Today, green building certification pays scant attention to landscaping, but it should, according to the Sustainable
Sites Initiative, which has just released the world's first
rating system for the design, construction and maintenance of
sustainable landscapes (with or without buildings).
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
(LEED) was created by the U.S. Green Building Council to provide a
standard for environmentally sustainable buildings, but only gives a
few points of credit for green landscaping. The Sustainable Sites
Initiative plans to change that by incorporating state-of-the-art green
landscaping principles into next version of LEED in 2012.
"The Sustainable Sites Initiative has developed a
LEED for landscapes," said Ray Mims, horticulturist at U.S. Botanic
Garden (D.C.) "If you follow our guidelines, you can do better than the
carbon-neutral status of the best buildings--you can actually improve
the ecosystem's health and the health of whole surrounding community."
The landscape rating system has recently emerged from
the public comment period and is now entering the final stage where it
will be debugged in the field. For the next two years the program will
be tried out on 200 plots nationwide in order to fine-tune the
landscaping standards that will be incorporated into LEED.
Qualifying plots can be included in the pilot program by applying at SustainableSites.org.
Landscaping around any type of building will be considered, as well as
many sites with no buildings at all--from corporate campuses to
transportation corridors to public parks to single-family residences.
"A building can only be 'less bad.' By that I mean
that no matter how green a building is made, it is going to have some
negative impact on the environment. Landscapes, on the other hand, can
actually be regenerative and give back to the planet. Landscapes can
clean the air, produce oxygen, slow the water down and not only be good
for the environment, but be good to humans too," said Mims.
The rating system was designed by a partnership
between the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the Lady
Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, The University of Texas (Austin) and
the U.S. Botanic Garden (D.C.) For four years, more than a dozen
sustainability experts, scientists and designers have evaluated input
from hundreds of sources to derive the guidelines for creating
sustainable landscapes.
Points will be awarded for various elements of
landscapes, resulting in one, two, three or four "green stars." Points
are awarded for the types of green spaces included in landscapes, as
well as for the biodiversity of the species residing there.
More information is available in two reports issued from the Sustainable Sites Initiative: The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009 and The Case for Sustainable Landscapes and Guidelines.
