Siteplan

Native cross vine (Bignonia capreolata)was used to shade the exterior of Atlanta’sEcoManor, a participant as a pilot projectin the Sustainable Sites InitiativeTM (SITESTM).

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THERE ARE MANY GOOD REASONS to createmore ecologically sustainable landscapes: water short-ages, energy and irrigation costs, water and air pollu-tion, the loss of native plants.

Until recently, very little guidance and few criteria existed for creating landscapes thatcould protect scarce and sensitive resources. To address that need, the Wildflower Centerpartnered with the U.S. Botanic Garden and the American Society of Landscape Architectsto create the nation’s first guidelines and rating system for sustainable landscapes: theSustainable Sites InitiativeTM (SITESTM). This fall, the initiative launched the new Landscapefor LifeTM website and workbook, which simplify SITES for homeowners.

Wildflower Center Executive Director Susan Rieff says, “We have always felt that for theSustainable Sites Initiative to have real impact beyond large-scale commercial and govern-ment projects, we also would need to offer homeowners practical information about howto make changes in their yards and gardens. Landscape for Life is our approach to makingthat information widely and easily available.”

In this article, we illustrate the kind of principles central to Landscape for Life with fourresidential projects that participate in the two-year pilot study that tests the SITES ratingsystem. The experience of these homeowners will help inform the final version of the SITESguidelines and rating system.

ASitePlanHomeowners make sites sustainable

By Christina Kosta Procopiou

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PILOT PROJECT: ECOMANORLOCATION: ATLANTA, GEORGIASUSTAINABLE FOCUS: VEGETATION, STORMWATER RUNOFF, MATERIALS REUSE, SOIL

OME PEOPLE RECYCLE ANYTHING THEY CAN GET THEIR HANDS ON –even grinding up leftover wood, paper and drywall from their home remodel to useas soil amendment in their garden. Laura Turner Seydel, daughter of environmentalphilanthropist Ted Turner, and her husband, environmental attorney RutherfordSeydel, followed LEED® green building standards to do so safely as their homebecame the first over 5,000 square feet and the first in the Southeast to be certifiedLEED® platinum by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The long-time advocates for green living chose to renovate their house in Tudor style with-out leaving a mansion-sized footprint on the earth. Inside the luxury home are a number of cutting-edge – even plant-based – sustainable features, but the sustainable one-third-acre land-scape and green roof make EcoManor a perfect candidate for SITESTM .

Georgia-based Ed Castro Landscape showed the family howto integrate the outdoor native landscape with the built environ-ment using a minimal lawn sown with a native fescue seed insunny areas where grass is more sustainable, water retention fea-tures, native plants for beauty and wildlife habitat, and a greenroof over the garage.

Concerning the green roof that is visible from their familyroom, Turner Seydel says, “We wanted to bring nature closer toour home and to our sight line, rather than look out our familyroom at the roof of the garage. Plus, the green roof keeps thegarage much cooler in the summertime.”

Indeed, by reducing reflective heat through native plantingsand minimal hardscape, the green roof has a cooling effect.Rainwater is also captured on the roof and directed to the rainwa-ter harvesting system. Ed Castro explained how other featuresminimize the amount of stormwater that leaves the home and useit for irrigation.

For example, the firm created a series of terraces where therewas a natural slope in the landscape. The terraced effect slowsdown the flow of stormwater to reduce the amount dischargedinto storm sewers. What would have been a patio is planted withnative sedum and other plants that also slow water flowing off thesite and cleanse it to reduce pollution to nearby streams.

Captured stormwater and “gray water” from sinks indoors areused to irrigate the lawn and native plantings like red maple (Acerrubrum), summersweet (Clethra alnifolia), blueberry (Vacciniumdarrowii) and inkberry (Ilex glabra). Four raised beds of organicvegetable and fruit plants are Turner Seydel’s favorite feature.Composting helps make sure the family’s food doesn’t end up inthe landfill, and chickens help aerate and fertilize the lawn. Thenative plantings helped earn the home another certification, as aNational Wildlife Federation backyard habitat.

“It was important to me to choose plants so that somethingwould be in bloom at all times for the different pollinators and forcutting for native floral arrangements to display inside the house,”says Turner Seydel.

