Children’s Garden chosen to test new national Sustainable Rating System

Whoo – hoo!  We’re officially a pilot! 

AUSTIN, August 16, 2010 – The 4.5-acre Children’s Garden being developed at The University of Texas at Austin’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has been selected to be a pilot project for the recently-launched Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES), a new national rating system for sustainable landscape design, construction and maintenance. The Children’s Garden is one of only about 150 projects in the world selected to participate in the SITES two-year pilot program.

Austin-based W. Gary Smith Design designed the Children’s Garden as a whimsical learning environment that will advance the Center’s environmental education mission. TBG Partners, a leading Texas-based landscape architecture and planning firm, played an integral role in developing the Children’s Garden design, particularly in conceiving and implementing many sustainable techniques that distinguish this project as a model of sustainable landscaping.

As a pilot project of the initiative, led by the American Society of Landscape Architects, the  Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the United States Botanic Garden, the Children’s Garden was developed from the outset in close coordination with evolving SITES guidelines and criteria — the actual points system itself had not even been established during initial design phases — and was altered throughout development to maximize compatibility with the initiative. Moreover, unlike most urban pilot projects that use existing infrastructure, the Children’s Garden is sited in an undeveloped, naturalistic setting, which required carefully carving the project out of a delicate rural ecosystem and minimizing disturbance. TBG and the project team’s sustainable considerations encompassed not only design and operations, but sourcing of materials, construction and maintenance, ensuring a genuinely green project from conception to construction and beyond.

 Read more here:

http://coopersmithagency.com/pressrelease/childrens-garden-at-lady-bird-johnson-wildflower-center-chosen-to-test-new-national-sustainable-rating-system/

Low-Impact Design Strategies

I read this list of examples of Best Practices for Developers in a SSI publication and wanted to share:

From a 2008 forum on sustainable development co-sponsored by the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Urban Land Institute

1.  Preserving forested or natural areas can save up to $110 per square foot or $435,000 per acre over conventional landscape solutions.

2.  Balancing cut and fill on site can save up to $100 per cubic yard in haul costs.

3.  Using raingardens and bioretention areas can save up to$4,800 per residential lot over conventional engineered solutions (Sherwood Gap Creek, 2000)

4.  Creating narrow streets (24 feet wide) versus wide streets (32 feet wide) can save up to $30 per linear foot in street costs.

5.  The use of on-lot bioretention areas can save up to $4,000 per residential lot over standard stormwater management pond costs (Somerset, MD, 2005)

6.  On-lot bioretention can save up to 75 percent of stormwater fees per residential lot (Kensington Estates, WA, 2001)

7.  Shade trees on the south side of buildings can save up to $47 per tree per year in energy costs (Peper, 2007)

8.  Green roofs can retain more than 75 percent of rainfall annually, reducing downstream stormwater management costs (ASLA Green Roof, 2007)

9.  Recycling construction waste can save tens of thousands of dollars in haul costs, dump fee, and material costs (Stapleton, 2006)

*From The Case for Sustainable Landscapes – The Sustainable Sites Initiative.

We’ve Applied for the Sustainable Sites Initiative Pilot Program

The latest news on our project is that we have applied for the pilot program with our Children’s Garden!  Applications are currently being reviewed and the selections will be made known in April 2010.  The pilot program will then officially begin in May 2010 and will continue for two years.

Brian Ott in our office received an email stating that the SSI received 345 applications to participate as pilot projects.  Wow!  Here are the project stats of the applications:

PROJECT TYPES
• 21% Local Park (74)
• 19% Residential projects (66)
• 16% Educational center (29) and Campus (25)
• 9% Commercial (32)
• 7% OTHER-MISC (23)
• 5% Garden (17)
• 4% OTHER-MIXED USE (14)
• 4% Govt. Complex (12)
• 4% Streetscape (12)
• 4% Transportation (12)
• 2% OTHER-OPEN SPACE/NATURE PRESERVE (6)
• 2% Industrial park (5)
• 1% National Park (4)
• 1% State Park (4)
• 1% OTHER-PARKING LOT (4)
• 1% OTHER-RESEARCH FACILITY (4)
• 0.6% Medical Complex (2)
EXISTING LAND USE
• 66% Greyfield (227)
• 24% Greenfield (83)
• 10% Brownfield (35)
PROJECT SIZE
• 27% Less than one acre (92)
• 27% 1-5 acres (93)
• 37% 6-100 acres (127)
• 7% 101-500 acres (25)
• 2% Greater than 500 acres (8)
STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT
• 8% pre-design phase (28)
• 30% site design phase (105)
• 16% already designed but not yet constructed (54)
• 26% projects in construction phase (88)
• 19% projects that are completed (66)
• 1% “Unknown”- project did not complete question on application (4)

