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Living Green
 The Virginia Living Museum in Newport News is creating a “Green House” environmental education center and “bayscaping” backyard habitat.
The project, called “Living ‘Green’ in the Watershed,” is designed to demonstrate how choices for products and landscaping can improve our environment. It is expected to cost $315,000 and is scheduled to open in spring 2009.
“Though green design options and products are becoming more available to architects and contractors, they are not easily accessible to the public,” said Fred Farris, deputy director of the VLM. “This project will position the Virginia Living Museum as a showcase of green living options. The ‘greening’ of America will come one step at a time through more informed consumer decisions by each of us. The VLM’s ‘green’ house will be just the place to learn how to make those green choices.”
Under construction is a 600-square-foot “green” house environmental education center to promote conservation. The building will be covered by an extensive green roof of living plants with rain barrels and solar collectors. Exhibits will promote recycling, water conservation, green building products, energy conservation and other related topics, including the museum’s own conservation initiatives.
Exhibits will also highlight the weekly efforts by Museum volunteers to remove the urban runoff of trash and other debris from the creek, lake and Museum grounds. These waterways targeted for cleanup are a part of the Bay watershed and shared by Deer Park, the Mariners’ Museum and the Noland Trail.
The “green” house will be surrounded by a 3,000-square-foot bayscaping garden to highlight “earth-friendly” gardening techniques, such as use of native plants, mulching, composting and reduced use of synthetic fertilizers/pesticides.
Much of the “green” building will incorporate green design elements and be made with recycled building products where possible. The roof will have a steeply sloped section that comes within several feet of the ground, allowing the public to closely examine it. The green roof display will encourage people to consider this Bay-friendly roofing option for their home, garage, shed, porch and/or business.
Exhibits inside the building will promote options to increase stewardship of the Bay environment. Visitors will be able to calculate their carbon footprint and see how that footprint can be affected by various lifestyle choices, such as type of car, frequency of travel, amount of electricity usage.
The bayscaping garden will show visitors how to transform their traditional yard into a wildlife-friendly habitat. Bayscaping landscaping has many environmental benefits including reducing storm water runoff and pollution into the local waterways, while providing food, water and shelter for wildlife.
The Virginia Living Museum already has one of the largest displays of native plants in the region. This project will provide a more prominent teaching display garden to highlight the use of native plants, backyard habitats and Bay-friendly gardening methods. The garden portion of this project is also being supported through a generous donation from the local Huntington Garden Club.
The project is being partially funded by a $150,000 grant from the National Park Service’s Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network The Network is a partnership system of more than 140 parks, refuges, historic ports and museums, trails and water trails throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
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