Cece Haydock

The Power of Measurable Outcomes in Proving Economic Value: A Collection of Resources & Tools

ASLA staff1 Comment

by CeCe Haydock, ASLA, PLA, SITES AP, LEED AP, WEDG

ASLA 2021 Professional Communications Honor Award. Sanctum. Los Angeles, CA. Evan Mather, FASLA / image: Calvin Abe, FASLA

Let Your Clients Know: Financial Savings of SITES Certification

When discussing the value of SITES® certification, the conversation often focuses on its environmental and social benefits: healthier landscapes, better stormwater management, and improved biodiversity. While these benefits are well documented and increasingly recognized, many clients want to understand the financial case. After all, sustainable projects must not only improve ecosystems but also demonstrate long-term economic efficiency. Fortunately, years of research, case studies, and performance metrics make it clear that SITES is not just good for the planet—it’s also good for the bottom line.

The Economics of Performance-Based Landscapes

The Landscape Architecture Foundation’s Landscape Performance Series Case Study Briefs is a searchable database of over 200 exemplary built projects with quantified environmental, financial, economic, and social benefits. Note: one can also view SITES projects (see the ‘Tags’ search dropdown).

Additionally, the American Society of Landscape Architects provides various research and case studies to demonstrate economic benefits. For example, in a recent study, nature-based solutions can be constructed for 5-30% less and maintained for 25% less than conventional gray infrastructure. The Landscape Performance + Metrics Primer highlights the power of measurable outcomes in proving financial value. For example, landscapes designed with sustainability in mind can reduce irrigation needs, lower maintenance costs, and extend the lifespan of infrastructure. By tracking metrics such as water savings, energy reductions, and avoided costs, landscape architects can present clients with quantifiable evidence that sustainable strategies pay for themselves over time.

Continue reading →

HELP on Long Island: Ecology Training at the First Audubon Preserve

ASLA staff4 Comments

by CeCe Haydock, ASLA, PLA, SITES AP, LEED AP, WEDG

image: CeCe Haydock

In the past ten years, ecological landscape design has become the prevalent style; climate change, pollinators, and clean water are some of the drivers for this shift away from formal, high-maintenance landscapes. While many designers are both practitioners and advocates, the landscape management industry is slower to make the switch. That is exactly the motivation for the recent HELP: Habitat and Ecosystems Land Pro three-session course in March.

The classroom setting was the historic Theodore Roosevelt Bird Sanctuary and Audubon Center, the first Audubon Center created in 1923. The site was originally designed by the Olmsted Brothers with attracting birds the focal point. The Sanctuary was recently redesigned by Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects and is adjacent to Roosevelt’s final resting place in a small cemetery.

Continue reading →

Transporting SITES to Washington

ASLA staff2 Comments

by CeCe Haydock, ASLA, PLA, SITES AP, LEED AP, WEDG

The Atlanta BeltLine’s Historic Old Fourth Ward, a SITES pilot project / image: Aaron Coury, courtesy of the Atlanta BeltLine

“Though the word beautification makes the concept sound merely cosmetic, it involves much more: clean water, clean air, clean roadsides, safe waste disposal, and preservation of valued old landmarks as well as great parks and wilderness areas.

To me…beautification means our total concern for the physical and human quality we pass on to our children and the future.”

– Lady Bird Johnson, “The Environmental First Lady”

With these word, Kevin Burke, FASLA, Design Director, Atlanta BeltLine, Brandon Hartz, ASLA, PLA, SITES AP, LEED AP, Design Director of Landscape Architecture for the General Services Administration (GSA), and I introduced the concept of the SITES v2 Rating System to members of the Standing Committee on Landscape and Environmental Design of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) on one early January 2024 day in Washington, D.C. There were approximately 30 landscape architects and engineers in the room, with many more virtually because of TRB’s large membership. Focusing on sustainability and the massive US transportation system, the presenters borrowed the words of Lady Bird Johnson, who advocated for both beauty and environmental function of roadways throughout the country.

