Why Some Greenspaces Thrive and Others Struggle

Episode Transcript

Mollie (Host)
Welcome to {Brief}ly Speaking, the SEH podcast where we tackle big topics in architecture, engineering, and construction with quick expert insights. Green spaces are in high demand for communities right now. They support environmental goals, create gathering spaces, improve quality of life, and help communities to stand out. But creating a successful green space involves much more than what gets built on opening day. The projects that deliver value for decades are often the ones that balance ambitious design with practical long-term stewardship. That means considering everything from maintenance staff and equipment to irrigation needs, budgets, and operational capacity long before construction even begins. Today we're exploring how thoughtful planning and maintenance-minded design can help communities create green spaces that remain beautiful, functional, and sustainable for years to come. Joining me on the podcast today is Carl Weissenborn, a senior landscape architect and project manager who works at the intersection of design, budgets, and long-term performance. He partners with communities and clients to guide complex projects from early planning through final design, helping teams align vision, resources, and long-term goals to create spaces that stand the test of time. Carl, welcome to {Brief}ly Speaking.

Karl (Guest)
Hi, Mollie. Good to be with you.

Mollie (Host)
We hear a lot about sustainable design. Sustainability in general is kind of a hot topic these days. What separates projects that thrive for decades from those that struggle to meet their long-term goals?

Karl (Guest)
Quite often sustainable design is the most cost effective, but it may not seem that way when you initiate a project. But over the duration of a project, a sustainable design is a long-term solution. What is missed on projects are some of the communication of the early objectives, put it that way, especially to the client or to the community. So you have to acknowledge upfront what the costs are and you have to think about the long-term solution. You need to understand that commitment long term. It's always best to follow best practices for plant establishment. You know, we always hold all this desirable. We always, for the projects that we work on, pretty much insist with our clients that we do a two-year warranty window that establishes plants and gets them up and running. And then it's important to hold the contractor to the specifications and the requirements. And I can think of a good example recently in the last couple of years where we've worked on a project in the greater Twin Cities of regional maintenance facility for a large Twin Cities area client. The project site was located in the Minnesota River Valley, and the intention of the project was to have all the grass, all the turf in native seeding, which was a great initial design intent. What was missed, unfortunately, during the couple years of construction is one of the really simple things, and that's the native grass mowing cycle in the first second year. It just wasn't instituted from the prime to a sub, probably to a second sub, to do that work. And for a multi-million dollar project, just to have literally a couple $1000 worth of effort that was missed in a mowing cycle, unfortunately the whole native grass establishment area became wheat infested. And then it became non-desirable wheat infested with Canadian thistle and all kinds of really aggressive hyper super bad weeds. So the fix that we had to institute, again, it's not to call out the prime or a sub with what was missed. It's like, well, it happened. And then we had to step in and do some corrective actions. Kudos to the client to understand and to still, to not just walk away from it and throw their hands up and say, well, we missed it or it was missed, so let's just walk away from it. It's just more effort though. I mean, once you've kind of gone down a road where, for example, for native grass establishment, If it gets infested, it's a number of steps over a period of time to get back on course.

Mollie (Host)
I feel like any homeowner understands the struggle of those very difficult weeds and the preventative steps that are important. This is just on a much larger, more expensive scale. And so I can feel the pain of, like you said, that $1,000 or a couple $1,000 decision that then led to this ultimately failing. So you kind of touched on this there, but talk to me a little bit about how designers and maintenance teams can work together to have those conversations like you were just mentioning to ensure that a project's original vision remains successful over time.

Karl (Guest)
Early in a project, a lot of this comes back when I could use the word design intent. It's communicating the design early and often up front. And it's so often that I see the maintenance or the operational people that will be after the construction of a project, installation, construction or project is done, the long-term maintenance and operations can occur over the next 20 to 30 years. And the people that have that charge on behalf of a community or a client or a developer, whoever that we're working with, quite often those operators, those managers are not at the table early to hear and to bring their viewpoint and what works for them. And quite often it's just a matter of for them to understand what the design intent, what the best course is that we're trying to institute and establish. If they're just given a headache a couple years after construction ends, they're not going to be a good stakeholder for the next project that comes down the road. So we like to institute with our clients and the folks in the communities that we work with, it's like, yeah, get a big group, a big diverse group of the people that you work with, operations and maintenance especially, and bring them to our project to hear the discussion and hear what we're trying to achieve early.

