Stroud Educators at Work How To Create Carbon Neutral Landscapes: The New, Green Esthetic
This year Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania will greet nearly 800,000 visitors, each of whom will walk its grounds and take in the views that have made the botanical gardens a destination for travelers from around the world. Longwood’s access to such a large audience with an expressed interest in landscape esthetics and horticulture is exactly what made collaborating with them a no-brainer for Stroud™ Water Research Center scientists and educators who wish to highlight the environmental benefits of best management practices for landscaping while simultaneously reshaping the public’s visual aesthetic to align with more carbon neutral choices.
Your Livable Landscape: Cultivating an Ecosystem Esthetic, a joint program funded by the National Science Foundation, will allow the two organizations to focus on teaching the public about landscaping techniques that produce a smaller carbon footprint. Central among the techniques will be those that reduce rainwater runoff, which mobilizes carbon and returns it to the atmosphere as CO2, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global climate change.
THE ART OF CHANGING BEHAVIOR “Just giving people a good reason to do something doesn’t typically change a negative behavior all by itself,” says Susan Gill, Director of Education for the Stroud Water Research Center. “We’ve got to demonstrate that the new, desired behavior is both achievable and, in this case, also beautiful.” What better place to showcase that behavior in practice than at Longwood Gardens, a place synonymous with beautiful landscapes and widely respected for its horticultural education programs?
For years Longwood Gardens has utilized integrated pest management, constructed wetlands to increase water infiltration, planted meadows with native wildflowers to reduce water use, and practiced ecologically sound forestry methods. Tom Brightman, Land Steward for Longwood Gardens, sees the collaboration with the Stroud Water Research Center as a wonderful opportunity to share these practices, which mirror Longwood’s core values, with guests. “Although we’ve shared some of these methods with our visitors in the past,” he says, “this new program will model and highlight a few simple and effective behaviors at a time when so many people are interested in adopting sustainable practices.”
Brightman noted that, while Longwood Gardens has adopted sustainable practices for years, it is constantly seeking to implement the newest, most innovative and most effective methods. Better incorporating rainwater and runoff from impervious surfaces into the landscape is a strategic goal of the organization, and it helps advance Longwood’s long-standing commitment to conservation and sustainable practices.
The Your Livable Landscape: Cultivating an Ecosystem Esthetic program will include the development of new interpretive materials for use at Longwood Gardens and a video library for visitors, students and professionals, intended to demonstrate the “how tos” of best practices. Finally, a series of public lectures slated for 2012 and a newsletter will provide a wider audience with access to knowledge and tips about carbon-neutral landscaping.
This year Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania will greet nearly 800,000 visitors, each of whom will walk its grounds and take in the views that have made the botanical gardens a destination for travelers from around the world. Longwood’s access to such a large audience with an expressed interest in landscape esthetics and horticulture is exactly what made collaborating with them a no-brainer for Stroud™ Water Research Center scientists and educators who wish to highlight the environmental benefits of best management practices for landscaping
while simultaneously reshaping the public’s visual aesthetic to align with more carbon neutral choices. 
THE ART OF CHANGING BEHAVIOR
© 2010 Stroud Water Research Center. Stroud and the Stroud Water Research Center logo are trademarks and the Leaf Pack Network is a registered trademark of the Stroud Water Research Center. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.