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Samantha Fielden
Green Innovation
Now I can get a job taking care of 'green walls' too. I've gained a lot of confidence and overall excitement about new possibilities with plants.
Samantha Fielden
It's a damp afternoon in early May on the shores of Halifax harbour and Horticulture and Landscape Technology graduate Samantha Fielden is climbing the walls. Literally.
She's helping to install 7,000 plants in the first permanent, exterior living wall east of Vancouver. It's exactly like a garden, only the plants are rooted in the wall itself. Instead of crawling in the dirt, Samantha is high off the ground on staging, carefully placing plants designed to thrive all year long despite the harsh seaside climate.
"It's a wall with plants that are actually growing on the side of the building and not just climbing up it," explains the Hants County native. "Some plants will flower and some will stay green for the winter months, and have a red tinge so it will be interesting all year long."
The living wall is one of many unique features of the Centre for the Built Environment (CBE), located at NSCC's Waterfront Campus in Dartmouth. Opening in September 2010, the CBE will bring a focus on sustainable building practices, environmental stewardship and collaborative learning to trades and technology programs. This innovative building incorporates renewable energy technologies including solar, wind and geothermal systems that will be accessible to students and industry partners for research and study.
Samantha has been working on the living wall since 2008 at the Kingstec Campus with faculty member Tim Amos and landscape architect Sue Sirrs. This small team faced an enormous challenge when they agreed to be the first to install a project like this on the windy shores of Halifax Harbour.
"We have cold, salty air, exposed winds, fog, ice, all sorts of issues like that," explains Tim. "We developed a system to hold planting bags that is unique. We developed a soil that's different. We developed a plant list that's different. We developed a maintenance practice and an irrigation system that's different. The whole thing is monstrous, really!"
Once the plan was in place, Samantha started working on the project full time as an intern.
"I took over the greenhouse full of plants they were testing in the Spring of 2009. They wanted to see how they grew; we had some plants that we decided wouldn't work and so we had to propagate more of the ones we thought would work. It was a long process."
Now that it's a living, breathing reality, Samantha holds a skill set that few others in her field possess. That means career possibilities she never imagined.
"I figured I'd be able to either work in a greenhouse or help with a landscaping company to do peoples' yards and gardening and things like that," says Samantha. "Now I can get a job taking care of 'green walls' too. I've gained a lot of confidence and overall excitement about new possibilities with plants."
Tim Amos says the sky is the limit.
"Samantha now has some great first-hand knowledge. We're not pick-and-shovel anymore! Landscaping and horticulture is beyond that," says Tim. "This whole project has garnered a lot of attention from other colleges and universities. It's really quite state-of-the-art. When it comes to this project, I like to say, 'we're growing up!'"
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