Sustainable Landscape Design Guidelines

Project Description

The Stanford Health Care (SHC) campus, within Stanford University, offers patients, visitors, students, and staff an array of outdoor spaces to enjoy for aesthetics, relaxing, and gathering. As part of its campus planning efforts, SHC identified sustainability goals and targets, which included Sustainable Landscape Design Guidelines as a priority. To meet this need, Biohabitats provided ecological planning services to OJB, the project lead.

To begin, Biohabitats conducted an ecological characterization of the 44-acre campus, based on a rapid site reconnaissance, data review, interviews, and observations of tree canopy, biodiversity, soil health, hydrology, and connectivity. This work informed an initial framework based on landscape themes, functional management zones, and sustainability goals and opportunities. Regenerative ecological principles were then incorporated into the guidelines to support biodiversity, minimize water use and soil disturbances, and enhance opportunities for connecting visitors to nature.

Future campus improvement projects will benefit from the consistent design and maintenance practices as well as inspiration to incorporate sustainability measures in a range of project types. In developing these guidelines, the team helped Stanford Health Care create a roadmap to ensure adaptive management strategies support a cohesive, healthier landscape for decades to come.