Straight lines do not occur naturally in the landscape. This is an ongoing challenge for the landscape professional faced with the task of installing and maintaining angular and rectilinear landscape designs. Often these designs are used in maintenance strips and walking paths, but also accentuate contemporary structures and formal gardens. For the landscape professional, this challenge extends beyond the installation and can become a long-term maintenance issue. For the designer and the property owner, the challenge is to select products that achieve the designer’s intent at installation and sustain it over time against damage from power maintenance equipment and the eroding forces of nature.

Often inter-locking pavers are used in these situations because they lend themselves to hard structural edges that can be easily maintained. When properly restrained, pavers provide a beautiful and long-lasting effect. It is when the landscape design introduces new materials that do not naturally create straight lines, that a challenge is created for the landscape contractor. These materials include stone, decomposed aggregate, mulch, asphalt and countless others. These materials are often utilized for natural walking paths, bikeways, drives and maintenance strips, as well as landscape forms.

The more common challenge of straight lines occurs in maintenance areas along buildings, fence lines and parking areas. These landscape features can consume valuable installation time and quickly detract from the overall look of the project if incorrect materials are used.

Using a traditional metal landscape edging that is designed to be flexible, maintaining these lines proves to be a painstaking effort. Permaloc, with its long-standing reputation as being the expert for edging and restraints, has developed and manufactures a product called PermaStrip. This is an aluminum landscape edging specifically designed for straight runs in the landscape. PermaStrip uses an L-shaped design that makes this product incredibly rigid, saving time during installation and insuring long-term performance. PermaStrip allows you to save money on labor, improve the quality and look of the project, and deliver on time, while the facility owner receives a product that will maintain the design intent for years to come.

Unique products like those manufactured by Permaloc can save time, money, and add to the overall quality of the project. When you encounter unique applications, there is often a supplier that manufactures a product specifically designed for that application. Don’t waste time and money trying to make a product work that wasn’t designed for your exact application. Use the internet, trade magazines, your local distributor, or word-of-mouth through your friends and contacts in the industry. Somewhere out there is a company making exactly the right product or tool for exactly what you are doing.

The Pokagon Band of Dowagiac, MI is completing the building a sustainable community center, which will provide tribal citizens a central place to gather for meetings, social events, and special occasions.  This community center is not just a typical building, however.  The entire project from building to interior to landscape has been designed with sustainability in mind, making it an extremely green building.

The space will embody the Band’s mission statement to preserve Mother Earth by including a host of green features, including solar panels and a section of the roof that will be a green roof, supporting the growth of live native plants.  This vegetated green roof will help insulate the building and reduce water runoff.  Another feature is a geothermal heating and cooling system that will improve comfort and reduce both energy dependence and operating costs.

The large meeting room with a southern orientation and glass walls will use passive solar to maximize daylight and manage heat gain.  A 12 inch concrete floor in the main space will act as a heat sink that will help retain heat in the winter by absorbing radiant sunlight.  Some trees at the site were removed and will be milled and reused for trim.  Also planned is the use of porous pavers in the parking lot to reduce stormwater runoff.

The building and site will meet the US Green Building Council’s requirements for a silver LEED rating.  LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system providing third-party verification that a building or community promotes energy savings, water efficiency, carbon dioxide emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impact.

Permaloc’s wide range of sustainable, application-specific edging types proved to be a perfect fit for the Pokagon Band’s planned green building.  From the green roof, to the maintenance strips around the building, to the sustainable site plan, including landscaping and permeable pavement, Permaloc has a sustainable edging solution that was a perfect match.

For more information on the community center and it’s sustainable green building plans, visit the Pokagon Community Center website.