Q&A: Claudia West

When Claudia West looks at landscapes, she doesn’t see ornamental plantings, but plant communities interacting. She envisions plants fitting together like a 3-D puzzle, above and below ground, to build healthy green infrastructure.

As ecological sales manager at North Creek Nurseries, West works on green infrastructure projects for stormwater management, habitat development and soil stabilization. She says the key is dense vegetation – and North Creek specializes in growing Landscape Plugs that establish dense vegetation more quickly, affordably and sustainably than traditional planting methods.

West will explain in a session at Cultivate called, “Landscape Plugs in Green Infrastructure.” Here’s a sneak peek.

Q: What are the biggest challenges of green infrastructure?

A: Folks have installed habitat gardens for stormwater treatment in the traditional way, with an ocean of mulch and a few shrubs and perennials planted on broad spacing. The problem with this planting method is that we don’t put enough plants into these systems for optimal treatment, so they’re under-vegetated in terms of function.

It’s also a maintenance problem, because to keep mulch looking pristine and weed-free, it needs to be a sprayed with chemicals. These systems are supposed to clean up sites instead of adding more chemicals.

Rain gardens and green roofs only function as green infrastructure if they are densely vegetated, with solid groundcover and hardly any soil or mulch showing in between. We try to get this groundcover established as quickly as possible, because that’s the only way to successfully prevent weeds long-term.

This dense planting style is hard to perform with traditional container sizes. Imagine planting a green roof with 1- or 2-gallon containers; it’s a tremendous amount of labor, and it’s very expensive. This is where Landscape Plugs come in. That dense plant cover can only be achieved by using smaller plant sizes and thin spacing. Landscape Plugs came out of this need to plant more densely, establish plant cover more quickly and address the weed problem sustainably.

Q: Why are Landscape Plugs beneficial to green infrastructure?

A: Landscape Plugs don’t take nearly as much time to install as traditional planting systems. A team can install up to 150 Landscape Plugs an hour.

They ship for a fraction of the cost, because you don’t have any more soil than necessary. Logistically, they’re much easier to handle. Because of the way the root systems are designed, they don’t need to be torn apart before planting. From a nursery point-of-view, Landscape Plugs take only a few weeks to grow from seedlings into ready plants. They spend less time in heated greenhouses. They take up less irrigation water and nutrients from fertilizer, for a lower carbon footprint.

Q: Why is green infrastructure an important topic right now?

A: One reason is that functioning green infrastructure projects are now required by many states, so you won’t get away with planting traditional systems. We can measure the quality of water going into a rain garden and the quality of water leaving that rain garden, so if they’re not planted correctly, you’ll pay fines.

Another reason is that it’s a huge market opportunity for contractors, because commercial and private clients are now asking for this. If you want to bring monarch butterflies back or manage stormwater runoff, that only works with dense planting methods. That’s a huge market that’s growing exponentially every year, that very few companies are tapping into.

We need plants that are ecologically valuable, functional and beautiful. These under-vegetated mulch landscapes are not doing anything to prevent urban heat island effects, clean stormwater, create habitats or reconnect people with nature.

Want to go? “Landscape Plugs in Green Infrastructure” Sunday, July 10 | 3:00 – 3:20 p.m.