Earlier this month, the annual Residential Landscape Architecture Trends survey found that the American love affair with the backyard is still going strong.  The survey, which questioned landscape architects who specialize in residential design, is seen as an annual snapshot of what consumers are asking for as they remake their outdoor spaces.

Interestingly, sustainability is being seen as increasingly desirable components of a residential landscaping plan.  Native or drought-tolerant plants were preferred by 85.4 percent of respondents, drip irrigation by 81.7 percent and permeable paving by 71.6 percent.

Most, it seems, are interested in an undemanding outdoor space with lots of room for entertaining. The category of gardens and landscape spaces received a 94.9 percent rating as somewhat or very popular, and was followed closely by outdoor living spaces at  91.5 percent, which were defined as kitchen and entertainment spaces.

Low-maintenance landscapes were seen as important by 96.6 percent, fireplaces and fire pits at 95.8 percent and dining areas at 95.7 percent.

Meanwhile, the value of green infrastructure in cities is outlined in a separate study.

ASLA teamed up with American Rivers, the Water Environment Federation (WEF) and ECONorthwest. Titled Banking on Green: How Green Infrastructure Saves Municipalities Money and Provides Economic Benefits Community-wide, the study is a response to the need to further quantify the economic benefits of green infrastructure.

The report’s top findings:

1. Not only does green infrastructure cost less, but these practices can further reduce costs of treating large amounts of polluted runoff.
2. Green infrastructure can help municipalities reduce energy expenses.
3. Green infrastructure can reduce flooding and related flood damage.
4. Green infrastructure improves public health — it reduces bacteria and pollution in rivers and streams, preventing gastrointestinal illnesses in swimmers and boaters.

We’ve seen some examples of the report’s recommendations in two of Pine Hall Brick’s StormPave paver installations that Pathway Café has covered in the past.
The Atlantic magazine 
reported that the study covers 479 separate cases of green infrastructure projects around the US. The majority of the projects turned out to be just as affordable or even more so than the traditional “grey” infrastructure.

About a quarter of the projects were more expensive, 31 percent kept costs the same and more than 44 percent actually brought costs down. (That was certainly true with the StormPave installation in New Albany, Ohio. Planners discovered that permeable clay brick pavers were less expensive than asphalt.)

The lesson learned so far is that “… including green infrastructure stormwater approaches, on public as well as private properties, can result in long-term fiscal savings for local governments as well as provide numerous, tangible economic and community benefits through related ecosystem services,” notes the study.

The costs of traditional infrastructure are especially pronounced in cities and regions with combined sewer systems that collect both sewage and stormwater. During heavy rainfall, these systems are often overwhelmed, pouring sewage-laden water into drinking water sources and greatly increasing water treatment costs.

Technologies like permeable pavements and rain gardens can capture, naturally treat and filter stormwater back into the ground, preventing overflows and reducing reliance on treatment centers. (That was the idea behind the StormPave project at the Virginia Capitol in Richmond, VA.)

In both residential and municipal uses, permeable clay brick pavers lend themselves to an outdoor lifestyle and can lead to significant savings.

Burlington, Vermont is a place where you can find dessert, manners and education: It’s the home of Ben and Jerry’s, the Emily Post Institute and three colleges – the University of Vermont, Burlington College and Champlain College.

But more than that, it’s the Home Office of winter. Ski Vermont urges visitors to come in and experience winter in its original state. And they’re speaking the truth: the town averages 81 inches of snowfall each year.

The climate, then, is a necessary part of planning whenever a construction project is undertaken. When Champlain College set out to pave a main promenade that directs pedestrians to Perry Hall, which houses admissions and the enrollment center, the goals were to have a hard surface that would withstand the weight of both pedestrians and vehicles, while allowing stormwater and snow melt to seep into the ground.

John Caolo, associate vice president of campus planning and auxiliary services, explained that permeable pavement was required under the renovation plans for Perry Hall, which was converted from a 19^th century residential structure into its new use. The college decided early on to pursue LEED Platinum status, which has as one of its requirements that site improvements be sustainable.

Originally, the college used a porous concrete product, which was installed atop a series of graded aggregate materials. Caolo said that after one winter, with a combination of the cold environment and the use of salts and snow retardant, the concrete didn’t hold up.

