SvR Design Co.
Specialty: Site restoration, landscapes using sustainable materials, play fields and play areas
Management: Co-presidents Peg Staeheli and Tom von Schrader
Founded: 1989
Headquarters: Seattle
Projects: Tregaron, a housing project planned for a historic site in Washington, D.C.; the Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel for the city of Seattle; High Point Redevelopment right of way landscape for Seattle Housing Authority
More of Peg Staeheli’s clients are starting to look below ground.
Rather than settling for just putting a few inches of topsoil on packed dirt, they are paying attention to how good below-surface conditions affect above-surface conditions, said Staeheli, a landscape architect.
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Staeheli said more of her customers are beginning to recognize that a site will function better if the soils are prepared better.
They understand that the soil “has a value not just an aesthetic,” Staeheli said.
The effects of this type of thinking and doing on a large scale can be seen in New York’s Central Park, where fields are aerated and fenced off from people for a season at a time, she said.
“It’s like a major habitat in an urban environment,” she said.
Focusing on runoff
More attention also is being paid by clients to the effects of runoff on waterways, she said. Some national companies who hire landscape architects are starting to go beyond government requirements in doing projects that keep runoff from polluting groundwater, Staeheli said.
“What they’re recognizing now is if they do them a little better, they can actually use them for PR,” she said.
Another trend is the collaboration among clients and landscape architects, civil engineers, geotechnical engineers, arborists and contractors in developing, redeveloping and maintaining sites, she said.People are recognizing “that the end result is better if we listen and work together,” she said.
Too many pesticides
Yet while there is a trend toward creating a healthier environment, many in the landscape maintenance industry still rely too heavily on the use of pesticides and herbicides, she said.
“It’s going to take awhile to get us away from a chemical-based approach,” she said.
The use of chemicals can be reduced by improving the soil, which makes plants grow better, Staeheli said. When plants thrive, they naturally crowd out weeds. More healthy plants are less likely habitat for pests than weak ones, she said.