Reduce

Conservation Initiatives – Reduce Consumption

To understand how we conserve materials, you’ll need to consider what our product and our market is.   We grow plants for the green roof industry, which we ship directly to the customer’s job site where they are installed immediately.  To reduce the materials that it takes to accomplish this, we think about every stage of the process: Marketing and Selling, Propagating, Growing, Packaging, Shipping, and how our customers use our products.

Sales & Marketing:

We have never used a paper catalog.  This is unique in the wholesale horticultural trade.  Our full catalog with all information about the plants we grow is available online.  This saves tons of paper annually, plus the associated cost of development, printing, and mailing.

Propagating & Growing:

To minimize materials & labor, we propagate into the same containers that we grow and ship our plants in.  Our first objective is to provide the very best quality plants  possible.  Since conditions present on a green roofs can be harsh and extreme, we’ve learned that it may not be best if we ‘coddle’ our plants too much.  The shock of transitioning quickly between two disparate environments, for example, from warm greenhouses with plenty of moisture into a cold dry environment, may negatively affect the long term health of the plants.  So we’ve chosen a growing format that works best for the plants.

We typically grow our plants in standard 10″x20″ nursery trays, in a deep 72-cell flat (or “tray”).  This format allows us to provide the highest quality product, yet minimizes the resources required:

• We minimize our water requirements by consolidating the area of plant plant material in our greenhouses,
• The extra root mass provided by the deep trays we use is an important advantage towards the overall success of the green roof.  When our plants are installed on a roof, a significant amount of root material will be well below the surface where it can absorb the maximum amount of water.
• We can put many plants in a small space for packing and shipping.  This allows us to use fewer packing materials, and the smallest possible vehicle for transportation which reduces fuel use.
• Condensed packaging also minimizes the amount of effort required to get plants to the rooftop of a building.

We minimize water consumption through the use of:

• Covered houses in the winter;
• Shade cloth in the summer;
• Manually watering most plants to apply the water directly where it is needed to further conserve water.

Energy Consumption is reduced by:

• Heat is only used in our offices and two propagation houses to protect tender plants.
• We purchase Energy-Star equipment whenever possible.
• Our computers are set to maximum power saving modes.

Other ways that we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels is by sourcing our energy from alternative and renewable sources.

• Our water wells are solar powered.

• We have installed compact fluorescent and high-efficiency fluorescent lights throughout our buildings.

• A 1.2kVA solar photovoltaic array offsets a significant portion of our electricity usage.  The remainder is purchased as wind power credits.

Environmental impact is reduced by:

• Using existing buildings to house our offices, shipping center, supplies, and for storage.
• Running our business in a way that minimizes our overall footprint on the land.

We reduce our overall footprint on the land as much as possible by:
Re-establishing native flora and fauna on the remainder of the farm.  Of the 135 unused acres of land, about 40 is forest or undergoing reforestation; the remainder is open meadow.  We mow this land a single time each fall to knock back non-natives such as multiflora rose.  We invest time and effort in eradicating invasive plant species as well.

Packaging & Shipping:

The boxes we ship our plants in are made from 100% recycled cardboard, and are printed with plant-based inks.  Our packing materials are also 100% recycled materials – you won’t find plastic bubbles or styrofoam mixed with the plants  in our boxes!  When palletizing is necessary for an order, we ship on pallets we get, used, from local companies.  Also, we recently changed the plastic wrap we use to stabilize our palletized freight shipments to a corn-based product.