Sharon DeBell

FYI – Public comments on the Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks Draft 2008 are now posted on the Sustainable Sites Initiative website for review. http://www.sustainablesites.org/report/

Try this website for requirements to remain accredited – scroll down to see the answers:
http://www.everblueenergy.com/leed-exam-prep-leed-2009-update.html

Here are some other resources. las pilitas nursery. 2 locations. North San Diego county (Escondido) & San Luis Obispo. http://www.laspilitas.com. website is deep with info. Another is “California Native Plants for the Garden” by Carol Bornstein, Bart O’brien & David Fross. Cachuma Press. David Fross was my Cal Natives Professor at Cal Poly, SLO. Lots of…[Read more]

Agree with Ken and Blake. There’s also some nurseries that specialize in natives. Yerba Buena Nursery south of SF has a demonstration garden with labeled plants and the owners are VERY knowledgeable. Also, North Coast Nursery and Cal Flora in Sonoma County. Also, it’s good to be mindful of the fact that California has many totaly different native…[Read more]

Katrina, to clarify, UCBG and Tilden are in Berkeley and Merritt College is in Oakland.

The South Lake Tahoe and North Lake Tahoe Demonstration Gardens show a plethora of California Native plants used in the high Sierra. These gardens give great examples of California Native plants at diffrent stages of development.

Agree with Blake — the Merritt program is great. I also volunteered at Tilden’s native nursery on Thursday mornings — propagating, etc. It was a great way to learn about natives. U.C. Botanical Garden and the Tilden Park (native) Botanical Garden are both stunning places to check out CA natives in a park setting.

you may also want to check out the horticulture program at Merritt College for i.d. classes. http://www.merrritt.edu

Rob,

There are a lot of good softwares out there, selection really depends on your situation and needs. I would “demo’ as many softwares as possible to see which one fits your office best.

For Autocad, Raincad for Autocad works well. It runs in Autocad as a toolbar, similar to Express Tools. You still have the full function of autocad while…[Read more]

I was able to find some irrigation training and I am more confident now. However, I am looking to purchase irrigation design software. What are the best choices out there? Land F/X? IrriCalc? RainCAD? Others?

yep, sure I could contribute! well done Jennifer

Whilst I am glad you all find the discussion useful – let’s avoid blank statements and overlooking the progress some applications had achieved. Every release of each application brings many new and sometimes very good features. Some of these upgrades make a huge difference and change the appeal of the software.
So for 2D – AutoCAD LT is g…[Read more]

I’ve been using Rhino and just a word of caution, it is primarily an industrial design 3D modeling program and I’ve found that it does not work well for large scale applications. It exceeds in designing small elements, which can then be exported into other programs that work better with land manipulation.

I think this conversation is great…[Read more]

After using AutoCAD for about 12 years of drafting, and then switching over to Vectorworks Landmark, I would say without hesitation that the advantages of working in Vectorworks over AutoCAD are immense. The only reason why I had been using the “industry standard” is because I didn’t seek anything better. Many take their work out of AutoCAD to do…[Read more]

Great idea for a group! As I accumulate drawings with each class, I am at a loss of what to do with it all, what is worthy to include in a portfolio and how best to create a portfolio.

Has anyone looked at Viz Terra?

As someone who spent years as a contractor before going back to school, i can tell you that often the person you deal with in the office, or the supervisor, isn’t always going to be on site when the plan implementation starts. The few LARs that I worked with back home, made it a point to make sure that all plans were easy to read/understand, or in…[Read more]

For a Landscape Architect to truy be successful as a designer, he has to be able to communicate on the level of the contractor. Not to say that he designs to the level of the contractor, (which we all know contractors are alot like water, they always take the path of least resistance…) I say that coming from alot of years of being a contractor…[Read more]

Re Justin and Glass Factory Brownfield conditions.
Is there contamination of anything other than “broken glass” and in what condition would that contaminate be? .. Glass is just another form of sand, I wonder if you could tumble the contaminated ground in something like what they tumble new bricks to make them look old. Smooth off the edges, maybe…[Read more]

In regards to mitigation measures for the redevelopment of brownfield sites, the two design options that I am most familiar with, is to install a 40mil impervious linear and or install 3′ of clean fill.
The basic concept is that you are capping the areas of contaminated soils with a liner or with soil.

In regards to the impervious liner,…[Read more]