“The decision was made to look out into the marketplace and see what comparable products were out there and that’s how we were directed to StormPave pavers,” said Caolo. “The building is a muted brick with a very 21^st century metal panel addition, so it has one foot firmly in the past and one foot firmly in the future. That’s the metaphor we were shooting for.”

Adam Portz, an associate and landscape architect with SE Group, which did the project design, said that several materials were considered as replacements for the porous concrete. StormPave rose to the top, because it had the advantages of aesthetics, permanence and ease of maintenance. David Burton of Trowel Trades, a Pine Hall Brick distributor, said that an additional plus was a demonstrated tolerance by Pine Hall Brick’s clay pavers for exposure to road salt in installations in other cold climates.

To fit in with the colors that the college had already chosen for the design,StormPave in a Rose Fullblend was chosen for the field, with a StormPave in gray to match up with building trim and on-site stonework. To install, the contractor removed the remainder of the broken porous concrete, added in about three inches of additional aggregate and compacted it to bring the top of the StormPave pavers up to ground level.

“I think the college has been very pleased with it,” said Portz.

Part of the project was finished in the fall and part remains to be done, once the threat of winter weather is past, perhaps as soon as this month, or later, in early summer.

The installation has led to one reminder: Mother Nature doesn’t often cooperate. This past winter, when the StormPave installation could have shown what it was made of after being pounded by feet of snow, the winter was one of the mildest in recent years.

While there was not one decent winter storm this year, Caolo did say that he did not see any indications of ice on top of the StormPave pavers after rainstorms followed by freezing temperatures, which is similar to what others have reported at other StormPave installations.

Next winter, or the winter after that, will show how well the pavers do. And that can’t come soon enough for Caolo, who said he actually likes winters in Vermont.

“I didn’t go skiing once this year,” said Caolo. “Last year, we had a great winter and plenty of snow. I like my seasons with hard edges.”

When the estimates came in, the cost was virtually the same. The village decided to go with the more attractive and green option of permeable clay pavers.

From CE News—

Green construction costs
The project wasn’t a done deal because cost had yet to be factored in. The cost to install permeable pavers came in at $424,389. Estimates for putting in asphalt, including five years of maintenance, was $427,718; maintaining it for 10 years raised the cost to $434,085.
Read more here.

For Franco S. Manno, ASLA, LEED AP, senior landscape architect with Columbus, Ohio-based firm EMH&T, the Third Street Project had as one of its goals to combine aesthetics with an effective means to control stormwater.

Several varieties were made into mockups on site to show how they would look in daily use and the StormPave™ paver, in the Ironspot color, rose to the top. The conventional English Edge paver, also from Pine Hall Brick, will be used for the sidewalks.

The project itself is a street approximately 600 feet long with roughly 13,000 square feet of pavers installed.

The Village’s maintenance responsibility will be limited to vacuuming or sweeping the debris out from in between the voids from time to time. What the Village won’t have to do is to go to the cost or trouble to resurface it in five years, which an asphalt street would require.

Sometimes you don’t have to go far to go green.

Officials in Wentworth, North Carolina, were looking to build a new judicial center, one that would replace a facility built at the turn of the last century. What they got was a $34 million 175,400-square-foot state-of-the-art facility that earned a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold designation from the Green Building Certification Institute.

The facility, which houses courtrooms, the register of deeds office, facilities for the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office and a 300-bed detention center, is the first LEED Gold justice facility in the Eastern United States.  It uses energy-efficient HVAC systems, lighting and building envelope strategies to reduce energy expenditures by 28 percent ($94,000) per year; rainwater cisterns to annually save 600,000 gallons of water; an Energy Star ® compliant roof membrane to lessen local heat island effects and keep the building cooler; and local and regionally manufactured building materials to support the state economy and reduce the impact of transportation on the environment.

The latter included 350,000 wire-cut light range face bricks, along with a number of Pathway Red and engraved clay brick pavers, which were brought from Pine Hall Brick Company in Madison, NC, which is a little more than 11 miles away.

Lance Metzler, Rockingham County manager, said the effort was worth it.

“I’ve worked on a LEED Silver project before, so I understand how hard this team worked to successfully target LEED Gold for our center,” says Metzler. “Not only will this facility save the county operational costs in the long run, but we are leading by example.”

Dan Mace, a vice president with Moseley Architects and the managing principal on the project indicated that Rockingham County’s leadership viewed LEED certification as a measured risk worth taking for one of the county’s largest capital projects.

