NCCC Horticulture Offers Seminar on Landscape Architecture in WNY

With spring in the air, the Niagara County Community College Horticulture Program is holding the first of two horticulture seminars April 17 from 9 a.m. to noon titled “Landscape Architecture in WNY – The Past and The Future”.  The seminar series is presented as part of the USDA Agriculture Education Challenge Grant awarded to NCCC.  The seminar will explore the unique landscape architectural heritage of Western New York. Then, look to the future with the Sustainable Sites Initiative and green techniques to preserve and promote the beauty in the environment.  Nancy Knechtel, professor of Arts & Media Design at NCCC, will speak about the contributions of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to Western New York’s landscape.  Joy Kuebler, registered landscape architect, will delve into the Sustainable Sites Initiative and its value to the preservation of landscape architectural heritage.  Greg Robinson, Olmsted Park’s landscape architect, will talk about the Olmsted Parks Conservancy and its master plan.  The seminar is in room C-161 with on-site registration at 8:30 a.m. Admission is $5 in advance or $7 at the door. Early registration is recommended by calling 716-614-6470 or for more information contact NCCC Horticulture Program Coordinator and Certified Nursery and Landscape Professional (CNLP) Carolyn Stanko at cstanko@niagaracc.suny.edu

NCCC Horticulture Offers Second Seminar on Spring Gardening

Now that the spring bulbs are blooming, the Niagara County Community College Horticulture Program is holding the second of two horticulture seminars May 1 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. titled “Gardening Galore! Get Ready for Spring”. The seminar series is presented as part of the USDA Agriculture Education Challenge Grant awarded to NCCC.  NCCC Horticulture faculty will spend the morning seminar exploring landscape design, lawn care, container gardening, tree & shrub maintenance, and more. Attendees will learn the latest trends and environmentally-friendly ways to create and care for their landscapes.  Speakers at the seminar include Carolyn Stanko, NCCC Horticulture Program Coordinator and Certified Nursery and Landscape Professional (CNLP); Tom Mitchell, NCCC horticulture adjunct faculty member, retired McKinley High School horticulture teacher, and CNLP; Joe Territo, NCCC horticulture adjunct faculty member, Buffalo State College Supervisor of Grounds, and certified arborist; and Margaret Lapp, NCCC horticulture adjunct faculty member, and Cornell University landscape architecture graduate.  The seminar is in room C-161 with on-site registration at 8:30 a.m. Admission is $8 in advance or $10 at the door. Early registration is recommended by calling 716-614-6470 or for more information contact Carolyn Stanko at cstanko@niagaracc.suny.edu

Rules:

1. In order to keep this fair, please email your answers to jkuebler@jklastudio.com with the subject being “JKLA Scavenger Hunt” [we wouldn't want anyone copying others answers! (= ]

2.  Entries must be submitted by Friday, March 19th, no later than 11 AM.

3. It will be necessary to browse through our website [www.jklastudio.com], facebook page, and blog page [jklastudio.wordpress.com]  in order to find all of the answers. This will require some searching!

4. 1 point for every correct question

5. In the event of a tie, we will place all tied names in a hat and randomly select the winner

6. PRIZE: 2 tickets to the Sabres v. Ottawa game on Friday, March 26th.  [Section 304, row 2]

7. We will announce the Winner Friday afternoon (March 19th) on our Facebook page, so be sure to check back!!

8. Good Luck!!

Here are the questions:

1. What year did JKLA become an Erie County Certified Women Business Enterprise?

2. Who had this to say about Joy and the JKLA team? : “Joy is an upbeat, creative, and competent designer who delivers an imaginative product on time and within budget. What more could you ask for?”

3. JKLA has done projects for Acacia Park, The Rapids Bus Transfer Facility, and Midway State Park. On which page of the website can these projects be found?

