If you’ve ever walked around campus you know how beautiful it is!

Grounds Services, a division of Facilities Management, is a champion in the field of sustainability and works hard to keep our campus beautiful while being as sustainable as possible. We are often asked about how we keep our campus so green and there are a number of ways we do this.

We conserve irrigation water in a several ways:

• Our automated watering systems are monitored and regulated as precipitation changes.
• We prioritize where we water and only water as required.
• The water systems have rain and wind sensors which shut down during storms.
• We usually water only at night.

We also do our part to reduce, reuse, and recycle:

• We passively compost any landscape organic materials on site and use the finished compost on campus. We purchase finished municipal compost to use as a soil amendment and for top dressing turf areas.
• Brush from tree work on campus is chipped and used as mulch.
• Along with our Escarpment Lands we have a number of other natural areas and long grass areas on campus that are maintained following sustainable practices. These areas are only planted with native plants. Elsewhere plant species are chosen with native species as a first priority and only non-invasive non-native species would be chosen.
• We do use fertilizers in maintaining the campus landscape and sports fields. We do not however use pesticides and have not since 2002.