University of North Carolina, Greensboro
OP-9: Landscape Management

The excluded land would be the footprints of the buildings.

1. The UNCG Grounds Dept. landscapes with plants that are generally known to be disease and insect resistant. Some insect and disease damage can be tolerated if the plants can be kept healthy and vigorous enough so the pests do not seriously harm the plants. 2. The IPM program consists of scouting for a pest or disease, identifying the pest or disease, determining if the damage tolerance threshold has been reached, developing a treatment strategy, and implementing the treatment strategy to target only the insect pest or disease once the damage threshold is reached. Alternative methods to chemicals include using beneficial predatory insects and mechanical removal of affected plant material.

UNCG has a comprehensive tree maintenance program, focusing on proper pruning techniques and removal of any damaged/diseased areas. Trees are the foundation of our campus landscape, not only for beauty but for soil stabilization, water-uptake, and the release of oxygen. During any construction or renovation our Campus Tree Care Plan is strictly followed by employees and contractors. This ensures trees are protected to the best of our ability; should any have to be removed, the Plan ensures that replacement trees will be planted back in the area.

Naturally vegetated buffers are maintained on the banks of campus streams to prevent erosion and filter runoff before it enters the water body; some areas have been enhanced through live staking. UNCG Grounds also utilizes the paths of campus storm water to create dry stream beds consisting of river stones. The stones allow the water to flow to its path of least resistance without soil erosion. Finally, Grounds is working with Facilities Management and the Sustainability Office to install a rain harvesting system that will reduce campus water consumption for annual plantings. The system will capture and store rainfall for irrigation of annuals. Rainwater is better for the landscape than municipal water because of the natural organisms in rain. This system will also reduce stormwater runoff.

The Grounds Sports Turf Maintenance Team composts all grass clippings. Grass clippings are left after mowing the warm season sports fields. All rotary mowers are equipped with mowing blades which pulverize and leave grass clippings behind during the mowing operation, cycling the nutrients back into the soil. During aerification of the sports fields, the resultant plugs are composted and used as top-dressing over the fields. Clippings from the golf greens are added into the pile of aerification plugs and mixed for a top-dressing as well. During leaf-drop in the fall the same mowers mulch as much leaf litter as possible on turf areas. If the level of leaf drop is so heavy that it may impact over-seeding, the leaves are vacuumed up. Some of the leaf litter is transported to both Piney Lake (a UNCG-owned recreational site approximately 8 miles from the main campus), and the City of Greensboro Arboretum, where it is composted. In 2013-14, approximately 12 tons of leaves were diverted to these two locations from the landfill.

The Grounds Department uses an ice melt product that contains magnesium chloride. This product is less environmentally problematic than other chloride-based products such as calcium chloride and sodium chloride. Any runoff from this product contributes less chloride contamination in surface waters because it has one-third less chloride content versus other chloride-based options. Further, since magnesium is a common ingredient in most fertilizers it will not harm vegetation. Finally, this product is less harsh on concrete areas such as sidewalks and driveways; concrete where the product is applied shows less scaling and chipping, thus reducing maintenance costs and the affiliated environmental costs.

Information for this credit was received from Kevin Siler, Grounds Department at UNCG and Rhonda Strader, GIS specialist for UNCG.