Wednesday, February 26, 2025
By: Cara Jackson
The University of Florida Department of Landscape Architecture held its 10th annual Edward D. Stone, Jr. Lecture earlier this month. The lecture is held annually in honor of Stone and his contributions to the UF College of Design, Construction and Planning.
This year’s lecture featured keynote speaker Meg Calkins, an educator, speaker and author who discussed driving a climate-positive approach in landscape architecture.
Calkins is a North Carolina State University professor who teaches courses such as landscape architecture construction materials and methods. She is also a founding member of the Sustainable Sites Initiative, or SITES, a project rating system that evaluates landscape sustainability.
During her lecture, Calkins emphasized the urgency of addressing climate change and addressed how landscape architecture can help reduce sites’ carbon footprints. She said that 80 percent to 90 percent of the embodied carbon comes from the materials used in construction.
To combat high carbon emissions, Calkins advocated moving away from high-carbon materials such as cement and concrete. She talked about adopting a more sustainable alternative, including concrete not containing Portland cement, due to cement being 7 percent to 8 percent of global carbon emissions. Calkins presented visual data on materials used in retaining walls or decks and how they vary in their carbon impact.
Calkins recommended using alternative materials, highlighting the use of local materials within the landscape area. She also suggested considering the ecological impact of using more carbon-dense materials and talked about lowering our consumption through a circular economy of reusing and optimizing structures.
Dr. Nicholas Serrano, an assistant professor of landscape architecture, discussed the advantages of adopting a climate-positive strategy.
“It just adds to the toolbox of ways that landscape architecture can help the country and society be more prepared for whatever the future may hold,” Serrano said.
Mark Grossberg, a landscape architecture graduate student, said, “Climate change and conservation policy are what brought me to this program. So, being able to learn more about it in a deeper way—beyond just surface-level—not just saying we need to do something but understanding how to actually do it.”
During her lecture, Calkins was excited to announce the new cover of her book “Details and Materials for Resilient Sites,” which features a picture of Warsaw Uprising Mound Park in Poland.
She concluded her presentation by reiterating her three leading solutions to a climate-positive approach: reducing the embodied carbon of standard materials, decreasing consumption and using alternative materials structures.
She emphasized the importance of landscape architecture for students to understand how materials impact the environment and make sustainable choices in their work.
“I think recognizing the performance capability of landscapes and the ecosystem services they provide are key to students’ understanding of what they’re doing and why they’re doing it,” Calkins said.
The future of landscape architecture projects relies heavily on climate-friendly design, which focuses on reducing our carbon footprint one step at a time.
