RANA

For years there has been concern that rising temperatures, drought, and deforestation are negatively affecting the Amazon rainforest. These actions are reducing the capacity of the world’s largest rainforest to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and help offset emissions from fossil fuel burning. Recent studies have even suggested that some portions of the tropical landscape already may release more carbon than they store. Curbing the deforestation of the Amazon is ess...ential to reversing this damage along with increased efforts to replant lost trees. #WeAreTheTropics #AmazonRainforest #RanaCares @reutersphoto

Speaking of pollinators A favorite project RANA conceptually designed for pollinator habitat is Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre in Colorado. The design concept directly resembles that of a sound wave for the performances held at this venue . A diverse assemblage of native plants is woven into a botanic tapestry based on leaf color, blossom color, habitat, and seasonal dynamics. These native Colorado plants offer habitat for an array of our beloved pollinators including beetles, birds, and butterflies. How amazing to absorb a concert among the wildlife! #Colorado #RanaCares 303 Magazine

Pollinator Week is an annual event celebrated around the world to support pollinator health. It's a time to celebrate pollinators and educate each other about what we can do to protect them. There is no limit to how you can celebrate this week! Plant specific native plants that attract and support the life cycle of bees, birds, butterflies, beetles and bats. Learn about what pollinators are endangered or need population support to avoid becoming so. (Monarchs!)... Go out and visit local parks that have flora & fauna designed and planted to provide long-lasting habitat for pollinators. #pollinatorweek #RanaCares

"Francisco Park, it's for the birds!" This much-awaited open space in the middle of San Francisco is close to opening day for the community. The birds however have been enjoying it this past year as construction has settled. There has been an increase in bird activity of Warblers, Song Sparrows, Jays, Finches, Cedar Waxwings, Northern Flickers, Robins, and a lively flock of Parrots. We are looking forward to visitors enjoying the Hummingbirds especially! They, along with other precious pollinators are attracted by the Hummingbird Sage, Red Flowering Currant, and Goldenrod our RANA Landscape Architecture team designed and grew RANA Nursery #pollinatorbirds #PollinatorWeek

It's Pollinator Week! What can you do to help the favorite Western Monarch Butterflies? Plant native milkweed! @rana_nursery has grown thousands of milkweed plants just this year to promote planting sustainable habitats for Monarch butterfly caterpillars in California. We can all contribute by adding this easy to maintain and extremely beneficial plant to our gardens. #savethemonarchs #plantmilkweed

Western Monarch Butterfly population has been counted this year at 2,000 a 99% decline over the past three decades. California conservationists and naturalists are actively educating about how to help these favorite butterflies. Planting Milkweed as the habitat for Monarch butterfly caterpillars is the best contribution we can make! These are the ONLY plant species that the Monarch will lay its eggs and essential to their survival. What can you do? Plant native milkweed! ...@rana_nursery has grown thousands of milkweed plants, just this year in an effort to create a sustainable habitat for monarch caterpillars in California. We can all contribute by adding this easy to maintain and extremely beneficial plant to our gardens. Learn more: https://www.theguardian.com//monarch-butterflies-californi #savethemonarchs #RanaCares

RANA is now hiring! We are looking to fill positions in both our Landscape Construction and Landscape Architecture departments. Please refer to our website careers page to check out list of job openings www.ranacohabitat.com/careers

Today is the day. Vote! It's the patriotic thing to do. . Regram of the talented @brietheplantlady

As part of an island wide sustainability plan, RANA collaborated with Lou Cooperhouse of Food Spectrum Inc., the University of Hawaii, and other specialists in designing a plan to integrate invasive Axis deer management with food system incubation, reforestation and resource recovery for Lna‘i. Currently, 20,000 acres of former pineapple fields lie fallow in the caldera, while 90% of food is imported, and costly. Furthermore, the aquifer is depleted, deforestation persis...ts, and the landfill is nearing capacity. . With an understanding of the deer population (16,000+), reproductive rates, hunting takes, cultural values, mobile processing unit capacity, market for high-quality venison, biomass calculations and applications of nutrients for agricultural soil generation and waste-to-energy recovery, aquifer recharge rates with relation to native forest cover, current and projected water availability, current and projected food production targets, and agricultural irrigation demand, RANA designed a system to integrate island food production goals with invasive species management, groundwater recharge, reforestation, resource recovery and quality of life improvement for the community. See more

Some fun pumpkin facts for our favorite pumpkin-themed holiday! Indigenous North Americans have grown pumpkins for thousands of years even before the cultivation of beans and corn. In 1584, after French explorer Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence region of North America, he reported finding gros melons. The name was translated into English as pompions, which has since evolved into the modern pumpkin. Carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns is a popular Hal...loween tradition that originated hundreds of years ago in Ireland. Back then, however, jack-o’-lanterns were made out of turnips or potatoes ; it wasn’t until Irish immigrants arrived in America and discovered the pumpkin that a new Halloween ritual was born. Now pumpkins are commonly placed on stoops in the fall months, and get carved ahead of Halloween night. Happy Halloween! From, all of us at RANA

Swipe to see the concept renders we're working on for a building in east Palo Alto in collaboration with @williammcdonougharchitects and #arctecinc. The property's close proximity to the tidal marsh shoreline of the San Francisco bay inspired the landscape design's estuarine-terrestrial transition zone between the bay shoreline and adjoining upland. Principles of the landscape design concept include vegetation that is adapted to salt, fog, wind, and alkaline soils and is supportive of ecological connectivity movement of terrestrial wildlife to and from the badlands.

