FEATURES
The Green Standard

by Marcia Passos Duffy
Designing for sustainability and disaster resistance

Dichondra is used between hardscapes as a turf substitute and is a low-maintenance plant material.

Florida’s newest resort community, Alys Beach, is flanked by two “New Urban-ism” communities of Seaside and Rosemary Beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida’s panhandle. New Urbanism communities aim to be walkable, human-scaled and compact with public spaces—an old-fashioned small-town concept.

While Alys Beach has all the hallmarks of a New Urbanism town, it is different from its neighboring communities: it incorporates “green” ecological sensibilities to its buildings and landscape, as well as building for disaster resistance, crucial in this hurricane-prone area of Florida.

“Our goal is for Alys Beach to exist in harmony with the beauty, and forces, of nature,” said Christian Wagley, environmental program manager for Alys Beach. Wagley works at the community full time to oversee the environmental aspects of the growing town, including using green building materials, ensuring that homes meet the Florida Green Home Standard and daily monitoring of all environmental conditions and issues. The eco-friendly buildings contain soy-based foam insulation, recycled drywall and geothermal heating and cooling. The landscape features native and drought-tolerant species, and the community typically does not allow grass lawns on residential property. An environmentally sensitive trail system winds through the wetlands property.

The 158-acre site, with 1,500 feet of shoreline, occupies the last slice of beachfront property left on the Florida Panhandle. The community was designed by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., the architects who pioneered the New Urbanism movement and created Seaside. It will eventually accommodate 600 courtyards, villa and compound homes spanning from the 20-acre wetland preserve along the property’s northern boundary to the Town Center and The Village along the Gulf.

Alys Beach, perched in the hurricane pathways on the Florida Panhandle, is also the first community to be “Fortified...for safer living” and certified by the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS); its construction standards are designed to withstand hurricane force winds and wildfires.

The architectural styles of Bermuda and Antigua were the inspiration for the project, incorporating European courtyards and walkways. Homes are 2,000 to 4,500 square feet, built with a whitewashed stucco palette and incorporate private and public courtyards.

Flora by zone

To protect the community’s natural backdrop, the master plan calls for four zones of transecting ecology for its landscape to gradually ease the property from urban to rural. More formal landscapes and hardscapes near the dense urban center (closest to the beach) transition to looser, more rural landscape design to the north as it nears the wetlands.

Dichondra close-up.

Each zone dictates how the landscape will look, including which native plants are best suited for the differing environments. Prior to building, planners and landscape architects took an inventory of the native plant life in each zone to determine the best trees, bushes, ornamentals and ground cover for each zone.

For example, Zone 1, closest to the beach and the most densely populated with homes, requires a more formal landscape and hardscape. “This zone’s challenge is that it is also the area most exposed to direct salt spray and wind,” said Kendall Horne, landscape coordinator for Alys Beach.

Although Zone 2 is not exposed to the rigors of zone 1, it is still subject to salt drift. Zone 3, considered a more suburban landscape, is a “medium-exposure” area, with less salt drift and wind exposure. Zone 4 is to the north of the property, which incorporates the property’s wetlands.

Any home built within a particular zone is required to replant with the list of native species that were found there prior to construction. However, one of the challenges of sticking to the native plant pallet inventory, said Horne, is that it is somewhat limited. “We want to provide an expanded pallet to homeowners for aesthetic reasons,” she said.

Horne said that research is underway to uncover hardy plants that will work similar to native species, and she has already discovered some plants that work well in each particular zone. “These new plants, although not native, have the hardy, low-maintenance characteristics of the native species,” said Horne. The group is careful not to introduce any exotic invasive species to the community, even in private courtyards. “That is in the landscape code,” she added.

One of the benefits of populating the landscape with native species, or those that behave like natives, is that they are low maintenance, plus for many homeowners in the community who purchase a home at Alys Beach as a second or seasonal home. “These plants require far less care than ornamentals,” said Horne.

By using native plants that are uniquely adapted to the soil, climate and pests that mark the local landscape, less irrigation, fertilizer or other special care is required. “This native landscape is also beneficial to the wildlife species that live here and depend on these native plants,” said Wagley.

Limestone is used as a hardscape in courtyards. Joints are a tiny beach gravel. Palms are used due to the space constraints. There are native vines planted on the back wall.