And these pollinators – and other wildlife – love to visit. Asmall recirculating water feature perfect for a dip on a hot sum-mer day and blooms during every season put wildlife in the lapof luxury.

SA Manor Of Speaking

EcoManor in Atlanta is the firsthome in the Southeast and the firstover 5,000 square feet to be LEED®-certified. It is the home of environmen-talists Laura Turner Seydel andRutherford Seydel.

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At EcoManor, a small recirculating water feature was created in therear garden to provide habitat for frogs, turtles, birds and butterflies.Water from the rainwater harvesting system fills the pond, and power issupplemented to the pumps from the home’s solar panels. Native plantsinclude Piedmont azalea (Rhododendron canescens), marginal shield fern(Dryopteris marginalis) and cherry laurel (Prunus caroliniana).


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PILOT PROJECT: ASH CREEK HOUSELOCATION: PORTLAND, OREGON, NEAR THE CITY’S ASH CREEKSUSTAINABLE FOCUS: SOIL, WATER, NATIVE VEGETATION AND MATERIALS

ALKER LEISER, NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, DeSantisLandscapes, calls this SITES pilot project a good example of what canbe done for fairly little money. Small budget aside, the landscape stilldid so much – particularly to reduce the amount of irrigation needed– that it helped the property achieve LEED® platinum status from the

U.S. Green Building Council. A rain garden retains water high up on the landscape, andstormwater from the residence’s roof is detained and overflow sent to the landscape.

Leiser explains how they turned a “dilapitated garage into a treasure.” The garage wasremoved, the wood recycled to make a community compost bin and the concrete broken upand used as stepping stones in the landscape. Where the garage once stood, river rocks now

surround native and adapted plants chosen for vibrantcolors and deep root structure to help them toleratedrought and promote evapotranspiration.

The biggest labor of love was reclaiming a 7,000-square-foot backyard covered in invasive plants. Theanswer was to mow the area before applying sheetmulch, made by overlapping cardboard on top of athick layer of humus. The sheet mulch process is tomow rather than spray existing grass before applyingtrace amounts of organic micronutrients and a thinlayer of compost. Next, landscapers covered this withoverlapping cardboard refrigerator boxes that werewatered before adding another thin layer of compostand a leaf mold full of micronutrients that can hold upto 500 percent of its weight in water. “That will holdwater if there’s a flood from the adjacent creek,” Leisersays. The backyard is now home to planted elderber-ry, adapted dwarf dogwood, currants and redtwigdogwoods and is the focal point of the homeowners’view from inside the house.

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Before & After

ABOVE LEFT The view is the “before” picture ofthe house and yard. BOTTOM LEFT The areathat was sheet mulched and the finished land-scape. BOTTOM RIGHT Where the garageonce stood is a rain garden that includes nativeplants and healthy soils that capture rainwaterand aid its slow release from the site. This preventsa fast dump into the creek, which could causeflooding and other problems.


WILDFLOWER FACT In June, the first projects to use the SITESTM rating systembecame participants in the SITESTM two-year pilot program. When com-pleted, participants that earn sufficient credit points (a minimum of 100 out of

a possible 250) will be pilot-certified, and feedback will be used to revise the final rating system.Thirteen percent of these 162 pilot projects are residential landscapes.


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PILOT PROJECT: FLOAT HOUSELOCATION: NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANASUSTAINABLE FOCUS: SUSTAINABLY DESIGNED AFFORDABLE HOUSING WITH FEATURES THAT

INCLUDE ZERO STORMWATER RUNOFF, BUOYANT FOUNDATIONS THAT FLOAT WITH RISING WATER

LEVELS, NATIVE VEGETATION, PERVIOUS PAVEMENT

CTOR BRAD PITT STARTED THE MAKE IT RIGHT®FOUNDATION in 2007 to help residents of New Orlean’s LowerNinth Ward rebuild their lives and homes after Hurricane Katrina.Rebuilding meant rethinking what it means to live in a floodplainand building homes able to withstand the next hurricane. Morphosis

Architects, under the direction of renowned architect and distinguished UCLA professorThom Mayne, designed the first floating house permitted in the United States to rise ver-tically on guide posts, securely floating up to 12 feet as water levels rise.

