing invasive plants from an area and replacing them with species that encourage biodiversity
• Adapting seaboard vegetation

Nature with ecological functions

There are green spaces where, for a number of years and to highlight the city’s grasslands, a policy of selective mowing has been applied using native plants typical of the Mediterranean climate. These are allowed to develop naturally, with less intensive maintenance, while opting for sustainability and best gardening practices.

Grass, lawns, tree pits and grassland have important ecological functions: they are spaces of great interest for biodiversity where a large number of invertebrates develop that make it possible to feed various animal groups, such as birds.

Flowering also provides food for pollinating insects, so important for ecosystems. At the same time, the proliferation of invertebrates acts as a reserve of useful fauna that takes part in the biological control of pests and diseases that affect the city’s green spaces, which is part of a comprehensive approach to gardening management that prioritises natural treatments.