Landscapes for life

The Taylor residence used plants sourced from area growers. Photo Mark Gormel.

Growers from different parts of the nation have set their sights on SITES, the Sustainable Sites Initiative. Growers can use the SITES benchmarks as a way to audit production practices and adopt more efficient techniques from energy use and growing media recipes to water conservation and recycling efforts.

SITES was created to promote sustainable land development and management practices that can apply to sites with and without buildings. Trees, shrubs and perennials are an integral part of these projects, such as local, state and national parks; conservation easements and buffer zones; transportation rights-of-way; industrial, retail and office parks; military complexes; airports; and public and private campuses.

SITES provides tools for those who influence land development and management practices and can address increasingly urgent global concerns such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and resource depletion. They can be used by those who design, construct, operate and maintain landscapes, including but not limited to planners, landscape architects, nursery and greenhouse growers, engineers, developers, builders, maintenance crews, governments, land stewards and organizations offering building standards. Healthy landscapes have the potential to clean air and water, reduce flooding, cool urban air temperature, promote habitat conservation and biodiversity, and provide better living conditions.

TOP: The Novus campus created a space for employees to interact and it enhanced natural habitats. Photo courtesy of SWT Design; BOTTOM: The NREL used native grasses and perennials in its design. Photo Robb Williamson.

This effort began as separate projects of the Sustainable Design and Development Professional Practice Network of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. In 2006, the United States Botanical Garden (USBG) joined as a major partner in the Initiative. A steering committee representing 11 stakeholder groups was selected to guide the Initiative. In 2009, SITES created a national, voluntary set of performance benchmarks to encourage the sustainable design, construction and maintenance of landscapes. The 2009 rating system contains 15 prerequisites and 51 credits that cover all stages of the site development process from site selection to landscape maintenance. It includes criteria for sustainable land practices that will enable built landscapes to support natural ecological functions by protecting existing ecosystems and regenerating ecological capacity where it has been lost.

A SITES two-year pilot program began in 2010, and to date, 23 projects have been certified. These projects represent a diverse cross-section of project types, sizes and geographic locations in various stages of development from design to construction and maintenance.

“By participating in SITES, growers and all parties involved can ensure the landscape project is enhancing the ecosystem,” said Lisa Storer, senior program coordinator of SITES. “As more developers, landscape architects and landscape contractors participate in SITES, growers will get more requests for plants based on the SITES guidelines. It’s a way for more growers to get involved.”

Grower participation
Klyn Nurseries in Perry, Ohio, supplied plants to the Cleveland Botanical Garden’s SITES project, one of the certified pilot projects. Klyn has been a supplier to the garden for a number of years, but Bill Hendricks, the nursery’s president, saw an opportunity for improvement by participating in SITES.

“We completed an audit of everything we do in the nursery and we found that we were already met many of the SITES requirements,” he said. “Sustainability is one of those words that gets used a lot. I figured out that what it really means is common sense.”

Once Hendricks saw the audit data on paper, he confirmed that the nursery was making a lot of good decisions, but also identified some areas that could be tweaked. Hendricks said the SITES guidelines are “attainable,” but one aspect didn’t quite make sense.

“I wasn’t pleased with the ‘zero peat’ part of SITES,” he said. “Certain plants need peat, but reducing peat is a better guideline.”

Bohn’s Farm and Greenhouses in St. Louis worked on two certified SITES projects – the SWT Design campus and the Novus International headquarters. Like Klyn, Bohn’s Farm was already achieving much of what SITES promotes, said Bill Ruppert, sales manager at Bohn’s. Again, like Klyn, the most challenging part of SITES was dealing with peat in growing media mixes. But the grower found a solution and sources composted material from a local company, St. Louis Composting.

“Participating in SITES raises awareness to be more efficient in your operation,” Ruppert said. “It gets you thinking about cost savings and it gives you an opportunity to see all the things you’re doing right.”

Working on the SITES projects also opened up the lines of communication between all parties, including the client.

“Novus sent representatives to the nursery to see how we were growing their plants. That’s not something you normally see.”

Ruppert said SITES provides a competitive advantage to local growers because the group is particular about how far plants are sourced.

“A local grower may beat out a large nursery on either coast because of their location,” Ruppert said.

Updated guidelines
During the pilot program, SITES collected data and public opinion about the original guidelines and benchmarks. This November, the group is releasing SITES v2, a set of updated guidelines. While interested growers should study all parts of the SITES guidelines, there is one particular credit that targets plant production, including where the plants are sourced. And it was one of the least used credits during the pilot program, Storer said. Out of the currently 23 certified projects, only four achieved the plant production credit – the SWT Design campus, the Novus International headquarters, the Cleveland Botanical Garden project and the Taylor residence. But the new guidelines allow for more opportunities to use that credit, she said.

In the 2009 guidelines, there were eight sustainability practices. SITES v2 will present 10 practices and ask that growers to meet six of them, she added. Some of the sustainable practices include reducing runoff at the nursery, choosing sustainable soil amendments, recycling organic matter and using an integrated pest management program. Two of the new practices are providing safe and fair working conditions and preventing the use and distribution of invasive species, she said.

One of the changes from the 2009 document to the updated one requires an integrated design team.

“Often the landscape architect doesn’t talk to the growers, or the civil engineer doesn’t understand the vegetation in the area, or the landowner doesn’t meet the grower,” Storer said. “With this method, all parties are improving communication. They set goals together and it’s a collaborative design.”

The new guidelines cover all aspects of the SITES goals, not just plants.

“We’re trying to make entry into the program a bit easier, but there are still stringent rules that must be met,” she said. “We’ve lowered some thresholds, streamlined a lot of the documentation and created some templates.”

SITES continues to review some 60 projects in the pilot program for certification. 

For more: www.sustainablesites.org