As I have recently heard, SSI is now going to go by SITES.  They released their Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks for 2009 several months ago.  This contained the certification criteria listed below:

Certification levels ( 250 total points)
One Star (minimum points 40%):	100
Two Stars (minimum points 50%):	125
Three Stars (minimum points 60%):	150
Four Stars (minimum points 80%):	200

Since we had based our project design and construction documents on the old draft set of criteria, I reviewed all of our information with this new criteria and determined that we hoped to achieve a Two Star certification level.  Now, you may ask why are we only going for Two Stars?  It turns out, that since our site is a greenfield and located in a more suburban and rural location, we are missing out on a lot of points that are geared for more urban infill and brownfield sites.  At first, this was a bit disturbing to me.  I thought that SITES would be geared toward smart and safe development of such greenfield sites.  After having a discussion with the Wildflower Center, I learned that SITES is really geared toward repairing broken sites and ecosystems, which makes sense because these landscapes are not functioning in the way that they should be and improving them should be a priority.  Now, I still think that smart development of greenfield sites is very important, because that development is still going to happen as cities grow and as developments require more land.  It will be interesting to watch this pilot program and see how all the projects achieve (and don’t achieve) certain credits.

Children in Nature

Last Wednesday evening, I attended the Celebration of Children in Nature 2009 Awards Presentation and Dinner.  The Austin Children in Nature Collaborative is a group that strives to give children in the Central Texas area easy access to nature.  Last year, they had Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, as the keynote speaker.  He has coined the term “Nature Deficit Disorder” and this group is trying to fight this disorder.

I was most moved by the keynote speaker, Andrew Sansom.  He is the Executive Director fo the River Systems Institute and Research Professor of Geography at Texas State University in San Marcos.  He told some moving stories about taking children out to Bamberger Ranch, a 5500 acre ranch specializing in habitat restoration.  The one story that stayed with me was about a group of kids from an East Austin school district that went to spend several days at the ranch.  One day they all went to try their luck at canoeing.  Andrew said that you should have seen them the first time they stepped into those canoes.  They were so unsure of themselves in the little swaying boats on the water.  But, in only a few minutes, they were all comfortable and looked like they had been doing it for years.  At one point, a little boy noticed a man on the shoreline throwing rocks across the surface of the water.  The little boy asked what he was doing?  Andrew replied that he was skipping rocks and the little boy asked if he could try it.  They went to try it and the little boy learned to skip rocks and just loved it!  This really stuck with me.  I came from a 200 acre farm and ranch where skipping rocks was part of visiting the river on our property at least once a week.  I thought there are children that don’t even know what skipping rocks is?  Something has to change.  Andrew also talked about the influence of these visits to Bamberger Ranch on the children’s grades.  I can’t remember if it was the same class or not, but after a several day visit to the ranch, these kids grades increased significantly – especially in the sciences.  Just from being out, learning and playing in nature did their interest increase! 

I’m writing about this because the basis of our garden is “learning through play”.  Gary Smith, the landscape artist and architect we are working with on this project, wanted to create elements that sparked the children’s interest and made them ask questions and activate their bodies and minds.  We don’t have a swingset or a slide at our garden.  We have a spiral wall that you can run through.  It’s covered with mosaic tilework of plants that makes you stop and look closer and touch.  And, the best part is that this entire garden is placed in a natural landscape – with huge trees, plants, animals, water, bugs and all sorts of exciting things.  What a great place to learn!  And get outside!

Here are some links from my post:

www.bambergerranch.org

www.childrenandnature.org

www.westcave.org

The award winners that night were:

National Wildlife Federation and Texas Wildlife Association

J. David Bamberger – Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve

David Matthews – teacher at Small Middle School

McKinney Roughs Nature Park

Experiencing the Children’s Garden….

The update is that we’re still in a hold pattern for our garden.  The Wildflower Center will start fundraising and we hope to move back into action in the winter.  Please cross your fingers!  I still want to keep posting to keep this alive – so I’m trying to include pertinent and related information to our garden, children’s garden and sustainability. 

