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Landscapes and Outdoor Spaces

One approach green museums are taking to improve sustainability is to consider their outdoor spaces and landscape design. Greening outdoor spaces provides multiple benefits beyond aesthetics and museums are increasingly using their outdoor spaces to further sustainable strategies and educational goals. According to the National Clearing House for Educational Facilities, there are many types of educational, recreational, and social skills that may be successfully taught outdoors. Outdoor museum spaces include pathways, trails, pavilions, picnic areas, fountains, courtyards, waste management areas, rooftops, and the greater surrounding environment. Whether a new facility or an existing one, green museums use these outdoor areas to implement sustainable practices. For instance, incorporating native plants, wetlands, bioswales, rain gardens, butterfly gardens, vegetable gardens, and green roofs are all ways museums can maximize the use of and green their grounds. Additionally, the natural surrounding environment can be an integral part of the green museum (where the land is part of the museum). Incorporating these outdoor spaces provides a more flexible learning environment with greater educational opportunities. Outdoor spaces allow for hands-on projects that promote environmental awareness and are an ideal catalyst for community involvement.

Increasingly, green museums are incorporating sustainable thinking in their outdoor planning. For example, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum designed a rooftop that won the 2003 Chicago Green Roof Award. The living portion of the roof reduces the volume of storm water runoff and solar panels generate electricity used by the museum below. The Pittsburgh Botanic Garden is working on a reclamation project to heal its land that was once used for coal mining. The project tells a powerful story of ecological change over time and restoration. In the summertime, Walker Art Museum uses its outdoor space, Open Field, for public programs and as a gathering place that brings together imagination, recreation, relaxation, and exploration. The Natural History Museum of Utah prides itself on being a model for environmental sustainability. The exterior of the facility was designed to respect and reflect the natural world by blending in with the surrounding environment.

The ability to quantify the performance of outdoor spaces is important to be a trusted example in the green museum community. There are multiple rating systems and interactive tools online and there is a growing consultancy field aimed at helping museums audit, develop baselines, and benchmark their performance. One strategy for museums going green is to become LEED Certificated. In 2000, the US Green Building Council (USGBC) introduced the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system that ranks sustainability in buildings and operations. To date, LEED is focused mostly on structures and development, while landscape issues are minimally addressed. The Sustainable SITES Initiative (SITES) is a new benchmark and rating system that was created, as a joint venture by the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the United States Botanic Garden. Modeled after the LEED program, SITES is a work in progress to establish benchmarks and a rating system that addresses site selection, landscape design, construction, operations, maintenance and monitoring. Currently SITES is in the pilot project phase, and will be completed in June 2012. In November 2009, "Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009" was released which includes the SITES rating system within five areas of focus for the pilot process; hydrology, soils, vegetation, materials, and human health and well-being. While LEED focuses on energy, the key to SITES is ecosystem services.
Ecosystem services are benefits provided by natural ecosystems such as:

• Climate regulation
• Clean air, soil, water
• Water supply regulation
• Soil erosion / sediment control
• Habitat and pollination
• Decomposed waste integration
• Human health and well being
• Food and organic products
• Cultural, educational, and aesthetic value
• Flood impact mitigation, among others.
  

SITES shows that when assessing overall sustainability, the museum landscape is equally important to the building structure. However, like any operational decision, the appropriate sustainable design techniques must balance with the museum's mission. It helps to articulate what learning outcomes are involved and what the long-term plan is for the space.