Putting down roots in Middle East desert climate

The next time you complain about a rainy day in Ireland, spare a thought for those whose jobs literally involve calculating every drop of water they use. One such person is Ross Loughnane, a landscape architect working in one of the hottest and driest places on earth: Qatar.

The tiny Middle Eastern country gets about 75mm of rain a year, about a tenth of Ireland’s average . So what made the 30-year-old Meath man want to move to a place where growing even the simplest plant is such a headache?

“I’ve always liked a challenge and am especially interested in urban development, so a city like Doha, which is undergoing such significant transformation ahead of the World Cup in 2022, is the perfect place for me to be right now.”

Loughnane is involved in building and designing an urban park equivalent to New York’s Central Park or Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The 200-hectare space has a budget of €420 million – a drop in the financial ocean for the world’s richest nation. But as wealthy as the kingdom is, it can’t put Mother Nature on the payroll create natural rainfall.

“From the very early stages, we have to consider water – or the lack of it. It’s an integral part of the design process and the plans have to be deemed acceptable by the municipality,” he says.

“We have to calculate how much water each species of tree will need over the course of its lifetime in the park, which we then calculate down to the number of litres per day. Date trees for example, which are native to the entire Middle Eastern region, actually use a lot of water.”

In a place where many people spend more on drinking water than petrol every month, Loughnane says his team has to use every research tool available to be as efficient as possible.

“We do a lot of what we call Xeriscaping, which is effectively mimicking the desert by using a layout of drought-tolerant species. The government is also conducting a two-year study on hundreds of trees to find out which types use the least amount of water.”

As well as trying to make trees grow in the desert, Loughnane has cultural considerations to think about too at the design phase.

“Qatar is a bit of a cultural melting pot, so it can be challenging to try and accommodate everyone’s tastes. The principal contrast here when designing public space is that it’s used more at night than in the day and by large groups to meet, rather than for sport, for example. So you need to think about children running around when it’s dark.

“Parks aren’t often used in the morning, unless you can link them from residential areas to places of work. Indians are the predominant minority group in Qatar. They will play cricket on any surface, good or bad, whereas Qataris tend to use parks when there is a destination like a coffee shop or a beautiful view to bring them there.”

Loughnane's green fingers came from his father, who runs his own company, Redlough Landscapes, in Mulhuddart in Dublin. Loughnane worked at the family business every summer from the age of 14, nurturing his love of landscaping.

“Seeing projects develop from site to completed works was always very intriguing to me and this then developed into a love of making cities as green as possible,” he says.

“I was always interested in how people got from one place to another as well as people’s perception of spaces, not just as destinations but as thoroughfares. There is a stark contrast in people’s experience of their commute to work, for example, whether they are motorists, cyclists or pedestrians.”

After a stint in Dublin and then London, Loughnane moved to Doha in 2012 and believes a person has to experience the soaring desert temperatures to understand the needs of its people.

“Qataris have a different relationship to the heat than Europeans do. Instead of going to the beach or on a walk with a picnic, the locals will go to the desert to camp. They use the landscape in a way which is relevant to their historical way of life as nomads,” he says.

“It’s maybe because of this that they don’t build structures which are designed to be around for long periods of time. The challenge for us is trying to develop a public space will stand the test of time.”