One floating house and 50 other houses built to the LEED® platinum standard havebeen built so far. Thirty more are under construction. As if a house that floats wasn’tenough, these homes are packed with sustainable features, evidenced by each receivingLEED® platinum certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. In the landscape,attempts were made to minimize aggressive non-native turf grass and to achieve zerostormwater runoff.

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Making It Right

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N Like the traditional New Orleans“shotgun” house, the FLOAT House sitson a raised four-foot base, preservingthe community’s vital front porch cul-ture. The state-of-the-art home generatesits own power, minimizes resource con-sumption, collects its own water andfeatures native plants in the landscapeas well as pervious pavement.

LandscapeFor LifeRIGHT NOW, THE PILOT PROJ-

ECT STUDY is testing the SustainableSitesTM guidelines and rating systemso that within two years landscapeprofessionals can use them to createsustainable landscapes that can becertified by SITESTM in the waybuilders use LEED® standards to cre-ate LEED®-certified buildings.But where does this leave home-

owners who want to harvest theirown rainwater, stop using pesticidesor replace non-native plants withnative plants? They won’t have a wayto certify their landscape just yet, butthey can view Landscape for LifeTM, anew workbook and online resource atwww.landscapeforlife.com. Theresoon will be a curriculum for use bybotanic gardens and arboreta to edu-cate homeowners about sustainablelandscapes. Holly Shimizu is the executive

director of the U.S. Botanic Garden,which is a partner in SITESTM. Shesays that homeowners now have anaccessible and free resource inLandscape for Life. “If you hire alandscape designer, for example,you can ask for these things. You cansay, ‘I want all native plants or I wantto reuse my rainwater. Or you canfind a simple way to do it yourself.”Landscape for LifeTM is based on

the principles of SITESTM, which is theresult of four years of rigorousresearch and collaboration fromexperts in the fields of soil, hydrolo-gy, materials, vegetation and humanhealth. See landsapeforlife.com formore information.


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PILOT PROJECT: COYOTE HOUSELOCATION: SANTA BARBARA, CASUSTAINABLE FOCUS: WATER REUSE, VEGETATION, MATERIALS

F IT’S NOT A NATIVE, LOCALLY ADAPTED PLANT, then you can eat it,”says landscape architect Susan Van Atta of plants in the landscape at her SantaBarbara home. Natives are planted according to exposure: on the north side arewoodland plants, on the sunny south side a lawn of native bentgrass (Agrostis

pallens). Non-native thyme (Thymus sp.) is a groundcover; non-native artichoke(Cynara sp.) chosen for its form. She and her husband, architect Ken Radtkey, wanted to achieve a home very unified

with the landscape, and two green roofs were integral to that. “The green roofs alone have so many benefits that aren’t well-known and that are

important to our region,” says Van Atta. “For example, the succulents on one roof are fire-resistant in a high-fire-hazard area. Green roofs also provide not only temperature insula-tion but insulation from noisy, intense nighttime winds that are common here.”Other landscape choices were made according to local environmental concerns.

Twelve existing eucalyptus trees – a fire hazard – were removed and used as lumber forgarage doors, building trim, windowsills and even a dining table and bookshelves.Sandstone boulders were salvaged from another site to build stairs and walls.Van Atta – whose landscape architecture firm is Van Atta Associates Inc. – calls the

LEED® platinum-certified Coyote House a “big lab” that allows her to adopt sustainablepractices that she has encouraged clients to try for years. The family composts, and chick-ens live in a chicken tractor and will roam the grounds. And not everything was a big investment like the EPIC® rainwater system that acts

as a distributed cistern while keeping the native lawn irrigated with minimum lossfrom evaporation. “Some things are simple, like puttingan arbor across from glass doors. Anything you can do with microclimate makes a bigger difference than people can believe.” a

Coyote Beautiful

ABOVE LEFT In the foothills of Santa Barbara,Coyote Manor seems to blend seamlessly intothe regional landscape’s mountain backdrop.LEFT One of two green roofs at Coyote Manor.Not only do green roofs limit stormwater runoff,but the roofs themselves last twice as longbecause of the protective layer green roofs pro-vide the roof membrane.

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