A Garden Built to Benefit People & Nature: Visit the First SITES certified Residential Landscape on the East Coast!

Date: Thursday September 19th, 2013 (Rain Date: Friday September 20th: you will be notified in the event of a rain cancelation, the tour will go on if it is only raining lightly!)

Time: 5:30-7:00 p.m.

Location: Creek Road, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Directions will be emailed to registered participants prior to the event. Please make all efforts to car pool - on site parking is limited.

Registration is required. Only the first 25 registrants will be able to attend this lecture and tour. If there is enough interest we will make every effort to add an additional tour date. REGISTRATION IS NOW FULL! If you would like to be put on a waiting list please send an email to mpc@whiteclay.org. 

Come join local landscape architect, Margot Taylor, on a personal and up close tour of her property, a 3-star certified sustainable SITES project. The Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES), is an international program that evaluates and rates sustainable practices in Design, Construction, and Maintenance of landscapes. The new rating system gives credits for the sustainable uses of water, the conservation of soils, wise choices of vegetation and materials, and design that supports human health and well-being. The Taylor property is now developed as a landmark demonstration site for sustainable land practices. This accomplishment marks the second certification by SITES of a residential property world-wide and the first on the east coast.

Presentation will provide overview of SITES program, how residential project met standards, and include a hands-on demonstration/ activity on a sustainable landscape practice.  A site tour will follow the presentation.

Overview

The property demonstrates a variety of ways to make the home landscape sustainable, beautiful, and fun: (1) Storm water conveyances & rain garden, (2) green roof & straw bale hut, (3) drip irrigation, (4) Reuse of construction materials, and (5) recycled garden art.

The SITES program is ultimately about rebuilding a site's ecosystem services. Sustainable Landscapes Give Back, providing natural benefits that are essential to daily life, like cleaning air and water, reducing floods, combating climate change, and other natural benefits that support life on the earth.  Conventional landscape practices unintentionally often work against nature by ignoring, reducing or eliminating beneficial ecosystem services.  Sustainable landscape practices rebuild and optimize natural system processes and in doing so begin to repair the web of life by restoring environmental and human health and well being, one garden at a time.

Sustainable practices spotlight the following areas:

• Water; • Soil; • Vegetation; • Material Selection; and • Human Health and Well-Being.

The Christina Basin Pollution Control Strategy is designed to reduce the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and bacteria in the polluted waters of the Christina Basin which is made up of the Brandywine, Christina, Red Clay and White Clay watersheds. SITES requires applicants to address control of pollutants of concern for project site watershed, in this case the Red Clay Creek.  The Red Clay Creek is impaired in area of property for the above pollutants and the addition of sediment.  The property extensive storm water management BMP's and state of the art wastewater treatment systems serve to eliminate contribution of known basin pollutants into the Red Clay and ultimately the Christina Basin.  Presentation will explain design, construction, operations, and maintenance responses that are adaptable and affordable at the residential project scale and reduce sources on non-point pollutants into local waterways.

Biography: Margot Taylor, RLA PA & DE, Environmental Consultant, Environmental Educator

Margot Taylor utilizes her 29 years of experience in landscape architecture, resource conservation, and environmental education to design/ develop and manage an array of ecological restoration, land management, and environmental design and advocacy projects through her consulting practice.  Her expertise includes riparian and forest habitat restoration; a holistic approach to land, vegetation and soil resource management; design of integrated and natural process-based stormwater management systems; design, construction, operations and management of sustainable landscapes; and procedural and documentation requirements that meet the Sustainable Sites Initiative standards.

She has a Bachelor’s of Science in Environmental Design, a Master’s level certificate in Education, has taught landscape architecture at Temple University, is a member of Delaware’s Forest Stewardship Committee and an advisor for Kennett Township on resource conservation and best management practices through leadership roles as chair/ member on the Environmental Advisory Council and Red Clay Scenic By-way Committee. For kicks she mountain bikes, kayaks and bows a Celtic fiddle style.

White Clay Creek Wild and Scenic River Expansion Act Passes the Senate!

The Senate voted unanimously this past Wednesday to pass the White Clay Creek Wild and Scenic Expansion Act, S.393. This legislation, cosponsored by Delaware Senators Coons and Carper and Pennsylvania Senator Casey will add nine more stream miles under the federal designation, the majority of which are located in Pennsylvania's New Garden Township.

It is now up to the House of Representatives to determine whether this bill will become law. The bill, if enacted by Congress, will provide added protection and enhanced conservation measures with out any added cost to tax payers. Pennsylvania Representative Pitts and Delaware Representative Carney are cosponsoring the House bill, H.R. 869. Please contact your representatives and let them know your support their actions.

Read full article on Senator Coons' Blog

Learn more about the Expansion Act here.

Volunteers Remove Invasive Species at Curtis Mill Site in Newark, DE.

 NEWARK — Volunteers helped clear invasive vines and other plants from around White Clay Creek at the site of a future city park Saturday.

“We’re removing some of the invasive plants so the native plants have a chance to come back,” said April Schmitt, a member of the Friends of White Clay Creek Preserve and Wilmington Trail Club.

Schmitt and members of Boy Scout Troop 255 of Newark worked on the project, along with Newark city workers.

The city is planning a public park at the site of the old Curtis Paper Mill, an area with a history stretching back more than 200 years.

The first paper mill there opened in 1798, according to the National Park Service’s Historic American Engineering Record.

In 1848, brothers George B. Curtis and Solomon Minot Curtis bought it and called it “Nonantum Mill,” from the American Indian name of the Massachusetts area where their family made paper. In 1926, the family sold the mill to outside stockholders, who renamed it Curtis Paper Co.

The mill closed in 1975. The city bought it in 1999 and razed everything but the smokestack in 2008. Restoring the smokestack was found to be too expensive, so it, too, was torn down.

Schmitt said the area was choked with multiflora rose, Oriental bittersweet, Japanese honeysuckle and other invasive species.

“The beauty of a forest is to see a diversity of plants,” Schmitt said. “When some of the ones come in from overseas, they don’t have any competitors here, so they just grow and grow and grow, and then they shade out everything else. So you can look in areas and see nothing but three plants, instead of seeing 25.”

Clearing them out helps restore biological diversity to the area, she said.

“The amount of native plants that come back is just astounding,” Schmitt said.

Contact Mike Chalmers at 324-2790 ormchalmers@delawareonline.com. Subscribe at facebook.com/MTChalmers or follow on Twitter at @MTChalmers.