“I think the further along we got the more we could see how the project would benefit from the high performance design strategies we were considering and how pursuing certification was a good use of taxpayer dollars,” says Mace.

Materials, practices and design choices led to the LEED designation. Some of the differences can’t be seen by visitors, while others can. The windows are big to bring in exterior light, which lessens demand on interior lighting. Dual flush toilets reduce cold water usage. Motion sensors control both lights and faucets. Outside, the closest parking spaces are reserved for low emission vehicles and the lights in the parking lot are dimmer, because they are of lower wattage to save electricity.

And some aspects of the building design are actually green, even though at first glance they may not appear to be. Clay brick, carved into bas relief designs depicting Rockingham County’s history on the exterior walls and clay brick pavers inscribed with the names of prominent citizens and organizations, are green because they are made out of dirt and water, the two most abundant building materials on the planet. They’re green because they have countless recycling options during manufacture. And they’re green because they last virtually forever, which is the definition of sustainability.

As it turns out, the entire project has become a point of pride for Rockingham County.

“It’s fantastic that we are leading in the green energy environment,” says W. Keith Mabe, chairman of the Rockingham County Board of Commissioners. “It’s a good model for other counties to follow.”

Since 1792, it’s been the seat of government in Virginia, served for a short time as the Capitol of the Confederacy during the Civil War and is even sometimes used as a stand-in for the White House for exterior shots for television and movie productions.

Today, the capitol’s grounds and adjacent streets and alleys are in the midst of a project that are using a mix of environmental design changes, including permeable StormPave® pavers from Pine Hall Brick, in an effort to protect the river that Jefferson admired from that hilltop more than two centuries ago.

The “Greening Virginia’s Capitol” project has brought together the Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Department of General Services, the City of Richmond and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay to implement this project, which is being funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

The overall goal is to both use and improve water wisely, by conserving clean water and cleaning pollutants from runoff.  To lessen the demand on clean water, an existing underground tank that was originally installed to collect stormwater runoff is being modified to redirect stormwater into the irrigation system on the capitol grounds, thus reducing the demand on the public water supply during the spring and summer.

The second is to cut back on runoff being treated off site, by reducing the area of impervious surface within Capitol Square, to include a rain garden, green streets, rainwater harvesting and StormPave® permeable brick pavers by Pine Hall Brick.

StormPave® is being used for walkways and notably, for a 150-foot staircase that leads to a monument on the grounds.

Planners say the changes are intended to reduce the amount of polluted stormwater flowing into Richmond’s sewer system by 64 percent and to reduce the amount of phosphorus in that stormwater by 69 percent and nitrogen by 70 percent. Nitrogen and phosphorus are two of the biggest sources of pollution in area rivers and within the nearby Chesapeake Bay.

Chris Hale, ASLA, LEED AP, is principal of Bioform Landscape Architecture & Environmental Design, which is providing design services for the project, said that the state had an interest in cutting down on the amount of pollution on the site, because it is so close to the nearby James River.

He explained that rain runoff is mixed with sewer outflow in downtown Richmond. Cleaning up the runoff means less sewage treatment and cleaner water being discharged downstream into the James River. Using permeable pavers means that stormwater is filtered naturally by flowing into the ground, instead of washing pollutants like fertilizer across a solid surface to a storm drain.

“The proximity to the river was really a driving factor in improving the water quality,” said Hale.

Ironically, within the walks and plazas on the capitol grounds, some of the new StormPave® clay brick pavers replaced older clay brick pavers that had been mortared into place. The older bricks were salvaged and taken to a recycling plant, where they will be turned into a brick aggregate.

“The new brick matched pretty well  with what was out there,” said Hale. “We worked with the historic character of the brick that was there, which allowed us to do the permeable system. We’re getting ready to do a few more walkways and when they replace these older walks, they want to use the permeable pavers.”

This includes a geothermal heating system, with 40 450-foot-deep wells drilled into the solid limestone bedrock.

Last September, the Children’s Discovery Meadow opened outside the building, where children explore a native meadow habitat and learn about plants, insects, soil conservation and natural water purification.

The idea is that, within 48 hours, the water will redistribute itself into the property.—John McGrann, as reported in the Lancaster, PA Intelligencer Journal.

Penn Stone installed this water permeable pathway and patio as part of its local library's Children's Discovery Meadow.

