The Crosby Arboretum: A Sustainable Regional Landscape

Epilogue

110 EPILOGUE The Crosby Arboretum is also a form of development and upon its completion has the opportunity to demonstrate a remarkable array of alternate techniques which can be displayed, monitored, implemented, and promoted. —Andropogon Associates, “Outline for Developing the First-Year Program of the Crosby Arboretum,” 1983 The Crosby Arboretum is dedicated to showing and explaining to visitors how natural processes work in the Piney Woods region of the Gulf Coast. Future generations will see a much different forest, just as early visitors saw the transformation of young shrubs from an open field. When they considered its possibilities as an educational facility, Crosby’s founders looked around with fresh eyes and responded in new voices. Ed Blake observed that the arboretum “pioneered ways of re-thinking and re-making our place in nature. It is an early initiative of developing a living structure , a green building, in ways that enable this world’s living infrastructure, in partnership with humans, to re-make itself in sustainable ways.”1 Thirty years after the Crosby Arboretum’s conception, sustainability has become a major goal of many new architectural and landscape projects. Two organizations have become prominent leaders in the promotion of sustainable projects: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES). LEED has set the architectural standards for structures and neighborhoods to achieve minimum criteria for sustainable buildings.2 SITES defines the categories and standards for a project’s sustainable landscape development.3 Both of these certifications help to establish important measurable qualities of sustainable planning, design, and construction. But well before the green emphasis of the landscape and architectural Epilogue | 111 professions, Andropogon Associates and Fay Jones had set new parameters for ecological and sustainable design in both landscape architecture and architecture at the Crosby Arboretum. Deep-seated beliefs in a synergistic harmony between human needs and the natural world motivated these accomplishments. The core principles established by Andropogon Associates for the Crosby Arboretum still resonate today as important criteria to establish a living, thriving sustainable landscape. Applying these key ecological concepts to our gardens and public spaces allows for the dynamic nature of life in which to shape our environments. Many management strategies used today do not encourage the conditions for biological life and the utilization of ecological process. And while these modern landscapes may appear to be clean and green, they can actually be impoverished landscapes with little ecological value. It is useful to revisit a few key principles adopted by the Crosby Arboretum to remind us of how they apply to our own landscapes: ECOLOGICAL DESIGN The ecological processes of the site would determine Crosby Arboretum’s design and management. The extensive studies of Pinecote’s hydrology, soils, vegetation, microclimates, and other factors directed placement of all buildings and exhibits. The locations of drier soils governed where structures would occur, thus preventing costly soil excavation and replacement, and the locations of wetlands influenced where aquatic features and drainage corridors would be placed in the Master Plan. Interesting vegetative features, such as groupings of pine trees or colonies of ferns, were identified as unique features to preserve and manage. This attention to the land follows Ian McHarg’s dictum to design with nature. There are plenty of projects that successfully preserve or enhance the preexisting features of a site. The American Society of Landscape Architects’ annual awards program and SITES’s case studies often display successful projects that showcase excellent design married with good landscape ecology. The emerging field of urban landscape ecology is deconstructing the perceived 112 | The Crosby Arboretum barriers between “natural places” and urban ones by recognizing that all landscapes add or take from a functioning ecosystem. Our land management choices and strategies determine the level of an urban space assessment of its actual ecological value. The Crosby Arboretum, the Cedar River Watershed Education Center near Seattle, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin are outstanding examples of ecologically designed landscapes. These facilities have an opportunity to teach local landowners about the design strategies and land management techniques they use, and thereby create a more informed public. Importantly, these centers discuss how healthy ecosystems can be created for a variety of land use types—whether residential, commercial, municipal, or industrial. CHANGE The Crosby Arboretum site will “change dramatically over time.” Faced with an abandoned pasture and scattered pine trees, the arboretum’s designers knew that it would...