The Standing Committee on Landscape and Environmental Design, comprised mostly of landscape architects, was one of many committees which convened in Washington for the annual TRB conference. During four days of presentations, panels, and internal meetings, approximately 10,000 transportation researchers and practitioners gathered to share diverse knowledge related to all sectors of transportation.

For the presentation “The Atlanta BeltLine: Railroad Corridor to Sustainable Link,” I introduced the SITES v2 Rating System and its relevance to transportation projects. In the SITES system, design is divided into major areas—soil and vegetation, water, materials, and human health and well-being—and is similar to LEED in concept and practice.

Continue reading →

Voices of Women in Landscape Architecture, Part 2

ASLA staff6 Comments
Clockwise from left: Aida Curtis, FASLA, and her team in action / image: Curtis + Rogers Design Studio; Kathryn Talty, ASLA / image: Lisa FitzSimons Photography; CeCe Haydock, ASLA

ASLA’s Women in Landscape Architecture Professional Practice Network (WILA PPN) is sharing the next trio of profiles of women in the profession (see last week’s set right here). If you’d like to be featured, the PPN’s call for submissions will remain open, with profiles being shared on an ongoing basis.

Submit a WILA profile!

These profiles will appear on the PPN’s LinkedIn group, Facebook group, and here on The Field. This post includes Kathryn Talty, ASLA, Aida Curtis, FASLA, and CeCe Haydock, ASLA. Stay tuned for more WILA profiles in the coming weeks as our celebration of women in landscape architecture continues.

Kathryn Talty, ASLA

What inspired you to pursue a career in landscape architecture?

Though I didn’t realize it early on, my childhood years, dependent on the facilities of the Chicago Park District, were the most influential on my career path. Who knew that a city kid with one single tree on her entire block would become a landscape architect? Hours and hours in the summer biking through McKinley Park or taking tennis lessons at Gage Park formed my deep devotion to public green space. I intended to pursue an advanced degree in architecture while I was an undergrad, but while taking site design classes in the landscape architecture department, I realized I was “of the land.”

Continue reading →

Precious Oasis

ASLA staff1 Comment

by CeCe Haydock, ASLA, LEED AP, SITES AP

Hyssop, thoroughwort, goldenrod, and little bluestem / image: CeCe Haydock

The poetry of sustainability is illustrated by a SITES pilot project, the Hempstead Plains Interpretive Center, certified silver in 2015.

Sandwiched between a college campus and a heavily trafficked highway, the nineteen acres of the Hempstead Plains remain just as they were before humans set foot on Long Island: a native Eastern prairie. The Plains once comprised more than 40,000 acres before becoming suburbanized. Today, this precious oasis of grasses and forbs—paired with the new Education Center, made from recycled shipping containers and topped with a green roof—serves as an outdoor classroom for all ages of students.

Continue reading →

Springfield MA Welcomes Ecological Landscaping

Leave a comment
image: Ecological Landscaping Association

image: Ecological Landscaping Association

Celebrating twenty years of promoting environmentally safe and beneficial landscape practices, the Ecological Landscaping Association (ELA) held their early March annual conference in Springfield, MA. While originally a New England organization, the group’s influence has spread to the mid-Atlantic states; ELA now boasts over 300 professional, business, and community members.

This year’s conference was held over two days and offered intensive workshops on urban landscapes and wetland restorations, as well as individual presentations on design, pest management, soil and water. CEU credits were given to landscape architects, as well as arborists, master gardeners, foresters, and pesticide applicators. Presenters included a practitioner from California who spoke on “water neutral” gardens using gray water, as well as a geneticist who dug deep into the subject of soil microbes and the use of beneficial biological products.

Continue reading →

Springfield MA Welcomes Ecological Landscaping

Leave a comment
image: Ecological Landscaping

Celebrating twenty years of promoting environmentally safe and beneficial landscape practices, the Ecological Landscaping Association (ELA) held their early March annual conference in Springfield, MA. While originally a New England organization, the group’s influence has spread to the mid-Atlantic states; ELA now boasts over 300 professional, business, and community members.

Continue reading →