Siteplan

Native cross vine (Bignonia capreolata)
was used to shade the exterior of Atlanta’s
EcoManor, a participant as a pilot project
in the Sustainable Sites InitiativeTM
(SITESTM
).
1004_Sites:Layout 1 11/4/10 5:12 PM Page 20

21www.wildflower.org
WILDFLOWER|WINTER2010
THERE ARE MANY GOOD REASONS to create
more 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 that
could protect scarce and sensitive resources. To address that need, the Wildflower Center
partnered with the U.S. Botanic Garden and the American Society of Landscape Architects
to create the nation’s first guidelines and rating system for sustainable landscapes: the
Sustainable Sites InitiativeTM
(SITESTM
). This fall, the initiative launched the new Landscape
for LifeTM
website and workbook, which simplify SITES for homeowners.
Wildflower Center Executive Director Susan Rieff says, “We have always felt that for the
Sustainable Sites Initiativeto have real impact beyond large-scale commercial and govern-
ment projects, we also would need to offer homeowners practical information about how
to make changes in their yards and gardens. Landscape for Life is our approach to making
that information widely and easily available.”
In this article, we illustrate the kind of principles central to Landscape for Life with four
residential projects that participate in the two-year pilot study that tests the SITES rating
system. The experience of these homeowners will help inform the final version of the SITES
guidelines and rating system.
ASitePlanHomeowners make sites sustainable
By Christina Kosta Procopiou
PHOTOCOURTESYECOMANOR

22 www.wildflower.org
PILOT PROJECT: ECOMANOR
LOCATION: ATLANTA, GEORGIA
SUSTAINABLE 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 use
as soil amendment in their garden. Laura Turner Seydel, daughter of environmental
philanthropist Ted Turner, and her husband, environmental attorney Rutherford
Seydel, followed LEED® green building standards to do so safely as their home
became the first over 5,000 square feet and the first in the Southeast to be certified
LEED® 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 how
to integrate the outdoor native landscape with the built environ-
ment using a minimal lawn sown with a native fescue seed in
sunny areas where grass is more sustainable, water retention fea-
tures, native plants for beauty and wildlife habitat, and a green
roof over the garage.
Concerning the green roof that is visible from their family
room, Turner Seydel says, “We wanted to bring nature closer to
our home and to our sight line, rather than look out our family
room at the roof of the garage. Plus, the green roof keeps the
garage much cooler in the summertime.”
Indeed, by reducing reflective heat through native plantings
and 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 features
minimize the amount of stormwater that leaves the home and use
it for irrigation.
For example, the firm created a series of terraces where there
was a natural slope in the landscape. The terraced effect slows
down the flow of stormwater to reduce the amount discharged
into storm sewers. What would have been a patio is planted with
native sedum and other plants that also slow water flowing off the
site and cleanse it to reduce pollution to nearby streams.
Captured stormwater and “gray water” from sinks indoors are
used to irrigate the lawn and native plantings like red maple (Acer
rubrum), summersweet (Clethra alnifolia), blueberry (Vaccinium
darrowii) and inkberry (Ilex glabra). Four raised beds of organic
vegetable and fruit plants are Turner Seydel’s favorite feature.
Composting helps make sure the family’s food doesn’t end up in
the landfill, and chickens help aerate and fertilize the lawn. The
native plantings helped earn the home another certification, as a
National Wildlife Federation backyard habitat.
“It was important to me to choose plants so that something
would be in bloom at all times for the different pollinators and for
cutting for native floral arrangements to display inside the house,”
says Turner Seydel.
And these pollinators – and other wildlife – love to visit. A
small recirculating water feature perfect for a dip on a hot sum-
mer day and blooms during every season put wildlife in the lap
of luxury.
S
A Manor Of Speaking
EcoManor in Atlanta is the first
home in the Southeast and the first
over 5,000 square feet to be LEED®
-
certified. It is the home of environmen-
talists Laura Turner Seydel and
Rutherford Seydel.
PHOTOSBYEMILYDRYDEN

