Sustainable Landscaping
Extension
New England Extension programs use demonstration
gardens and lawns, publications, websites, and workshops to
educate and partner with residents, professional landscaping
organizations, retail garden centers, and garden clubs. These programs are improving the ability of homeowners
to manage sustainable landscapes thereby reducing nutrient and
pesticide pollution to ground and surface water.
Some
highlights include:
Partnerships with New England Master Gardener
Programs throughout New England provide water quality
information for volunteers responding to consumer questions.
Master Gardeners participate in a variety of landscaping projects
within each state.
Voluntary pollution prevention education programs, modeled
after the National Home*A*Syst Program, train residents
and
local volunteers in Connecticut 
,
Maine , Rhode
Island, 
and Vermont (contact: Jurij
Homziak) to identify and reduce water quality risks
in and around the home.
UMaine Cooperative Extension Watershed
Stewards ,
Safe
Home ,
and Lake*A*Syst Programs train residents to assess the impact
of lawn management techniques on water resources.
UConn Cooperative Extension L.A.W.N.S
(Learning About Water and Nutrient Strategies) Program teaches
homeowners how to protect water resources through proper
nutrient management practices for lawns and use of low input
turf species.
Connecticut
NEMO
features the Sustainable
Landscape Demonstration Project which includes water-friendly design elements that
recommend in their educational programs, including pervious parking stalls, rain gardens, an engineered grass "green"
parking lot, and bioretention areas.
Selected Accomplishments:
UMaine's Cooperative Extension’s Watershed
Stewards Program documented
that their program significantly
improved program participant knowledge level over
non-participants through quantitative and qualitative measures
(Jemison
et al. 2004 ).
Stewards scored significantly (23%) higher on the objective
test than those that had not been involved in the program.
Program participants qualitatively demonstrated much more
involvement with lake governance, implementation efforts,
and related activities.
The URI Coastal Landscapes Program conducted 2 pilot training courses for over 100 landscape professionals as part of a "coastal landscape certification" program. In the near future, RI Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) will require that landscape professionals working in CRMC jurisdiction be certified in topics ranging from rain gardens, turf management, invasive species and buffer zone re-vegetation.
Focus area members partnered with the Northeast IPM Center and Mid-Atlantic Regional Water Program to organize the present at the first Green-Blue Summit on residential pest management, nutrients, and water quality. People from across the Northeast attended the Summit. As a result, the Northeast IPM Center released an RFA for projects focused on educating residents in the Northeast on how using IPM in residential structures and landscapes can affect water quality. The summit released a listing of comments and suggestions on what the focus issues should be.
CSREES
Projects in New England
The Healthy
Landscapes Project at
URI educates
homeowners on pollution prevention best management practices
that they can implement in their backyards to protect water
quality (McCann,
2004
).
One output of the project was the creation of educational
materials on rain
gardens.
More than 500 URI Master Gardeners were trained about sustainable
landscaping practices. Over 80% of the individuals (in
Healthy Landscapes program evaluation) indicated a willingness
to change their yard care practices to better protect their
water quality. More than 54% of respondents have adopted
at least one sustainable landscaping practice.
Landscaping for water quality protection
plays a key role in the Northern
New England Lake Education and Action Project (LEAP) ,
a collaborative project between the UMaine,
UNH and UVM.
An Integrated Project between UNH, Portsmouth State College,
UConn, URI, UVM, and UMaine applies
environmental and behavioral research results to
extension efforts to reduce the application of excess nutrients
by homeowners in targeted, urbanizing neighborhoods throughout
New England.