When you visit the Children’s Discovery Meadow today, you’ll find a pathway and patio made of Pine Hall Brick StormPave® pavers that was provided at no cost to the library through a collaboration of area businesses.

John McGrann, owner of Penn Stone, a Pine Hall Brick dealer who provided the pavers, said the installation is intended as a working model to teach some lessons of its own.

There is a lot of interest throughout the county in permeable paving and other stormwater management strategies. The City of Lancaster is under intense pressure to solve stormwater management woes and they have 20 years to do it in, before the EPA comes in and enforces an expensive solution.—John McGrann

Several different sites were discussed, until the township and McGrann’s group settled on installing the pavers as part of the Children’s Discovery Meadow. Projects using StormPave® have been approved in both commercial and residential uses, but municipalities in Pennsylvania have not been as quick to embrace permeable paving.

McGrann is determined to show that the technology works from the first rainfall. His company paid to have the pavers shipped from the plant in North Carolina to Pennsylvania. Erb Brothers Landscaping did the installation. Excavation contractor B.R. Kreider & Son helped with aggregate and labor to clear the site before the installation.

I am glad to have a real-life installation five minutes from my office to be able to encourage people to go and look at it. And I have followed up with municipal officials and we’ve been able to show that it works, and works well.—John McGrann

Guilford Technical Community College (Greensboro, NC) students level water-permeable aggregate in preparation for laying StormPave® clay pavvers in LEED certified home project.

Water permeable clay pavers play an important role in this application in Greensboro, NC, being installed by carpentry and landscaping students at Guilford Technical Community College.

Carpentry and landscaping students get an expert tutorial from Pine Hall Brick management Ted Corvey (first from left), Walt Steele (light blue shirt holding pavers) and Harold Beaty (green shirt, center).

The pavers contribute to the LEED qualification in three ways. First, they’re regionally available product. Second, the pavers come in colors that reflect heat. Third, water permeable paving is installed to allow storm water to drain between the pavers, into the special aggregate base that naturally filters the water back into the ground.

Harold Beaty presents the finer points of a "basket weave" design using water permeable pavers.

The three-bedroom, two-bath house was designed and built by students and demonstrates that green building techniques can be incorporated into a home that’s within the financial reach of many middle-income homeowners.

Pine Hall Brick and its management regularly support educational projects with product donations and by providing adjunct instruction in paver installation.

GTCC students have built houses for more than 20 years. This is, however, the first time the school has focused on green construction. The school and GHG Construction Corp., a not-for-profit that oversees GTCC’s building projects, wanted to give students an introduction to sustainable construction techniques and materials. Accordingly, the house was designed and built with an eye toward Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Water permeable paving is a must-have skill for residential construction.

ASLA noted that it when it comes to landscape elements, efficiency and sustainability reign supreme. The most popular for 2011 include low maintenance landscapes (94.2 percent), native plants (87.2), water-efficient irrigation (83.1 percent), ornamental water features (81 percent) and food/vegetable gardens (80.3 percent). Other popular sustainability features for 2011 include permeable paving (77 percent), reduced lawn (72.6 percent) and rainwater harvesting (63.6 percent).

As water permeable clay pavers demonstrate their combination of performance and beauty in municipal and institutional applications, look for more homes featuring water-conserving patios, driveways and walkways.

This fall, two water permeable paving projects using StormPave clay pavers have been  recognized in the Hardscape North America Fourth Annual Hardscape Project Awards competition.

The projects are separated by almost 800 miles and are widely different uses, but both had to treat an existing stormwater problem and while fitting in with nearby historic structures.

The Plaza at Kenan Hall, an installation at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, won for paver installation firm PaverScape Inc.

Gotts’ Court, a parking plaza and garden in Annapolis, Maryland, won an honorable mention for contractor Avon Construction.

The Plaza at Kenan Hall is in front of a main classroom building, equipped with seating and access to outdoor electrical outlets, to power laptops, lighting and sound systems. Since its completion, the 5,300-square-foot space has become a popular gathering spot. Classes sometimes meet there and after class, it's used for student-sponsored events, meals and parties, or fairs where potential employers and representatives of graduate schools set up tables and meet with students.

