What Washington, DC Property Managers Can Learn From Sustainable Commercial Landscapes

Sometimes the best way to get great ideas for your commercial property is to see what’s working for the other guys.

That’s definitely true for sustainability efforts, as commercial properties are more interested than ever in boosting their sustainability. There are great examples to borrow, maybe just across town from you.

While it used to be a “nice-to-have" feature, sustainability has become a core business strategy.

It’s a way to increase the value of your property, reduce operating costs and help ease the risks of climate change. And it’s good for your brand, showing the public you care enough about the environment to take tangible steps to protect it.

How can you boost your commercial landscaping’s sustainability? Borrow the strategies of three Level Green Landscaping clients and Washington DC properties doing it right.

Let’s learn more about commercial landscape examples in Washington DC, including:

• First, Why Does Sustainability Matter to a Washington DC Property? 

• The Golden Triangle

• The Avenue

• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

First, Why Does Sustainability Matter to a Washington DC Property?

If you haven’t paid much attention to sustainability efforts on your DC commercial property, now is a great time to start.

A few key landscaping strategies will reduce your maintenance costs, help you meet strict DC stormwater regulations and boost your brand image with tenants and clients who have come to expect companies to care about protecting the environment.

It’s all good. Using features like native plants, smart irrigation and green roofs reduces your water usage, lowers energy bills and helps keep runoff from polluting the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Here’s why you should care about

sustainable landscape maintenance in Washington DC:

• DC has strict regulations regarding stormwater runoff. Sustainable features like permeable pavers, rain gardens, and bioswales help manage this by allowing rain to seep into the ground, reducing the burden on city systems and limiting pollutants that wash into waterways.
• Sustainable landscapes require less water and fertilizer, significantly lowering maintenance budgets. Native plants, once established, need less watering, reducing your water use.
• Strategic placement of trees and shrubs provides shade and windbreaks, which can reduce summer cooling costs and trim winter heating costs.
• Eco-friendly landscaping appeals to tenants and clients, boosting your brand image. It can also increase property value and improve tenant retention.
• Using native plants supports local pollinators and creates wildlife habitats.

What great sustainable landscaping ideas can you borrow from a few of your DC neighbors?

Let’s take a look at what’s working:

1. The Golden Triangle

When Level Green Landscaping crews plant more than 19,000 vibrant flowers and plants in the Golden Triangle business improvement district each spring, everybody notices. It’s a highly visible project that packs a huge visual punch. But there are other equally impressive sustainability features here worth highlighting, and borrowing.

This vibrant, high-visibility business district in downtown Washington DC is LEED certified, committed to sustainability and environmentally responsible landscaping practices.

It’s a prime example of sustainable commercial landscapes in Washington DC.

What are they doing right? A few key sustainable landscaping endeavors:

• The business district has created 19 rain gardens in the neighborhood. These attractive sustainable features are shallow depressions planted with deep-rooted native plants and grasses. They encourage stormwater to soak slowly into the ground, not rush into the nearest storm drain. A rain garden’s soil filters oil, grease, and other pollutants before slowly releasing the cleaner water into the water table.
• The 20th Street Pollinator Gardens contain more than 3,200 native plants, shrubs and bulbs to support local wildlife. The gardens were created across 3,000 square feet of former impervious concrete space. Now it’s a vibrant area that attracts and nourishes bees, butterflies and birds and educates the urban community about the importance of biodiversity and conservation. The native perennial plants used throughout the corridor require less watering and less fertilization than annuals, and return every year, making them a sustainable plant choice.
• The Golden Triangle district converted 13,000 square feet of gray asphalt and concrete to vibrant green space. By reducing paved surfaces, these new gardens help cool the surrounding area and combat the urban heat island effect, when city areas are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas due to human activities, hot asphalt and concrete and lack of vegetation.
• One of these public green spaces is Duke Ellington Park, located in the heart of the Golden Triangle BID. The park functions as a "stormwater demonstration destination," capturing runoff from over 10,000 square feet of surrounding impervious surfaces. It’s a great example of sustainable landscape maintenance in Washington DC.

Ideas You Can Borrow

• Install a rain garden to help capture excess stormwater runoff. Planted with water-tolerant native species, it’s an attractive way to add a sustainability boost.
• Plant a pollinator garden to help struggling pollinators like bees, butterflies and birds, for a variety of good reasons:

1. Native, pollinator-friendly plants generally require less water and fewer chemicals.
2. A colorful landscape with blooming flowers adds appeal to your property.
3. It’s a visible example of your care for the environment.
4. The deep-rooted, native plantings help with stormwater management and soil health.

