Morning Highlights
9 a.m.
Registration opens. Browse exhibit tables, network with colleagues and wake up with coffee or tea.

10 a.m.
Opening Plenary
Revealing and Healing Landscapes: Using Water Well in Designed Environments
Warren T. Byrd Jr., CLA, FASLA, Principal, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects
If we claim landscape design to be the intersection of art and science, then how might we apply our best design thinking to effective water management on a variety of sites? Using several case studies of both planned and built sustainable stormwater management projects from around the country, this lecture will discuss key design principles and approaches to making water a central and essential landscape element. Projects ranging in scale from private gardens to institutional master plans will be presented.

11:15 a.m.
Who's Who: learn more about each of the afternoon speakers through brief introductions, and visit informally with them over lunch.

Afternoon Sessions: Three Streams
There are two afternoon break-out sessions, and in each session, there are three presentations-or "streams"-to choose from:
Stream 1-perhaps of special interest to architects, engineers, builders, and designers-addresses stormwater management solutions that blend technical innovations with sound conservation practices. Stream 2-perhaps of interest to landscape designers, contractors, and homeowners-offers design approaches and suggestions of plant materials that can be applied to any residential project. Stream 3-perhaps of interest to conservation advocates and natural resource managers-showcases Virginia projects that have addressed conservation challenges when urban, suburban, and rural interests coincide and are at stake.

Afternoon Breakout Session A
12:45 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Stream 1
Conservation Development and Stormwater Management - An Ecological Systems Approach
Douglas M. Mensing, Senior Ecologist, Applied Ecological Services, Inc.
Conventional development practices often eliminate or significantly compromise natural resources and the associated ecological systems. Native habitats are typically lost, fragmented, or degraded, and hydrologic systems modified significantly, reducing water quality and causing more volatile flows and water fluctuations. Increasing and inevitable development across the country requires that approaches to development address and reduce these adverse ecological impacts if conservation objectives and sustainable communities are to be achieved.

Employing conservation development (CD) principles can reduce or avoid many of these adverse ecological effects and better integrate healthy ecosystems with the built environment, to the mutual benefit of people and nature. Doug Mensing shares an approach to CD that focuses on preserving, conserving, restoring, enhancing, connecting, and managing healthy native ecosystems in perpetuity, while still achieving development goals. He will briefly introduce an alternative, ecologically-based stormwater management approach-the Stormwater Treatment Train (STT)-that plays an important role in most of his firm's projects.

Stream 2
Still Waters Run Deep: Why Water Is Such a Problem in Landscapes
Gerald H. Johnson, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Geology, College of William & Mary
Water is a problem as well as a blessing. Many of the problems faced by individuals, companies and governmental agencies result from a lack of understanding of the soils and the mechanics of ground water movement. This presentation begins with elements of ground water distribution and movement and then turns to typical geologic settings that control its movement. Problems arise when humans, mostly with good intentions, begin to alter the natural landscape. The last part of the presentation will be a discussion of cases illustrating the inappropriate use of landscaping, the causes of the problems and, hopefully, the solution and prevention of future problems.

Stream 3
Pay It Forward: Pooling Resources to Protect the Rivanna River Watershed
Ridge Schuyler, Executive Director, Piedmont Program of The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy's Piedmont Program in 2001 identified protection of the Rivanna River watershed as one of its top priorities, and by December 2006, was able to celebrate the preservation of nearly 6,000 acres of land, the retirement of 376 development rights, and the protection of over 100,000 linear feet of streams, including the restoration of over 3,000 linear feet of a severely degraded stream at the Forks of the Rivanna. This turn-around story exemplifies what is possible when public and private interests are united around a single goal: to protect the health of one of the finest freshwater river and stream systems in the Piedmont region. In an area where growing population has resulted in often inappropriate and environmentally-threatening residential development, the Forks of the Rivanna project is significant for its "pay it forward" approach: through a combination of real estate purchase, conservation easements and eventual resale of the property with its restored streams and wetland, The Nature Conservancy has generated new money which it can apply to future conservation projects.

