Community Build Day!

Learn how to turn the barren lawn back into a thriving native community, and control stormwater runoff in the process! Join us for a rain garden and prairie build this Saturday!
Sign up here:
http://tinyurl.com/LBC-RainGardenBuild

Building our first rain garden to manage sidewalk runoff

This rain garden was sized with not only the sidewalk at the Mission Zero house in mind, but also the area of paved surfaces uphill contributing to runoff at this location. The city storm sewer (pictured) is exhibiting considerable erosion although most of the runoff currently continues to the floodplain further downhill (in which numerous homes are situated). This rain garden will capture and allow infiltration of the runoff while providing a habitat to native plants and those that live off of them. We had a great Sunday building this rain garden with Drew Lathin of http://creatingsustainablelandscapes.com.

Native landscapes: rain garden and prairies.

Drew Lathin from Creating Sustainable Landscapes taught us about building rain gardens to clean and capture runoff, and establishing native prairies; both providing habitat for local species. We're looking forward to building both of these landscapes at the Mission Zero House. The first rain gardens at this site will be built to accommodate runoff from the sidewalk in front of the house. Learn more about building these native habitats at Drew's website: http://creatingsustainablelandscapes.com

More photos from the tour: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/102314954570760866144/albums/5906138647182575617

Join us today for a rain garden tour with Drew Lathin from Creating Sustainable Landscapes!(check out his work: http://creatingsustainablelandscapes.com)

Living Future 2013 - Seattle

Living Futures unConference 2013

David Suzuki opened the Living Future unConference 2013 with a heart-felt talk which was both a reflection on the past and a call to action for the future. On the topic of environmental stewardship, he remarked on the difference in being raised in a culture which regards a mountain as a god versus one that regards it as a resource. He also explored the LF13 theme of resilience from the small to the large scale - resilience due to the diversity of cells in an organism, diversity in cultures in the human population, and the diversity of ecosystems on the planet. These themes wove through subsequent speeches by International Living Futures Institute CEO Jason McLellan and Paul Hawken, each with a unique narrative.

Here's a summary of where we are in our project right now:

UMich LBC Team heads to Seattle!

UMich LBC team delegates Emily Herbert and Devki Desai arrived at Living Future (http://living-future.org/ilfi/education-events/living-future-unconference) in Seattle last night! We worked at the registration desk yesterday evening and met a lot of new and familiar faces. It was great to catch up with our friends in sustainable design from Michigan including Bonnie Bona from the Clean Energy Coalition (http://cec-mi.org/), Neal Billetdeaux from SmithGroupJJR, Tom and Marty Buhrbecc (LBC project - Burhbecc farmhouse) and their architect Michael Klement (Architectural Resource). The Great Lakes Living Buildings Collaborative is definitely represented in Seattle this week! We are so excited for the keynote and trade show starting this evening, and will keep you posted!