GardenDesignOnline

Sustainable Gardening Survey

A new survey by the American Society of Landscape Architects has found that most American households are taking action to adopt practices to promote energy efficiency within their homes -- but not outside in the garden.

The survey indicates that 90+ percent of Americans turn off light bulbs more often, 55 percent have decreased the use of air conditioning and heating, and 38 percent unplug appliances when not in use, but the percentages drop drastically when people move outdoors.

Only 29 percent of respondents plant shade trees to lower energy costs; 23 percent use tools like hand mowers or hand rakes instead of power mowers and leaf blowers; and only 15 percent recycle water or collect rainwater for watering plants.   Most people said they would institute sustainable techniques in the garden if they knew more about them, and most agreed that such methods would save them money.

ASLA Executive Vice President and CEO Nancy Somerville said the survey results "clearly show a desire and willingness to use techniques that reduce utility bills at home, but few know what can be accomplished outside their homes."  She added that the space between buildings is "just as important -- perhaps more so -- to not only reducing energy costs ,but addressing a broad range of environmental issues."

ASLA, along with the US Botanic Garden and the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, are soon expected to release voluntary guidelines and a rating system for sustainable landcape design, covering back yard gardens as well as major urban developments.  A recent case study comparing a conventional and a sustainable garden found that the sustainable garden cost $4300 more to install, but it uses 77 percent less water, produces 66 percent less green waste, and costs 68 percent less annually to maintain.  Holly Shimizu, Executive Director of the US Botanic Garden, said once the new standards are in place, they can "change not only the landscape and gardening industry, but also raise public expectations about the health and quality of the built environment."

California's Largest Green Roof

California Academy of Sciences
The new California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park opened last weekend -- with the largest green roof in the state.  The roof itself spans 2.5 acres, featuring seven hills covered with more than one million native California plants.

The undulating roof was designed by architect Renzo Piano, with the aim of integrating the building into the landscape of the park.  The only difference between the plants on the ground and on the roof is that the roof plants are all California natives.  Academy botanist Frank Almeda explained that his goal was "to choose native plants that were well adapted to the climate in Golden Gate Park and would provide much-needed habitat for native birds, butterflies, and other beneficial insects." He added that another goal was to "select species that would look attractive throughout the year, since a visually appealing roof is a much more powerful educational tool." 

Thirty species were tested on the roof of the old Academy before a final nine were selected -- all plants that can survive on the roof's steep slopes without artificial irrigation or fertilization.  The nine winners are:

• Self heal. (Prunella vulgaris) - shown left. Attractive to hummingbirds and bumble bees.
• Beach strawberries (Fragaria chiloensis).  Berries attract native birds.
• Sea pink (Armeria maritima) Flower attract moths and butterflies.
• Stonecorp (Sedum spathulifolium) Produces nectar for Hairstreak butterfly and threatened San Bruno elfin butterfly.l

News & Notes 9-18-08

Free Garden Books
GardenVisit.com is giving away eBooks through the month of October to celebrate its 10th anniversary.  They are:
The Principles of Garden Design by Garden Visit editor Tom Turner
24 Historic Styles of Garden Design by Tom Turner
You can download them at the Garden Visit website.

Free Water-Wise Landscaping Seminars
Saturday, Sept 20, 2008
Mountain View College, Dallas TX Room 171, West Bldg.
Water Wise Landscape Design 9AM-12:30PM
Fantasic Plants for North Texas 1:30PM-5PM
INFO: 214-670 3155 or this website.

Organic Lawn Project through October 15
Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA 413-447-7582
The garden has opened a Natural Lawn Demo Project to teach visitors how to create organic lawns without using harmful chemicals.  If you have to have a lawn, this is how to do it.

PA Hort Society Web Video Show
The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has a new weekly gardening video show, Gardeners' Studio, starring Philadelphia Flower Show designer Sam Lemheney and Jessica Story, the head grower at Meadowbrook Farm in Meadowbook, PA. The first installment aired on Sept 17th, and it can be viewed at www.philly.com

News & Notes

New Sustainability Website

The Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College has a new website on sustainability:  native plants, lawn alternatives, invasive species, plant conservation, just to name a few of the topics covered.  Also -- classes at the arboretum on sustainable subjects, and a section on how you can make your own garden more ecology-friendly.

Sky Gardens Website

Green Roofs.com has started a new blog on ... well ... green roofs.  An interesting resource for those interested in greening cities.

Green Roof Tours

And ... if you're hankering to see some terrific green roofs .. in Europe .. check out the Green Roof Safari website ... guided tours to some of the best green buildings in the world.

A Trip to the Archives

Garden Design Online is going to take a couple of weeks off to attend a landscape design conference, see a lot of great gardens and gather material for the blog.

In the meantime, here are links to some of your and my favorite past posts:

The all-time most popular post: Pushing the Crape Myrtle Envelope

Other favorites:

New Plants to Covet

Late Summer Plants

A "Green" Grower

Green Driveways

Philadelphia Gardens IV

Philadelphia Gardens VII

Channeling Oehme-Van Sweden

Garden Sheds & Hideaways

Abolish the Lawn, Improve the Community

The Huntington's New Chinese Garden

The Art of Color

Happy reading, and see you in a couple of weeks!

The White House Grows

Roosevelt Redux?

Presidents like to rip up the records of their predecessors, and that includes changes on the grounds of the White House.  Reagan ripped off the solar panels that Jimmy Carter installed on the mansion, and there's no trace today of the Victory Garden planted by the Roosevelts. 

So in this time of climate change and high fuel prices, Roger Doiron thinks it's time to "Eat the View" at the White House.  In an interview with Garden Design Online, Doiron, founder of Kitchen Gardeners International, said he's urging the next president to re-plant "an edible landscape" at the White House as an example to all Americans to conserve energy.

