Green Industry ECOnomics - LandcareNetwork.org

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Chapter Summary: 1. The green roof movement, spurred on by efforts to improve urban environment and promoted by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC), is growing rapidly and offers landscape professionals an excellent opportunity to profitably partner with contractors in the building trades. 2. Green roofs are engineered systems that require specialized technical and horticultural expertise to install. They provide cooling, are a natural habitat for animals and plants, and reduce dust and smog. In addition, technical benefits include the retention of stormwater, the addition of thermal resistance and reduction of noise levels. Green roofs also increase a roof’s life expectancy, offer more usable space, and can offer the owner financial incentives. 3. Green walls, which are about five years behind the development of green roofs, may become the next big push by GRHC. 72 Green Industry ECOnomics
Chapter 17: Edible Landscapes on the Grow Have you ever eaten at a nice restaurant where, when the server brings you the main course, there’s a colorful tiny pansy or nasturtium decorating the plate At the risk of being taken for a hick, you ask if you can eat the blossom. “Of course you can,” the server responds. That flower is one form of edible gardening. But, Parwinder Grewal, Ph.D., a professor at The Ohio State University, suggests something more ambitious, and from his point of view, more practical — edible landscaping as a profit opportunity for the commercial green industry. Again and again during the three-day Crystal Ball Committee meeting, Grewal challenged Committee members to look beyond aesthetics and focus as much on the utility of urban landscapes. In other words, what useful purpose can a landscape serve to justify the effort and inputs necessary to maintain it, apart from its appearance “The idea here is not agriculture,” said Grewal. “Edible plants can be quite colorful, too.” To demonstrate their appeal, several of Grewal’s students at the Ohio State’s Wooster Campus designed an urban edible landscape at a property in Wooster, Ohio, near the university’s campus. They began installing the “urban yardscape” in the spring of 2009. Landscapes featuring edible plants seem to be catching on because of several converging factors, including publicity focusing on sustainability, the public’s concern over food quality/safety, and the state of the economy. The media and the blogosphere, in particular, are alive with interest in Victory Gardens, the vegetable and fruit gardens that homeowners planted in their yards during World War II. “Since First Lady Michelle Obama put in a vegetable garden on the property of the White House, the ripple effect around the country has been amazing,” remarks Dean DeSantis. Witness the food garden installed at the USDA headquarters property in Washington, D.C., and the directive to install similar gardens at other USDA properties. Also, California First Lady Maria Shriver announced in spring 2009 that she is having a vegetable garden installed at the California Capitol property in Sacramento. Victory Garden or not, clients are warming to the idea of having edibles as a part of their landscapes. For instance, DeSantis relates that a popular restaurant chain in the Pacific Northwest inquired about taking out the lawns at its locations and installing community gardens in their place. “We said, yes, we Case studies 73
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Green Industry ECOnomics Innovating
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© 2009 by PLANET Professional Land
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Section 5: Sustainability and the i
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Heaviland is the owner/operator of
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Preface cat·a·lyst [kat-l-ist]
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Acknowledgments 2009 Crystal Ball C
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community, and the world. This sect
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Chapter 1: Sustainability Is a Tren
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usiness plans. You will, however, f
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• Practical: This 13 percent of t
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ment that it’s happening. The ear
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Chapter 4: The Emergence of Leaders
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“With the New Construction catego
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Chapter Summary: 1. LEED is a rapid
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Chapter 5: Life Cycle Assessments A
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Chapter 6: The 3 P’s of Sustainab
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Planet • Design and provide lands
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Page 72 and 73: Section 4: Case studies In the long
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Page 116 and 117: Crystal Ball History Early in 1970,
Page 118 and 119: Recommended Reading Edible landscap
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