Afternoon Breakout Session B
2:15 p.m. to 3:15 p.m

Stream 1
Go with the Flow: Ingenuity in Stormwater Management
Douglas M. Mensing, Senior Ecologist, Applied Ecological Services, Inc.
Charlene Harper, PE, Senior Project Engineer/Stormwater Specialist, Timmons Group
This session presents two models for effective stormwater management that are in sharp contrast to conventional stormwater management techniques, which typically employ runoff ponds and little else. Doug Mensing will discuss the Stormwater Treatment Train (STT), an approach which first addresses source reduction and then utilizes a combination of different natural systems (e.g., vegetated swales, prairies, wetlands) to provide rate and volume control and to increase water quality while enhancing infiltration, recharging groundwater systems and baseflow, and creating and connecting aesthetically pleasing wildlife habitat. Charlene Harper of Timmons Group will showcase the synergistic relationship in an innovative LEED/green roof/plaza stormwater design for an 11-story office building in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C. In this example, the owner/developer took the initiative to assemble a multidisciplinary project team to design a wholly integrated method of capturing and recycling storm and HVAC runoff. Both presenters will show how ingenuity in design doesn't need to compromise the developer's bottom line and, in fact, can be an effective marketing tool.

Stream 2
The Last Line of Defense: The Living Shorelines Strategy for Riparian Buffers
Kody Cario, Contruction Manager and Leslie Hunter-Cario, Nursery Manager, Environmental Concern Inc.
Alli Baird, L.A., ASLA, Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Chesapeake Bay Special Project Coordinator
Living Shorelines-natural, vegetative alternatives to rip-rap and bulkheads-control erosion while improving water quality and providing wildlife habitat in riparian buffers. The same underlying engineering and chemistry behind the Living Shorelines strategy apply to both saltwater and freshwater environments. Kody Cario shows examples of projects where the enhancement, restoration, or creation of tidal and non-tidal wetlands have yielded visually pleasing as well as practical landscapes. From Environmental Concern's Wetland Plant Nursery offering over 120 species of trees, shrubs, grasses and emergent vegetation, Leslie Hunter-Cario suggests quality plant materials that expand the designer's choices for shoreline treatments. Riparian buffers are included as Resource Protection Areas (RPAs) under the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act, and Alli Baird from the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Division of Chesapeake Bay Local Assistance offers guidance for homeowners on what can and cannot be done in these protected shoreline zones.

Stream 3
Going the Distance: A Multi-Faceted Approach to Watershed Management
Keith White, Senior Engineer, Henrico County, Virginia
John Newton, Environmental Engineer, Henrico County, Virginia
In 2001, the Henrico County Board of Supervisors adopted an innovative watershed management approach to improving water quality. The Stream Assessment/Watershed Management program incorporates channel restoration, channel protection, buffer establishment, urban stormwater retrofits, and regional stormwater controls-all in combination with the stormwater controls mandated by various state and federal programs. After a decade when around 500 on-site best management practice (BMPs) were constructed-with varying degrees of success-the County recognized that its approach did little to address degraded stream systems that were outside of newly developed sites. The County's stormwater management program, while useful to new plans of development in a fast growing suburban region, offered little opportunity to address stormwater problems in existing, older developments. Keith White reviews the origins of the Stream Assessment/Watershed Management program, and John Newton shares the stream restoration project at the Jamestown Apartments complex as one example of the program's successful application.

3:15 to 4:15 p.m. Closing Plenary
Applying the Lessons at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden
Warren T. Byrd Jr., CLA, FASLA, Principal, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects
This session will present a preliminary draft of the Water Management Plan being prepared for the Garden. This plan is emerging from a collaborative effort between the Garden's leadership team and a multidisciplinary team of landscape architects, environmental scientists and civil engineers oriented toward sustainability, under the direction of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. Plans and illustrations will depict Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden within its larger watershed, as well as the smaller on-site sub-watersheds that are influencing a series of landscape design strategies for collecting(harvesting), showcasing, cleansing and infiltrating the Garden's water resources.

4:15 p.m. Virginia Society of Landscape Designers Annual Meeting (reservations required)

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