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

PILOT PROJECT: ASH CREEK HOUSE
LOCATION: PORTLAND, OREGON, NEAR THE CITY’S ASH CREEK
SUSTAINABLE FOCUS: SOIL, WATER, NATIVE VEGETATION AND MATERIALS
ALKER LEISER, NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, DeSantis
Landscapes, calls this SITES pilot project a good example of what can
be done for fairly little money. Small budget aside, the landscape still
did 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, and
stormwater 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 was
removed, the wood recycled to make a community compost bin and the concrete broken up
and used as stepping stones in the landscape. Where the garage once stood, river rocks now
surround native and adapted plants chosen for vibrant
colors and deep root structure to help them tolerate
drought and promote evapotranspiration.
The biggest labor of love was reclaiming a 7,000-
square-foot backyard covered in invasive plants. The
answer was to mow the area before applying sheet
mulch, made by overlapping cardboard on top of a
thick layer of humus. The sheet mulch process is to
mow rather than spray existing grass before applying
trace amounts of organic micronutrients and a thin
layer of compost. Next, landscapers covered this with
overlapping cardboard refrigerator boxes that were
watered before adding another thin layer of compost
and a leaf mold full of micronutrients that can hold up
to 500 percent of its weight in water. “That will hold
water if there’s a flood from the adjacent creek,” Leiser
says. The backyard is now home to planted elderber-
ry, adapted dwarf dogwood, currants and redtwig
dogwoods and is the focal point of the homeowners’
view from inside the house.
W
PHOTOSBYWALKERLEISER
Before & After
ABOVE LEFT The view is the “before” picture of
the house and yard. BOTTOM LEFT The area
that was sheet mulched and the finished land-
scape. BOTTOM RIGHT Where the garage
once stood is a rain garden that includes native
plants and healthy soils that capture rainwater
and aid its slow release from the site. This prevents
a fast dump into the creek, which could cause
flooding and other problems.

WILDFLOWER FACT In June, the first projects to use the SITESTM
rating system
became 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.
PILOT PROJECT: FLOAT HOUSE
LOCATION: NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
SUSTAINABLE 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 Lower
Ninth Ward rebuild their lives and homes after Hurricane Katrina.
Rebuilding meant rethinking what it means to live in a floodplain
and building homes able to withstand the next hurricane. Morphosis
Architects, under the direction of renowned architect and distinguished UCLA professor
Thom 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 have
been built so far. Thirty more are under construction. As if a house that floats wasn’t
enough, these homes are packed with sustainable features, evidenced by each receiving
LEED® 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 zero
stormwater runoff.
A
Making It Right
PHOTOSCOURTESYMAKEITRIGHT®
FOUNDATION
Like the traditional New Orleans
“shotgun” house, the FLOAT House sits
on a raised four-foot base, preserving
the community’s vital front porch cul-
ture. The state-of-the-art home generates
its own power, minimizes resource con-
sumption, collects its own water and
features native plants in the landscape
as well as pervious pavement.
Landscape
For Life
RIGHT NOW, THE PILOT PROJ-
ECT STUDY is testing the Sustainable
SitesTM
guidelines and rating system
so that within two years landscape
professionals can use them to create
sustainable landscapes that can be
certified by SITESTM
in the way
builders use LEED®
standards to cre-
ate LEED®
-certified buildings.
But where does this leave home-
owners who want to harvest their
own rainwater, stop using pesticides
or replace non-native plants with
native plants? They won’t have a way
to certify their landscape just yet, but
they can view Landscape for LifeTM
, a
new workbook and online resource at
www.landscapeforlife.com. There
soon will be a curriculum for use by
botanic gardens and arboreta to edu-
cate homeowners about sustainable
landscapes.
Holly Shimizu is the executive
director of the U.S. Botanic Garden,
which is a partner in SITESTM
. She
says that homeowners now have an
accessible and free resource in
Landscape for Life. “If you hire a
landscape designer, for example,
you can ask for these things. You can
say, ‘I want all native plants or I want
to reuse my rainwater. Or you can
find a simple way to do it yourself.”
Landscape for LifeTM
is based on
the principles of SITESTM
, which is the
result of four years of rigorous
research and collaboration from
experts in the fields of soil, hydrolo-
gy, materials, vegetation and human
health. See landsapeforlife.com for
more information.

PILOT PROJECT: COYOTE HOUSE
LOCATION: SANTA BARBARA, CA
SUSTAINABLE 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 Santa
Barbara home. Natives are planted according to exposure: on the north side are
woodland 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 for
garage 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 sustainable
practices 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 loss
from evaporation. “Some things are simple, like putting
an 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 into
the 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 long
because of the protective layer green roofs pro-
vide the roof membrane.
I
PHOTOBYTYSONELLIS

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