We're nearing our 2 year anniversary on our project atop this $2.1 billion state-of-the-art, one million square foot facility in the heart of San Francisco. RANA designed five separate roof gardens that crown the Van Ness Campus at Sutter Health California Pacific Medical Center, adding 25,000 square feet of green space. Designed to achieve LEED Silver certification, the hospital features include using captured rainwater for the hospital’s five rooftop gardens and hig...h-efficiency, low-flow plumbing fixtures, which will save more than 3 million gallons of water per year. Every detail of the new hospital is geared toward creating an inclusive, healing environment, where high quality, technology, safety, efficiency and personal touches continue to be the norm. All rooms are private and feature exterior city or garden views and natural light. Shady oak woodlands and coastal meadow plants soothe and provide respite within the hospital’s urban location. Native wildflowers bloom with seasonal color and perennial plants attract pollinators and Monarch butterflies, forging a healing habitat. #tbt #CPMC #LEEDCertified . Herrero Builders See more

At RANA, what we want to get across is that nature is inherently beautiful. Our approach isn’t to put our footprint and our ego on our projects. We believe in the intuitive knowledge of nature and that guides many of our design decisions. RANA COO @martkep . Butterfly House, Carmel

Salesforce East at 350 Mission is 450,000-square-feet, 30-stories, and the first LEED Platinum highrise office development in the city of San Francisco. In a typical office environment, the top floor would be dedicated to executive offices. Eschewing convention, Salesforce created Ohana Floors open, flexible hospitality spaces available for employees to enjoy. As the Hawaiian word for intentional family, Ohana describes the bond between all of the employees, partners, an...d customers. These spaces extend that bond to all of the building's guests. In collaboration with @markcavagneroassociates, our landscape design team at RANA created the interior landscapes for the Ohana floor as Salesforce, as well as the plant species selection and placement. The @salesforce CEO Marc Benioff had a vision for these spaces: he wanted visitors to feel like they were walking through a redwood forest. On the top floors of the towers, with no windows or open air ventilation, the biophlic impact of the 5,000 plant species we selected brought this vision to fruition. We sourced all natural organic materials for this project - including redwood carved planters, a teak wood flooring system, and a living wall basket system on the vertical gardens. The wood used in the space is responsibly sourced and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. The custom living wall system we designed is growing media based, stepping away from the traditional panels. By bringing nature into the work environment through prioritizing natural light and shaping the interior landscape with lush foliage and curving, organic lines, we were able to create the redwood forest atmosphere for each visitor to experience "Ohana" for themselves. See more

These rooftop tea gardens were created because our entire design team was captivated by the ordered beauty of the tea plantations they visited surrounding Hangzhou, the neat rows extending across the lush green hills, and wanted the project's design to express this sense of timeless tranquility. The tea gardens on the roofs evoke this mythical mountain landscape, floating in the clouds. RANA worked closely with Dr. Liang Chen PhD, of the Tea Research Institute of the Chinese ...Academy of Agricultural Sciences (TRICAAS) National Center to select the most suitable tea cultivar for the project. In June 2015, the Chinese project team sourced and procured 1-year-old tea plants from local growers in the Hangzhou region. The tea plants were planted while the rest of the construction was underway - check out how beautifully they've grown in, just in time for the project's opener earlier this week. See more

The redesign of Frank Wynkoop's iconic Butterfly House has a feature in this month's @elledecoration_es! Our team at @ranacohabitat transformed the outdoor space for this home by reconnecting the site to its coastal ecological context; we carved out protected spaces within the rocks and native plantings for the owners to gather around a fire, and for their children to play amidst the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. Big congrats to the amazing designer for this home @jamiebushco ~ you can check out the full article and more photos at the #linkinbio.

#inprogress Part of the planting arrangement getting prepped for install at @oaklandmuseumca! Our team @Rana_Cohabitat is collaborating on the museum's garden re-design with @hooddesignstudio. Once it’s complete, the California gardens will occupy the elevated terrace spaces in front of the gallery windows, and continuous drifts representing diverse California landscapes will ebb across the terraces. Learn more about this project at the #linkinbio

Today’s history lesson brings us to one of the biggest beneficiaries of San Francisco’s Prop A: India Basin Shoreline Park! If the bond passes, it will fund one the biggest park projects in modern SF history ! Check out our story to learn more about the importance of this project, and how the Parks Alliance has worked to ensure community engagement & equity have been at the forefront of this process Repost @sfparksalliance

We are excited to be collaborating with @wrns on a new vision for the @curiodyssey science playground and zoo campus at Coyote Point! Swipe to see how the ecology of ephemeral rain garden concept changes from wet to dry seasons.

We're excited to announce that Sonoma Academy, LEED Platinum-certified and pending certification for ZNE, WELL Education Pilot, and LBC Petal, received an Honorable Mention in Fast Co.'s annual Most Innovative Sustainable Projects list! Check out the full list and get inspired. https://www.fastcompany.com//sustainability-innovation-by- . repost @wrnsstudio : @mdrpsf

Swipe to check out our living roof project at all angles. Heathcare patients have been found to have substantial healing benefits when exposed to landscapes that incorporate principles of biophilia into their design. If you were a hospital patient, would you choose this view?