Tag Archives: Hampton Roads AREC

Hampton Roads AREC Sustainable Garden Wins Award From City of Virginia Beach

sustainable garden

Sustainable Landscape Practices Educational and Demonstration Garden at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

Virginia Tech’s newly developed Sustainable Landscape Practices Educational and Demonstration Garden at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research and Extension Center is the first place winner in the Landscape/Green Industry category of the City of Virginia Beach’s 2011 Stewardship Awards.

The City’s Stewardship Awards recognize residents, organizations, and businesses within the City who demonstrate initiative and leadership in achieving a healthier outdoor environment.

The half-acre garden, designed by Laurie Fox, research associate, and planted and maintained by the Virginia Beach Master Gardener Water Stewards, wraps three sides of the new classroom addition at the Hampton Roads AREC. It contains 140 plant species and follows the sustainable concepts of biological diversity, resource conservation, low impact/input, long term planning, and water conservation. Thirty demonstrated practices that anyone can do in their landscape include: rain chains, sensors, and barrels, vegetated swales, permeable paving, passive solar heating/cooling, plant diversity and trophic layers, drip and watering bag irrigation, recycled products, proper fertilizer use, solar lighting, and grasscycling.

The garden is open to the public and is well signed for self-guided tours.

Submitted by:  Laurie Fox, research associate, Hampton Roads Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

 

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Protecting water quality while increasing growers’ profits

Chris Brown (left), president of Lancaster Farms Wholesale Nursery, speaks with Hong (right) at a nursery in Suffolk, Va.

Every year, nurseries and greenhouses around the country pump water from reservoirs and retention ponds to irrigate their plants. This helps the green industry deal with water shortages and the costs associated with using other sources of water, but it also has a major drawback: waterborne pathogens.

“We want growers to recycle water, but we don’t want them to recycle pathogens,” said Chuanxue Hong, plant pathology specialist for Extension and professor of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science at Virginia Tech.

For more than a decade, Hong has been leading an irrigation pathogen and water quality project at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Virginia Beach, Va., that has helped the horticulture and floriculture industry become more sustainable and better compete in the global market.

The team has already helped growers in Virginia improve irrigation practices and save money. Team members are also creating an online knowledge center to share research results and recommendations for best management practices with the green industry across the country. Read the full university spotlight on impact.

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