Gott’s Court serves as the entry point for visitors to Historic Annapolis and the Annapolis and Chesapeake Bay Visitor’s Center. Traditional red clay brick is the most common material found in the Annapolis Historic District, in both buildings and sidewalks, and Stormpave pavers match these surroundings. The project was designed to redirect stormwater to six rain gardens and from there, to an overflow pipe. In winter, it eliminates ice from building up and causing the parking lot to be shut down. In late summer and autumn, heavy rains have barely registered a trickle from the overflow pipe.

Torrents fell on the parking lot of the Annapolis & The Chesapeake Bay Visitor’s Center, paved with StormPave clay brick permeable pavers and promptly disappeared.

The 10,000-square foot parking lot is designed to direct all the rainwater to six rain gardens and from there, to an overflow pipe. Despite the volume of water, the pipe measured barely a trickle. The rain naturally flowed in between the spaces between the pavers, to an underground system of aggregates, instead of washing across the surface, picking up pollutants and carrying them to the nearest storm sewer.

This year, Hurricane Irene came first, hitting the bricks with 5.54 inches of rainfall on August 28 and on September 5 and 8, an additional 8.11 inches fell as the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee hung overhead. Results were identical to the previous year.

Gott's Court.

Landscape architect Shelley Rentsch, RLA, ALA, principal of Annapolis Landscape Architects and the designer of the parking lot, known locally as Gott’s Court, said everything worked perfectly this year, the same way this year as it had last year.

The Pine Hall Brick unit pavers worked exactly as planned and absorbed a tremendous quantity of rainfall during the Hurricane Irene inundation with stormwater rapidly disappearing through the pavers into the subgrade systems. With so many areas experiencing flooding, one could only imagine a more widespread use of this phenomenal product.—Shelley Rentsch

Case in point: The Artist’s Backyard, a joint project between NC State University’s departments of Landscape Architecture and University Housing. It’s a plaza and rain garden between two older dormitories, Owen and Turlington Halls. It uses a combination of StormPave®  permeable pavers by Pine Hall Brick, along with materials that were recycled from a building demolition. New benches anchor a gathering space where students visit with each other, read a book or text-message their friends. The area is central to campus, located near the Free Expression Tunnel and a historic courtyard.

Andrew Fox, an assistant professor at the NCSU College of Design, who is overseeing the project, said The Artists Backyard is an outgrowth of last year’s renovation at Syme Hall on East Campus. Fox pursued a $20,000 teaching grant through the NC State Provost’s Office to lead his students through a design/build exercise to improve the site from a muddy mess to a beautiful rain garden.

People noticed. Dr. Tim Luckadoo, associate vice chancellor for student affairs, who oversees housing on campus, immediately sought out Fox to talk about additional projects. And that turned into a five-year plan and $175,000 in funding to improve the landscape outside of several NC State residence halls.

Students get the real-world experience of designing and helping construct natural common areas, and the university gets cost-effective improvements to its surroundings.

Before the Artists Backyard was built, surging stormwater would carry leaves, mulch and other debris across the existing concrete sidewalk. The solution is to use Low Impact Development design techniques to slow, capture and clean stormwater on site. Cisterns and the permeable paver installation re-direct stormwater into the rain garden and the ground, effectively filtering it and preventing erosion. The soil itself was treated with compost and other materials to protect plants and help them grow. To carry out the permeable paver installation, Fox and the students turned to Fred Adams Paving of Morrisville, NC – and the students and the professionals worked side by side for weeks in the middle of a North Carolina summer.

Then, on a Saturday morning, nine days after the project was completed, thunderstorms rolled across central North Carolina and dropped 4.69 inches of rain on the new landscape. It was a 100-year flood.

“The surface water had drained into the rain garden, and it was dry, no puddling,” said Fox. “The rain garden had handled that huge pulse of rain water. After four hours, the test wells were slowly infiltrating and the water was not standing.”

From an engineering standpoint, then, the project works exactly as intended.  From an aesthetic standpoint, Fox said, the StormPave® pavers are right at home, because NC State is the “Brick Capitol” of college campuses, with brick pavers historically used in plazas and sidewalks. From an educational standpoint, it’s appropriate for students who are setting out to be landscape architects to do real hands-on projects, instead of listening to lectures about them.

And for those students who aren’t majoring in landscape architecture (those who walk through the Artists Backyard on their way to class), it’s important for them to not only enjoy their surroundings, but to use them to learn more about sustainable design and landscape management.