Mollie (Host)
I love that early and often conversations. I feel like is always good, but especially in these specific types of projects, because in a lot of our infrastructure, you design A pipe, you build it, you dig it out, put the pipe in, close it up, and it's expected to run the same way for years to come. Your types of projects are living. They are very variable. And so you have to kind of have those conversations on how do we keep that running in the right direction from the start. So how can understanding available staff equipment and budgets lead to more resilient and successful landscape designs? Again, we are just leading into it here. When you have those conversations, how do you know who should be at the table early and often?

Karl (Guest)
Well, one of the key objectives that we try to institute is to always be realistic. As I had mentioned that quite often a resilient, sustainable landscape quite often is a cost-effective or it is a long-term positive solution, but you can certainly plan and phase your projects and understanding what the phases may be early and potentially it's due less project initially and then do follow-up phases in the coming year or years. Great project that I can think of, Mollie, that we've worked on in the last couple years: the city of La Crosse, Wisconsin, acknowledged that they were lacking green infrastructure in their downtown core. So they captured funding or set aside funding from city budgets to institute A standalone set of projects for street tree establishment. So this wasn't a road reconstruction project. It wasn't a curb and gutter project. It wasn't reconstructing utilities, anything that's down below. But it was acknowledging that street tree that they had installed over the last 20, 30, 40 years were dead or gone, had died and gone. So it was a recognition of city leadership, city council recognizing the lack of trees and success. They demonstrated an ongoing commitment for that long term, what would be needed. They understood that a standalone project and getting the street trees installed properly using tree cells and having proper soil and air exchange and so forth. We identified a local expert, an arborist in the greater La Crosse area that was just fantastic and works around the world. He was one of the arborists out of the city of Milwaukee. He was basically working in the greater La Crosse area, but around the world on projects. So we brought him in the field with us to evaluate the existing trees. And I could look at a tree with all knowledge I have, looking at it's a street tree and say, well, this tree is probably struggling because it lacks water. And he as the expert could say, well, actually it has too much water. It's inundated. So the soil is saturated. It's not going through air exchange. So I guess back to what I acknowledged with the City of La Crosse, they understood the significance of if we have X amount of dollars to do this project yet this year, let's do the best project we can. Let's do fewer trees and then just understand we'll have two or three other follow-on projects, a standalone project for a street tree implementation. And that's the process that we're still within right now.

Mollie (Host)
I love that example. I think you can have as many different voices, but you have to have the right voices and you have to know who to ask and who are the experts in this field because they are so diverse. You would think as a landscape architect that you would have that knowledge, but you don't know everything about the trees. And I think that's okay to say. So knowing who to pull in and then knowing how to spread it out that it's okay to have a longer timeline for projects is an option on the table. Up until now, we've really talked from your standpoint. We're going to flip it now to the owners or the community leaders. So what should people in those roles consider early if they want beautiful landscapes that remain manageable for years to come?

Karl (Guest)
Well, certainly there are a whole bunch of factors. I mean, One is just the funding component. Be realistic about what it may take and be realistic about what you can accomplish. Back to my City of La Crosse example, that's a great example of council and leadership on the city level understanding what they had to work with. We have found recently that there are labor shortages either from the contractor side quite often or experienced folks in the contractor side, but city, county, public sector folks that we work with quite often, there are labor shortages. So it's being realistic to budget, be realistic to labor. Understand, just as you said moments ago, Mollie, the fact that this is living material and it's got a whole bunch of different criteria to be established. There's nothing that's a perfect bulletproof fix. And we always strive for low maintenance, but there's no such thing when you're dealing with the built environment or with landscape in the built environment to no maintenance. There's absolutely a level so it's being realistic to the ongoing maintenance. And then just understanding maybe the complexity of the systems and the complexity of what we're trying to establish. Again, I'll use that term with the design intent of what we're trying to do. Communicating with the maintenance folks. If we're doing, for example, a pond infiltration type system that has all kinds of different native plugs and has 50 different species, It's unrealistic for us to expect maintenance personnel to look and understand what's undesirable weed with what's the plant material that's intended. So then what we can bring forward in a design instead of the hyper realistic with hundreds of different varieties of plants, well maybe it's a half dozen plants, native plants, which are great plants, but the maintenance people just have to identify a half dozen plants.

Mollie (Host)
So it's a lot about having those conversations early and often, like we've said time and time again, but also training the right people who are going to be taking care of these in the long term and giving them that knowledge base to be able to be successful. So I know you've said sustainable green spaces can be budget friendly, but can these spaces hit the trifecta and also be low maintenance? What does that look like in practice?

