by CeCe Haydock, ASLA, LEED AP, SITES AP

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.

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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.

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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.

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