The planners have also introduced edible landscapes; one alleyway, dubbed by residents as Mojito Alley, is lined with lemon trees and common mint. A hedge of blueberries—three different varieties that mature at different times—have been planted in public space. Edible figs have also been planted. “These are for residents to freely pick and enjoy,” said Wagley.

Finding turf alternatives

Residential lawns are nonexistent and, in fact, prohibited on Alys Beach, except for several public areas and pockets of recreational space. The result has been more hardscapes and creative plantings around the homes. However, the heat of the pavers near the plants has stressed the native plants.

“We have found a few nonnative species that are working very well in this environment,” said Horne. For example, between the pavers, Horne had dichondra, a hardy creeping ground cover, installed. “It is soft, can be walked on and holds up to the heat of the stone. It is a turfgrass alternative,” she said.

Horne has also found that ornamental peanut—a low-growing, flowering ground cover native to South America—works well as a turf alternative to grow near homes. “It requires much less maintenance than bermuda turf, and rarely needs to be mowed. It is also pest and heat resistant and tolerates foot traffic.”

The goal is to keep turfgrass confined to public areas for recreational purposes, such as in the town’s “central park” and other public walking and play areas. “Turfgrass is very high maintenance and requires a lot of care and chemicals; this is one way to reduce that,” said Horne.

While homeowners do not have traditional lawns, they do have private courtyards within the house, which allows residents to be outside, but not visible to neighbors. “These courtyards were all different in their landscape elements, because of unique shade patterns in each courtyard,” said Horne. Plants that might do well in a neighbor’s courtyard might not work in another homeowner’s space.

“In one home, the problem became so bad in the northernmost part of the design that we had to replace all the live plants with creative hardscape, urns and plants more conducive to intense shade,” said Horne. Creeping fig grows well on west walls, they discovered, and works better with walls that are serrated so that the vine can easily grip.

Residential courtyards are also more creative in terms of hardscape, not being restricted by the white-pallet design codes throughout the public spaces in the community. “We use Dominican shelf stone, other stones that moss with age, we intermingle other materials such as pebbles [and] green ground cover,” noted Marianne Khoury-Bogt, the town’s co-architect.

Creeping fig

Lighting is designed to illuminate only where needed and to avoid glare, thus reducing energy use, preserving the view of the night sky and minimizing light on the beach that can disturb nesting sea turtles and their hatchlings.

In the public areas, there was also a lot of trial and error. “We used coral stone at first in between the pavers on the sidewalks near the homes,” said Khoury-Bogt, but later removed it when residents complained that the stone stuck to their feet and shoes, was found everywhere inside the home and scratched floors. “We seeded it with dichondra, which has worked really well.” The coral did not go to waste, she added, “...we mixed the shell into the grout for places that we didn’t use the dichondra.”

Pervious pavers in the parking lot

Another challenge centered on the communities’ parking lots. Sycamore trees were planted to help shade the cars and soften the hardscape, but planners did not want the hardscape to interfere with the health of the trees, namely, the absorption of rainwater. “We put in a product called structural soils, which creates a void for the tree roots,” said Horne. Pervious pavers were installed, a cobblestone-like product that allows rainwater to seep through the cracks. The pavers were created specifically for this project by Florida-based ConPave, a division of Block USA, (www.rmusainc.com/blockusa/) that now sells the blocks called the Belgium Paver product.

The pavers that are used for streets and parking courts are designed to allow 35 percent of all rainfall to flow directly into the ground through gravel that’s hand-set between pavers. The permeable paving minimizes storm water runoff, which is one way that pollutants are carried into nearby rivers and bays, said Horne.

Minimal disturbance

Constructing homes is disruptive to a ecosystem, but Alys Beach planners temporarily treat bulldozed grounds by hydroseeding with native grasses to help keep down sand and dust. Horne said that in some construction sites native wildflower seeds have also been used for the same purpose: “It is beautiful and is an inexpensive way to temporarily treat these areas.”

“This has been an awesome project,” said Horne, but added that more needs to be done as the community continues its 10 to 15-year projected growth until it is completed. “Our goal in the landscape is to keep maintenance down,” she said. So far, 89 percent of the plant palette is either native plants or nonnatives with drought tolerance and pest resistance. “A certain percentage of the plants will always be higher maintenance ornamentals, so I don’t think we’ll ever reach 100 percent, but I think we’re doing very well, and this is a great goal for a community.”

Visit the Alys Beach Web site at www.alysbeach.com for more photos of the project.

The author is a freelance writer from Keene, N.H.