2. The Avenue

This dynamic development six blocks northwest of the White House was formerly known as Square 54 and 2200 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Its innovative stormwater management strategies make it one of the most impressive sustainable commercial landscapes in Washington DC.

Visitors see a central courtyard water feature that adds beauty to the space. But behind the scenes, this feature is working hard as part of the development’s impressive stormwater management system that collects all rainwater that falls within the property.

The collected water drains through a stormwater filter to a 7,500-gallon cistern located in the five-story parking garage below the courtyard.

The water is continuously recirculated and filtered, then used to water the courtyard plantings.

The Avenue also features 8,000 square feet of green roof, which offers huge environmental benefits.

The roof, planted with low-maintenance native and drought-tolerant plants, reduces water runoff, offers habitat for birds, reduces the buildup of urban heat, and helps insulate the building.

Excess rainwater is filtered through the green roof layers before being collected in the water feature and cistern below.

This prevents 76,000 gallons of annual stormwater runoff from entering the city’s aging sewer system, because the water is collected and reused. And it reduces the amount of water The Avenue needs for irrigation by 62%.

The green roof also reduces summer rooftop temperatures by using a combination of plants and light-colored roofing materials. The roof surface temperature is estimated to be approximately 40 degrees cooler than a conventional black roof.

Ideas You Can Borrow

• Install a green roof. Green roofs on commercial buildings are more popular than ever. But be aware they need occasional maintenance to thrive, including irrigation and weed control. You can’t install it then ignore it.
• Capture and re-use rainwater. You might not need the impressive scale of The Avenue’s set-up, but existing buildings can add rainwater harvesting systems to lower operational costs, improve sustainability and use less water from municipalities. Stormwater runoff can be used for non-potable uses like irrigation and toilet flushing, especially if you have a large roof that provides plenty of runoff.

3. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

This five-story Washington DC conference headquarters serves as a central hub for the bishops' work.

Level Green crews use several sustainable landscaping practices on the property that keep the landscaping healthy and attractive while being kind to the environment, making it among the sustainable commercial landscapes in Washington DC worth noting. And the strategies here are easy to adopt for your own commercial property.

The site contains mostly perennials, with little turf. This helps the environment in a variety of ways:

• Once established, perennials are often drought-resistant, needing much less water than lawns.
• Perennials require little to no fertilizer or pesticides compared to the high maintenance needed for a robust turf program or annual flowers.
• Perennials, especially native species, provide important habitats, pollen, and nectar for essential pollinators like bees, butterflies, and birds.
• Perennials have deep root systems that hold soil together, reducing erosion and improving soil structure.
• Level Green crews divide the plants as they grow and use them to fill in empty spaces, adding more plants at little cost.

Mulching Grass Clippings

Level Green mowers have mulch kits attached to them, which reduces the amount of fertilizer needed on lawn areas because the grass clippings are mulched back into the soil.

Mulching grass clippings returns essential nutrients to the lawn, including nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. As the clippings decompose, they act as natural, free fertilizer.

Meanwhile, the clippings act as a protective layer that keeps soil moist, reduces water evaporation, and suppresses weed growth.

Crews also mow the grass tall, at 3.5 inches. This shades the soil to keep sun-loving weeds from sprouting. Fewer weeds means less need for herbicides.

Recycling Green Waste

Here at Level Green, we recycle all of our green waste. Shrub clippings, limbs pruned from trees, and perennial cuttings are all hauled away, where a company turns the green material into compost. We buy the compost back, and use it to enrich planting beds. It’s a great example of sustainable landscape maintenance in Washington DC.

Ideas You Can Borrow

• Replace high-maintenance lawn areas or beds of annual flowers with perennials, especially low-maintenance native varieties.
• Partner with a landscaping company that recycles its green waste.

Bring Sustainable Landscape Maintenance to Your Washington DC Property

Visitors and tenants have come to expect sustainable landscapes from office, retail and housing properties. And, as you’ve seen here, there are plenty of benefits to you, too.

Sustainable commercial landscaping isn’t just a wish list of good intentions. The Level Green Landscaping team helps clients achieve it every day, creating green spaces, installing rain gardens, maintaining green roofs, planting native plants, and reducing water use by installing smart irrigation systems.

Partner with a company that not only has the right experience and services for your landscape, but also one that focuses on sustainable landscape maintenance in Washington DC.

Which sustainable landscape improvements make sense for your property?

Let’s figure it out.

If you’re not already a Level Green Landscaping client, we’d love to add you to our growing list of happy customers. Our focus is on commercial properties like offices, mixed-use sites, HOAs, municipalities and institutions in Maryland, Washington DC and parts of Virginia.

Contact us at 202-544-0968. You can also request a free consultation online to meet with us one-on-one.

We’d love to hear from you.