INCORPORATING SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES IN LANDSCAPE AND GARDEN DESIGN

Has "sustainable" in landscape and garden design become a buzzword? Is resilient a better term?

Many landscape professionals advertise “sustainable practices” and regenerative design approaches when they build landscapes and gardens.  When it comes to actually building these landscapes their approaches are sometimes less than advertised.  Is the term “sustainable” becoming a catch-phrase?

Illustration from Randall Munroe, xkcd comics

Is sustainability about “doing less-bad”, is it attempting to slow down environmental degradation, is it creating regenerative sites, restoring ecosystem functions, rebuilding the earth’s natural capital?

If it is a buzzword, does this bring attention to the issue or by misuse/abuse of the term does it become just a selling point?  Is the word “sustainability”, the new “organic.” In terms of landscape design, maybe the new word should be planting and building "RESILIENT."

For a collective vision on sustainability, please refer to the Sustainable Sites Initiative.

COUNTDOWN TO CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW (5)

With an eye toward sustainable solutions, Nigel Dunnett, Adrian Hallam and Chris Arrowsmith presented an atypical garden at Chelsea last year… one that is both educational and creative in it’s approach. The “Future Nature” garden looks to a future for landscapes and gardens in a changing and unpredictable climate. This garden presents a number of practical solutions that can be used to create a new type of drought-resistant urban garden especially suited to underutilized city spaces. Its central message is, that by using a combination of any of the garden’s features coupled with careful plant selection, anybody, using simple planting methods and avoiding irrigation except with stored rainwater, can create a colorful and naturalistic garden. It aims to both help alleviate pressure on the urban drainage infrastructure in wet weather and maximize the use of water during increasingly dry summer months.

The central idea to this garden is water.... In the northern hemisphere, due to the rotation of the earth about its polar axis water flows down holes n a clockwise direction.  Check the sink or toilet, next time you go to the loo!!  Henceforth this landscape design is expressed in a spiral, clockwise direction.

Green roof - The colorful flowering green roof acts like a sponge, absorbing half of all the rainfall that falls on it, reducing the rate of stormwater run-off after heavy rainfall.  A mixture of sedums are chosen to withstand the harsh exposed conditions found on rooftops and provide a rich source of nectar for visiting insects on what would otherwise be a sterile and lifeless surface.  Well known are the benefits of green roofs - in addition to stormwater retentions and providing wildlife habitats, they also provide social benefits, improve air quality, modify urban micro-climates, provide insulation against heat and sound within the building and increase the life expectancy of the roof, and in some municipalities provide property tax credits and assist toward leed certification.

Together with the stormwater planter this series of small pools collect any excess rainwater that leaves the green roof.  The water passes thru a series of what is represented as small pools through upright growing aquatic plants that help to clean and purify the water before it spills into the rill (small channel).  The rill is designed to be attractive when not filled with water.

The line of the green roof flows in a spiral round o the pools and then via the rill to the central pool and vertical garden tower.The spiral is found in many cultures as a symbol of life and eternity.... a fitting form for a garden that aims to prolong the life of plants and addresses the pathway to a sustainable future by managing water, the source of life.

Key features of the garden include: a green roof to help reduce surface water runoff as well as enhancing biodiversity; storm water planters and pools to retain water from the roof; a living tower holding drought-resistant plants; butterfly mounds and insect towers stocked with colorful but drought-resistant planting that provide wildlife habitats in a brownfield environment.

Vertical Garden Tower - Full of intricate detail, composed of stacked and reclaimed materials.

Space for plant material, insects and other wildlife to find shelter and homes.

Unlike many “living walls” this also encompasses which require large amounts of water, this vertical garden is not dependent upon continuous irrigation.

Wild Flower Meadow - a designed and stylized version of the cosmopolitan mix of native and non-native plants that colonize urban wasteland sites and can be hotspots for the wildlife that grazes on the native species.

Stormwater Basins - Excess rainwater that leaves the green roof either falls directly into the stormwater planter, which absorbs further waste or drains into the collecting pools.  The planting will tolerate being inundated with water, but will also withstand long periods of drier conditions.  Stormwater basins can be used where rains lack the capacity to deal with all the run-offs from private property.

Like many gardens at Chelsea this garden was relocated to Yorkshire after the show and through its use continues to promote the inventive use of small urban spaces and water management.

NATIVE PLANTS

Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) one of the seminal figures in 20th century landscape design, was the child of a Brazilian mother (Burle) and a German-Jewish father (Marx). His mother fostered his passion for gardening and his father in design. His father had immigrated to Brazil around the turn of the century.  Born in Sao Paolo, at the age of 19, (1928) Roberto moved to Berlin to study art while engrossing himself in the massive cultural revival of the Weimar Republic. (Burle-Marx left after a couple of years as the political climate had quickly changed, most obvious of which was the building anti-semitism). However, It was while studying painting in Germany during the Weimar Republic, as he would later tell it, that Burle Marx realized that the vegetation Brazilians then dismissed as "scrub and brush," preferring imported pine trees and gladioli for their gardens, was truly extraordinary. Visiting the Botanical Garden in Berlin, he was startled to find many Brazilian plants in the collection and quickly came to see the untapped artistic potential in their varied shapes, sizes and hues.

The irony here is that these native Brazilian plants were not as prized in Burle-Marx’s homeland of Brazil as they were in Germany. Yet the twist is that they were soon to disappear from the Botanical Gardens because at around this time the Nazi party was developing it’s “Blood + Soil” ideology. “Blut und Boden” ideology insisted on the close relationship between nature and the German people and with it, preached the crucial role of landscape in forming and preserving national culture. This included the banishment of all non-native plants and trees from the Fatherland (Germany).

Reich Minister of Food + Agriculture Richard Darre, 

one of the leading proponents of "Blood + Soil."

Tried and convicted at the Nuremburg trials, he died of alcoholism.

SUSTAINABLE DESIGN FOR RESIDENTIAL DRIVEWAY

Impervious surfaces (such as driveways) limit the amount of stormwater capture and retention. During rain storms these surfaces (built from materials such as asphalt, cement and concrete) along with rooftops, carry polluted stormwater to storm drains, instead of allowing the water to percolate through the soil. This causes flooding as there is no absorption into the ground. Most municipal storm sewer systems discharge stormwater, untreated to streams, rivers, bays. In New York City, my understanding is that the overtaxed sewage system overflows into the East River.

So,…controlling the amount of stormwater runoff from urban homes is paramount in creating green infrastructure. The challenge is to allow the stormwater to percolate into the soil or ground, thereby reducing levels of urban runoff.

Thanks to a wonderful client of ours in Brooklyn, my partner Dinorah and I designed a sustainable solution to their problematic residential driveway in the midst of redesigning the entire property. The existing asphalt was cracking, pot-holed, consistently failing and flooding during rainstorms. As per local ordinances we could not repave + re-pitch the driveway to direct stormwater into the street. As we were demolishing the pressure treated wood deck in the rear, we chose to create a pea gravel driveway with secured wood boards from the demolished deck (which would then allow the stormwater to percolate down). The broken up asphalt driveway was then used to provide fill for the newly designed above grade stone deck. Only the pea gravel was trucked in, since we used material on-site to produce this. Best of all, the client reaped a tremendous cost savings through this solution!

Old driveway

Old deck

Sustainable Driveway solution