Doiron points out that it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce every one calorie of food consumed.  Put another way, the average food item in the United States travels 1500 miles to get to your plate -- and costs 400 gallons of fuel.

National Design Awards 08

The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum has announced the winners of its 9th annual National Design Awards, and the Olin Partnership of Philadelphia is this year's winner of the Landscape Design Award. 

Pictured left is the firm's design for the Gap Headquarters in San Francisco.  Olin, founded in 1976, is one of the leading landscape architecture firms in the United States, and it was cited by the museum for its dedication to "sustainability and green design." Some of the firm's recent projects include the Fran and Ray Stark Sculpture Garden at the J. Paul Getty Center in LA, and in New York City, the restoration of Bryant Park, and the reconstruction of Columbus Circle.

Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd of Seattle was a landscape design finalist, cited for its high-use landscapes in complex urban contexts.  The practice is led by partners Katherine Gustafson, Jennifer Guthrie and Shannon Nichol.  Shown here is Seattle's City Hall Plaza designed by the firm.

Stoss Landscape Urbanism of Boston was also a landscape finalist, for its practice "at the juncture of landscape architecture, urban design and planning.  Shown here is Stoss's Perkins Park in Somerville, Massachusetts.

(images: top, Marion Brenner; center, GGN Ltd; bottom, Stoss Landscape Urbanism)

A Big Hitch in Outdoor Living

If you talk to any high-end landscape designer, they'll tell you that one essential in any garden these days is fire outdoors:  a firepit, a fireplace, a chimenea, almost anything that glows in the dark and heats the place up a bit on chilly nights.

BUT -- from Connecticut to the Chicago suburbs, to California and Canada, municipalities are either considering or imposing bans on wood burning outdoors.  And that includes a lot of fancy and expensive new garden amenities.

You may be able to get away with gas-fired modules like those shown here (by FireByDesign), but anything that burns wood is now taboo in large swathes of California and in many other municipalities across the country.

Earlier this month, California's South Coast Air Quality Management District approved strict new regulations on wood burning fireplaces that affect homeowners in Orange County, parts of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernadino counties.  The new rules are in line with others already in existence elsewhere in the state. The wood-burning ban is aimed at reducing fine particle pollution, including bits of soot, which can work their way into lungs and cause a variety of health problems, including asthma, heart attacks and lung diseases.  The regulations cover indoor and outdoor wood-burning fireplaces, as well as chimeneas, back yard firepits, and other devices that burn wood.  Beach bonfires are not included in the ban, nor are wood-burning cook stoves, such as pizza ovens.  Within a year, wood-burning fireplaces in all newly-constructed homes will be banned completely.

In the Chicago suburbs, a group called Breathe Healthy Air is pushing for a ban on second-hand smoke that comes from wood-burning stoves and fireplaces, and similar campaigns are taking place in communities across the country.

While an outdoor firepit or chimenea can be relatively inexpensive, a real outdoor fireplace could cost tens of thousands of dollars.  Designers and homeowners should be aware of the trend taking hold in many states before they shell out thousands of dollars on something they might never be able to use.

(image: FireByDesign)

Doris Duke Display Gardens to Close Indefinitely

The indoor display gardens that late heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke created at her family estate, Duke Farms, in Hillsborough, New Jersey, are to close indefinitely after May 25th.  Through that date, the display gardens, which are housed in the estate's turn-of-the-century glass greenhouses, will be open to the public free of charge.  Reservations are required for the free one-hour self-guided tours that take visitors through gardens that emulate many different styles:  French, English, Colonial, Indo-Persian, Italian, Edwardian, Japanese, Desert, Tropical, and Semi-Tropical.

Duke Farms executive director Timothy Taylor announced that the large estate will become an environmental showcase and learning center.  "This is a bittersweet milestone for us," he said. "On one hand, this is the first step in increasing the public's access to the 2740 acres that make up this unique property.  On the other, it's the final months of the gardens being on display in the greenhouses that have enchanted visitors since 1964."

In the future, visitors to Duke Farms will arrive at a "green" orientation center, and will then be able to take numerous paths around the estate or take a tram to explore the property's diverse habitats and landscapes.  Taylor said the new plan will open up "hundreds of acres of trails" for walking, biking, and hiking.  Doris Duke's display gardens, which first opened to the public in 1964, will be re-configured and moved to a different greenhouse conservatory, and the gardens will be expanded to include outdoor gardens.

The new environmental center and the re-constructed display gardens are expected to be open to the public some time in 2010.

Reservations to see the display gardens before they close may be made online at the Duke Farms website, or by calling 908-722-3700.

Global Warming Events

Jan 30 9AM EST  Webcast on Global Warming

Architecture 2030, a non-profit research organization involved in the effort to find practical solutions to climate change, is hosting a webcast called Face It on Jan 30th to help kick off FOCUS THE NATION, a nationwide teach-in on ways to combat global warming.

The  webcast builds on the organization's teach in last year, which focused on the role of design education in global warming.  Architecture 2030's founder, Edward Mazria, urges a global moratorium on the construction of any new conventional coal plants and a phase-out of existing coal plants by 2050.  In addition, he calls for a global initiative to require all new buildings and building renovations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by 50 percent by 2010 and to be carbon neutral by 2030.

More than 1100 educational institutions are taking part in Focus the Nation events on January 31st, which are expected to draw millions of people across the country. It is the largest teach-in in US history, and its central challenge is to educate the country about the challenges ahead and possible solutions to address the problem.

Architecture 2030 is also unveiling two competitions during its Face It webcast, worth a total of $20,000 in prize money.  The two competitive categories are graphic design and video, but for more details, you'll have to tune in to the webcast.