The holiday weekend is now over and the month of June is upon us. Pretty soon the summer season will officially start, and we can continue to focus our efforts on the landscape around us. The Green Building Journal this month will focus on sustainable landscape design, which goes along very well with the start of the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) Pilot Program.

This program first started as separate projects within the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and then in 2005 both groups joined together at a Sustainable Sites Summet in Austin Texas. By 2006 the United States Botanical Garden joined as a major player, and now over 11 other stakeholder groups are involved including the US Green Building Council. SITES is the first rating system for sustainable landscapes, and as I mentioned this month marks the start of the Pilot Program with over 175 projects involved. For the next two years a Super Bowl village, industrial park, and power plant among other locations will be participating in environmentally friendly land development.

Did you know that there are a number of green rating systems covering building design and construction other than LEED?

Green building certification systems cover national, state and regional levels and all vary in terms of credit categories and program fees. Three in particular fall within the State of California: California Green Builder, GreenPoint Rated and Built Green Santa Barbara.

Just yesterday the Sustainable Sites Initiative unveiled the first national rating system for sustainable landscapes. This system covers all three sections of the process: design, construction, and maintenance and applies to both sites with or without buildings. It was made possible through a partnership with the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the US Botanic Garden.

Nancy Somerville, the current Executive Vice President and CEO of ASLA explains that "while the carbon-neutral performance remains the holy grail for green buildings, sustainable landscapes move beyond a do-no-harm approach." What she is referring to is the ability of natural landscapes to sequester carbon and filter out toxics in the environment. Carbon dioxide, as many people are aware by now, is a potent green house gas (GHG) that has just recently been named by the EPA as a toxic gas that must be regulated. Plants naturally take up carbon in the atmosphere in order to give off valuable oxygen. In addition vegetation act as natural filters that trap and break down chemicals in the environment, especially in water before it permeates to subterranean groundwater.