Environmental / Sustainable Design

Clark & Green was successful in winning a design competition for the sustainable landscape design for Heritage Fields and Great Park Corporation offices. Utilizing an abandoned military child care facility, this LEED certified Orange County Heritage Landscape, features orange groves, flexible people gathering spaces and a California friendly and California native landscape. Bio-swales, storm water retention and re-use of onsite resources were woven throughout the design.

The Coastkeeper Garden is a southern California Heritage Water Conservation Demonstration Garden located adjacent to Santiago Canyon Community College in Orange, California. The primary objective was to reduce urban runoff through the exhibition of state of the art irrigation and drainage practices, pervious paving alternatives and use of southern California native and non-native drought tolerant plant materials. The garden not only provides an exhibition of many of our southern California native plants as an educational experience but also provides a rich, diverse park-like setting for pure enjoyment.

Long before the terms “xeriscape”, “California Friendly” and “sustainable design” became popular we have embraced a more sustainable design approach. Our interest and knowledge in natural landscape systems coupled with involvement in large master planned communities has led to providing design for numerous restoration and mitigation projects ranging from oak woodland/riparian, coastal sage scrub and grassland habitats.

The project was a partnership between Southern California Edison and Orange County Coastkeeper, and represents SCE’s “Flagship Landscape Model”, demonstrating SCE’s commitment to resource and energy efficiency in all of their facilities. A science and research based design approach with the goal of reducing overall maintenance costs by 40% and water usage by 50% while eliminating site run-off and recycling all green waste onsite. The landscape features low maintenance, low water use, southern California native and “California Friendly” plants with an emphasis on long term viability and plant succession.

The approximate two acre Butterfly Garden is a demonstration garden for public enjoyment featuring southern California native plants supporting our native butterflies. The garden was designed to support the new Ranger Interpretive Center within the park and provide outdoor education opportunities for the nearby Wagon Wheel Elementary School science programs. Many other schools within the local district also utilize the garden as an outdoor classroom.