4. What is the name of the article from December 19^th, 2008

5. Which project features two decks, a water feature and a fire pit?

6. Which universities did Lynn attend?

7. For which project will JKLA ” provide ecosystem elements such as: a pond, stream, rain garden or “bog” environment, meadow, forest, bedrock layer and mountain areas. In addition a lawn area is included to provide a group instruction area. Functional areas were developed alongside the faculty and principal as well as specific site needs to meet NYS Regents level science lab practicals.”

8. In which issue of LA magazine was the JKLA green roof featured?

9. What is the last award list on our website that Joy has won?

10.  What product was recently featured on Amazon.com?

11.  You may have to do some digging for this one: What was our very first Facebook photo album?

12.  Joy was recently “insulted” by a building engineer. What name did he call her?

13.  On February 11, JKLA posted a link to which website that discusses all the things we love at JKLA?

14.  What announcement did JKLA make on November 7^th, 2009 via Facebook note?

15.  What is the name of the garden club to which Joy recently gave her “Residential Sustainability: The Jr. League Show House Case Study” talk?

16.  Our blog post on October 19 was an announcement for what?

17.  How many blog posts did JKLA make in November of 2009?

18.  In an early blog post, JKLA described something you should NEVER do when designing a crosswalk. What should you never do?

19.  What was our BIG REMINDER! in January?

20.  Which two talks were mentioned in a January post on our blog page?

Dan Kuebler – Sustainable Irrigation Not related to this Kuebler, but an interesting post on sustainable irrigation methods

Re-TreeWNY! A call out to Re-Tree and Extreme Makeover, scroll down to see the pic of our friends Carolyn Stanko and Art Traver!

Medical Herbman Interesting story about a traveling herb cafe project… check it out

WNY AmeriCorps and the Statler AmeriCorps getting involved with Statler, you know something will happen now. Move the politicians and nay-sayers out of the way and let the grass-roots, get stuff done people in to handle things!

February 5th:

Nurserymen’s Trade Show & Education Conference

Joy will be discussing green roofs and sustainability. Follow the link above for more information, and to see a full brochure and schedule of events.

March 6th:

Ithaca’s Native Plants Symposium

Joy’s Topic: Creating a More Sustainable Home Landscape: Strategies for greening the residential landscape for homeowners and designers, including green roofs, rainwater collection, permeable pavements and rain gardens. (Follow the link above for a full brochure and schedule).

Joy will also be giving a talk to a local garden club in February, and will be at NCCC in April for a Sustainable Sites talk, and possibly at the Stormwater Coalition on March.  Keep checking back for more information!

I have to admit when I first saw the advertisement for the presentation I questioned why a group such as Leadership Buffalo would bring in a speaker from Saratoga when we have several award winning Landscape Architecture offices that do quite a bit of bike and greenway trail work right here in Buffalo.  You all know how I feel about promoting Buffalo from within…

But I decided to attend and brought Leadership Buffalo a copy of our NY Upstate ASLA membership directory, in case they had any future needs for presenters.  I was glad to see the two local firms that do a great deal of trail work present at the lecture as well.

Jeff’s presentation was a motivational style talk promoting the benefits of Walkable and Bikeable communities, and to present Buffalo as a city that has the ability to make real changes happen and to strengthen communities by using one of our largest assets, our infrastructure! We have a strong grass roots base that is making changes happen at every level throughout our community (Case in point: Buffalo PUSH, Americorp and the Extreme Makeover Home Edition, which airs this weekend) and grass roots movements make things like walkable and bikeable communities a reality, one sidewalk and bike trail at a time.

Jeff stressed that it was unlikely that the US would move past using bikes as 10% of transportation methods, but since most communities are at 2-3%, striving to reach 10% is a feat in and of itself.  He noted that promoting Bikes in cities was moving past just being a transit issue, but public health advocates, family services and environmental advocates are all coming together to see biking and walking as fundamental aspects to our health and well being in the 21^st Century.  Jeff briefly touched on the national program of “Safe Routes to School” as a way to better walk-ability and bike-ability in our communities and serve our children, something we have mentioned on our Facebook notes in the past year.  I asked the question “How do you or your firm counter the perception of children not being safe when walking or biking to school?”  The moderator took only four questions from the audience and this was one of them.

