Many urban development sites have the hallmarks of cheap landscaping efforts: mud flats where sod was tossed haphazardly, washed-out gullies that get bigger with each rainstorm, or poorly designed "wetlands" that only grow mosquitoes.
The sheer scale of development in Chicago, however, provides ample opportunities for a smart, worldchanging approach to this oft-neglected aspect of commercial construction. Green landscaping solutions not only provide an attractive, eye-pleasing finished product, but done properly it can return the land to a more natural use and invite native flora and fauna back into the mix.
Tallgrass Restoration is one such bioneering firm. I met Brian Kapusta, a sales associate with the company, at the Chicago Sustainable Business Alliance networking breakfast on January 19. As he describes it, Tallgrass Restoration (with offices in Illinois and Wisconsin) works with large or small clients to restore native plant communities to the site. This process involves several aspects of ecological stewardship, including controlling invasive species, resculpting the landscape where necessary to reduce erosion and re-introducing alienated species. Kapusta's client roster includes companies like Motorola, Discover Financial, Verizon and Kellogg's -- all companies with the ability to make such landscaping solutions mainstream, by the simple virtue of their size and clout.
Considered on a macro-level, the work of Tallgrass and similar firms around the country amounts to corporate-level permaculture. And despite its application at office parks and retail strip centers (certainly the bane of a purist permacultural approach), the tenets remain the same: crafting sustainable habitats in cooperation with (not opposition to) the natural environment.