Karl (Guest)
Absolutely. they can be low maintenance and diverse adaptive ecosystems, especially once they're established. So again, another theme just to point out is the idea that first window of two years, typically it's two years, sometimes three years for more complex or larger landscapes. two to three years getting plant material established, getting things moving in the right direction. They don't necessarily take care of themselves, but the great thing about native plants is that they can out-compete once they're established. And when I say out-compete, they can get taller and shade out weeds, keep weeds from infiltration. Not to be oversimplified, but weed seed typically grows and establishes on bare earth. So the faster that you can get the native plant material established and thriving, the better off the project. So does that make sense?

Mollie (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. So yes, it can.

Karl (Guest)
Absolutely, yeah.

Mollie (Host)
Which is exactly what everybody wants to hear, that trifecta of sustainable, budget-friendly, and low maintenance. What are the characteristics of a landscape that was designed with long-term stewardship in mind from day one? So we've kind of talked about this already. I've heard native plantings, some clear ownership expectations. What are some other ones?

Karl (Guest)
Some of the key points are always locally sourced materials. I mean, even hardscaped materials, indigenous local stone. I can think of a streetscape project where a fellow landscape architect retired a year or two ago had specified these great granite chunks. And this is in the greater St. Cloud area. And these big blocks of granite, because of the way they were specified, were sourced from Texas. So they had Texas granite. And the client was understandably concerned and paid a premium to truck granite from Texas to the greater Saint Cloud area. And the greater Saint Cloud area has all kinds of native local granite. So, I mean, that was a, in my mind, a fellow landscape architect that maybe didn't specify the material in the best way. They used the term "local reject of stone". It doesn't have to be a square it up. this beautiful piece of granite coming from Texas, if you call it, reject millstone from the quarry mill. So locally sourced materials and actually locally sourced within a geographic area for the native plants as well. I tell friends, and actually I've told clients this too, they would go to a Lowe's or Home Depot or Menards and see a plant that is half-price or 1/3 of the cost from a local nursery or a local nursery that's sourcing material from a certain specific indigenous range. And if you understand the industry, Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards can buy master contracts for hundreds of thousands of plant material outside of USDA zones. So is it a surprise that once a tree that's sourced from a garden center, if something dies, the tree suffers from sun scall, the bark pops, that tree was grown in Arkansas and it was trucked to a project in Minnesota. You know, that's a pretty simple example of a big mistake. So we always specify durable, low maintenance materials. Like I said, we like to institute the idea of a phased planting approach. Again, back to communicating early and understanding ownership expectations, what the client or what the community may be looking for so that they understand and they're realistic to what the design is hoping to achieve.

Mollie (Host)
Yeah, and I can understand the want to have some of these exotic or different types of plantings. But there really is true beauty in highlighting what is native in your community and the backing of your community and just showing that across your community. So I think that there's a lot of importance in highlighting that in those conversations as well. Our final question for today is for any communities or owners starting a project right now. What's one early conversation that you think can set them up for long-term success.

Karl (Guest)
I could think of a few key points to highlight and you'll hear some of these themes that we've already talked about. Communicate early and often. I would say be realistic. Provide good planning, good realistic planning. Be adaptive. Each site, each project is different. Work within your goals. Establish realistic criteria for implementation. It's important to identify and choose good contractors. All contractors are not equal. Unfortunately, sometimes we'll work with a prime who is a paving contractor that has no expertise and hopefully would choose a subcontractor that would have different areas of expertise. That criteria should be baked into the specifications, but sometimes that's missed. And you hate to say the clients, our clients can certainly on the public sector can have long memories about their unsuccessful projects justifiably. So understand to establish good best practices early. do good planning, follow the specifications. And then once the project is ongoing, certainly, or maybe after the project is installed, but in the near term after, ask for volunteers. Get community buy-in, follow some of these key points, and I think you'll have a successful project.

Mollie (Host)
It sounds like you just laid out the ideal kickoff meeting. All the questions that need to be brought to the table there. So, no, I think that was great advice. today's conversation reminds us that the most sustainable landscape isn't necessarily the one with all the features. It's the one that can thrive for decades after the ribbon cutting. When communities align their vision with the resources needed to support it, landscapes remain vibrant, costs become more predictable, and green infrastructure continues delivering value for years to come. Carl, thank you so much for sharing your insights on how thoughtful planning and maintenance-minded design can help communities create these spaces that are both inspiring and sustainable. And to our listeners, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any upcoming conversations to help communities plan smarter, invest wisely, and build for the future. Until next time, I'm Mollie Sabo, and this has been {Brief}ly Speaking.