Jeff took a second to decide how best to answer, and as a parent and a landscape architect I think his answer was perfect.  Ultimately he said, deciding to let your kids walk to school was an individual choice.  But it was also one that parents, principals and school districts could be pro-active about, rather than feeling the only choice was to be reactionary.  He mentioned to concepts in particular, “The Walking School Bus” http://www.walkingschoolbus.org/ and “Bicycle Train”, http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/guide/encouragement/walking_school_bus_or_bicycle_train.cfm both of which are probably exactly what you think… a group with an adult, picking up kids along the way to school whether they are walking or biking.  This concept is exactly how I walked to school 30 years ago.  We had an older neighborhood kid as the leader and we picked up groups of kids along the way.  In fact I walked to and from school in this fashion into High School.

He also was very upfront about the impact of “helicopter parents” on the children of the 21^st Century, and my own personal beliefs mirrored his, in fact he mentioned that at no time in history have we needed a book called “Last Child in the Woods” but we need one now.  http://richardlouv.com/

He suggested parents, designers, community advocates be proactive about creating “Safe routes to school” for REAL, not just from a federal program level, but from a real and personal sense of your surroundings level.  If there is a property along the route that is questionable and cause for concern, make noise, do something about it.

I was quite impressed with Jeff’s presentation, and as landscape architects, this is something we preach every day!  What Jeff brought to the table on Tuesday was the ability to reach a much wider audience.  I’ll take a line from Newell Nussbaumer of Buffalo Rising On-Line “Is it going to take an out-of-town expert to tell us what’s best for the city? If so, then so be it. At the same time, maybe we can finally start listening to our own experts who have been treading the same pavement for years?” I think the statement addresses so many issues in Buffalo and as a landscape architect, it spoke to me.

Our firm continues o “pound the pavement” or board room table as the case may be to make positive change in Buffalo happen!

Many of you know that we spent a great deal of time working on the Statler and feel very passionate about the building’s legacy but also it’s importance to the landscape of the city core at Niagara Square.  Here is our comment response to the article:

Like brownteeth, I too worked on the project for over a year and also believe the building is in great shape and very viable as a hotel, condo and office space with mixed use restaurants, jazz clubs, lunch counter, retail… even the roof top terrace space we developed that overlooks Niagara Square.  Asbestos is a real problem and an expensive one, and one where complete removal vs containment is not all that clear…

Parking is a real issue as well, and to all the people talking… do you honestly think we all worked on this project for over a year and never came up with parking concepts!  Seriously people… The original building was structurally designed to accommodate a 4th tower (not by today’s standards mind you) so a 4th tower was considered and even schematically designed.  135 Delaware was even “pre-designed” and even considered a “sky bridge” that crossed Mohawk to ease movement of both cars and people. Valet at another location was considered but dropped due to difficulties meeting peak hour demand from users.  We even considered building an underground parking deck below Delaware Ave and Niagara Square and even looked preliminarily at the underground schematics and ramifications of such.

in addition to parking we schematically designed roof top terraces for cafes and dining, as well as possible pool area for hotel and condo uses.  We developed a plan to put trees on this block of Delaware to reduce the 20′ of blank pavement in front of the building by using the now defunct vaults along the sidewalk edge as planting areas, we look at and presented to the city traffic calming measures with pedestrian bump-outs and areas of refuge for those taking their lives in their hands crossing any of the streets that make up Niagara Square.

The project may not have developed into what any of us wanted, but Bashar’s vision, and due diligence to understanding the real issues and possibilities of the building were real and genuine.  The talented group of architects, landscape architects, structural, mechanical, electrical engineers, interior designs and the amazing building engineer did genuine and thorough work on the project

So be sure to watch ABC on Sunday, Jan. 24th at 8pm. And watch for the JKLA crew…just look for the girls in yellow hard hats bossing everyone around!

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