This weekend I traveled with my husband to Lansing, Michigan to visit our nephew.  We had the opportunity to visit the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids.  It never dawned on me the impact this visit would have.  They have a dedicated Children’s Garden that I got to experience with my almost 2 year old nephew, Ethan. 

photo courtesy of Michale Reed 'Pictophile' on flickr

It was such an interesting visit to really see the garden with him.  Here are a few of my observations:

• Kid scaled gates and openings completely thrilled him!  Though, they really did a number on my back.    We have included some of these at our grotto design.
• A two year old has a pretty short attention span.  He only made it half-way through the maze until he was bored and found his way out through the shrubs.  A good idea would be to include things to play with along the way.
• The treehouse was super cool!  The swinging bridge was a bit treacherous, but he still liked it.  He really gravitated towards the kid sized benches and tables.  Again, scale is important!
• He was overwhelmed by the huge rock quarry (a.k.a – sand pit).  The garden put out little shovels and other items every day for the kids to use.  He didn’t know where to go first.
• His ultimate favorite part was the……………splash fountain.  Imagine that!  Luckily, his mom had packed him an extra outfit, so even though he wasn’t in swim trunks, he got right in the mix.  He did want everyone to join and I was the only one in flip flops, so I got in with him.  Water will always attract the kiddos!!

Here’s the link to the garden and if you’re in the area, I highly recommend it.

http://www.meijergardens.org/gardens_experience/childrens_garden.php

My only complaint was that some of the art in the children’s garden was signed as “do not touch”.  One in particular was at the entry and was a large group of brightly colored circles.  Ethan ran immediately over to it and wanted to touch it.  We had to tell him no and pull him away.  In another section, there was one piece of colored tube that was set up as a play piece and about 15 feet away was another one in a different color, but with a sign that said to not touch.  That was really confusing for him.  I would hope that most art in this type of garden could be touched and played with.

So, thank you, Ethan, for letting me see garden design and landscape architecture through your eyes and in a whole different light!

What’s Happening?

Okay, I really owe a post as it’s been about 4 weeks.  I apologize.  Here’s where we stand and what’s been happening:  We turned over the construction documents to UT and the Wildflower Center.  It was our hope that we would begin the pre-construction phase of services which would entail hiring a general contractor to join the team, review the drawings, offer comments and provide preliminary pricing.  Sounds great, huh?  There were a few snafoos, and we are currently in a wait pattern.  Our owners need to work through some fundraising items and we hope to be back on track again come the fall.  If anyone is interested in donating to this project, please let me know.  You can be a part of something extremely special and monumental for the Wildflower Center, UT, Austin, TBG and sustainability.

How have I been doing?  I’ve missed this project greatly.  I think my whole team has as well and we had all became so invested in it.  It was our day to day work in a shaky economy that promised such a rewarding pay off at the end.  I miss my contact with our clients and our consultant team.  Maybe we should just have a team happy hour to catch up!    The good things is that we were able to work with some great people and companies and would definitely want to work with those people again. 

Back to sustainability and somewhat related to our project, there is a case study on the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio.  The 125 year old brewery is being redeveloped to a eclectic and exciting mixed use development.  They did a neat thing for their rainwater collection.  They used the brewing tanks used originally for the beer as rainwater harvesting tanks.  Pretty cool.  

Photo by Rialto Studio courtesy of The Sustainable Sites Initiative website

 I believe they plan to use these again on future phases.  Check out the link here for a case study  http://www.sustainablesites.org/cases/show.php?id=12

Recycling Plant for Construction Debris/Demo

Back in March, the Wildflower Center had set up a trip to visit 969 Pit Materials, a recycling plant, just east of Austin.  You’ll have to forgive my photos.  They were taken a long, long time ago…remember rain???

This place recycles concrete and construction debris to make materials that can be reused for other projects.  They take concrete w/ rebar, rock, asphalt, cmu block, brick and dirt.

They take old and broken up concrete and asphalt and turn it into material suitable for base material or pipe bedding.  There’s a project I’m working on that has a huge concrete structure that will have to be demolished.  What a great way to re-use all of that construction demo! 

Here’s my favorite part:  the concrete wash-out facility.  I’m sorry I’m so excited, but we Landscape Architects don’t always get to be involved this deep into the construction/demo procedures.  969 Pit will take out these washout systems and recycle the material inside them.  They make a stabilized sand product that is separated from the concrete mix and that can be use for pipe bedding and in lieu of regular sand under concrete walks.  I was talking to Jim and he said that a lot of times, temporary washout pits are created and then semi-cleaned out and filled back in.  Not only do you eliminate any of that waste going into the ground, you get to re-use the material.

 

So, how did we incorporate this material into our project?  I’m glad you asked.  Our wonderful civil engineer and structural engineer did some research and got some testing reports from Jim Lozier, the owner, and decided that they could use this material for pipe bedding and base.  We were pretty excited about that.  I think the idea of creating a material that can be used, ripped out, crushed, re-used, ripped out, crushed……(you get the idea)…. is awesome.  Talk about cradle to cradle.  We shouldn’t be excavating new material to use as base or bedding materials.  We hope to talk more with Jim to see what we can utilize in the future on more projects.  If you’re interested, here’s more info:

969 Pit Materials; Jim Lozier

6005 FM 973 South; 512-276-7575