APLD Conference in Portland

It's no coincidence that the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) is holding its international conference this week in Portland, OR. After all, the city has been named as the No. 1 sustainable city in the nation by SustainLane.com, which also notes that its city planners were thinking about ways to be environmentally responsible as far back as the 1970s.

"Landscape designers are drawn to natural beauty, and Portland embodies how nature and urban design can work hand-in-hand," Denise Calabrese, executive director of APLD, told The Oregonian. "Sustainability is becoming a paramount concern to both commercial and residential clients."

APLD created its seminar schedule based on the platform of sustainability. For example, on Monday, Portland's own Toby Hemenway, owner of the Center for Pattern Literacy, presented "Permaculture: A Tool for Ecological Garden Design," while Lorene Edwards Forkner, a former specialty nursery owner and current owner of Seattle-based PlantedAtHome.com, spoke about "Ornamental Edibles in the Landscape."

Yesterday, Mike Faha, a registered landscape architect and founding principal of local landscape architecture and environmental design firm GreenWorks, spoke to attendees about how Portland became a green city — touching on how to get the public's buy-in of sustainable practices, integrating habitat into the urban environment and rainwater harvesting, among other factors. Faha is also on the Board of Directors for the Urban Greenspace Institute, which is based in Portland and seeks to "ensure that parks, regional trail systems, greenways and greenspaces are integrated with the built environment in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region; and to promote urban greenspace efforts nationally and internationally."

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