Four Vermont landscape architects talk about the state’s devastating floods and how its unique culture and topography could be both a limitation and a strength in a climate-plagued future.

Interview by Jennifer Reut

Last July, Vermont experienced catastrophic flooding the likes of which had not been seen since Hurricane Irene hit the state in 2011. Over just 48 hours, Vermont received between three and nine inches of rain. In central Vermont, where the state’s capital, Montpelier, is located, the tally of rainfall at nearby North Calais was 9.2 inches.

Shortly after, I spoke with four landscape architects based in Vermont: Bonnie Kirn Donahue, a landscape architect for the Vermont Agency of Transportation who lives in Northfield, Vermont; Tom Hand, ASLA, the founder of SiteForm Studio Landscape Architecture, based in Stowe, Vermont; Emily Lewis, ASLA, a project manager and senior landscape architect with DuBois & King in Randolph, Vermont; and Stephen Plunkard, FASLA, a lecturer at Norwich University and senior principal at Q4! Associates in Cavendish, Vermont. [Editor’s note: We are saddened to report that Stephen Plunkard died while this interview was being prepared for publication.]

We spoke about the confluence of factors that contributed to the flooding, and the way Vermont’s unique culture and topography could be both a limitation and a strength in the future.

LAM: Tell me a little bit about the profession in Vermont. Am I right that you’re one of two states that has no landscape architecture program? That can often have a big impact on whether the public has any awareness of what you do.

TOM HAND, ASLA: We’re one of the states that does have one of those long-standing historic land grant colleges, with the University of Vermont, so they have strong environmental and agrarian design. There is a professor there, Stephanie Hurley, who is trying to build a landscape architecture program, [but] hasn’t gotten there yet. 

EMILY LEWIS, ASLA: We had our advocacy day at the statehouse this year. One of the things that we were really there to do was to try to explain to our legislators, what is landscape architecture? And some of them kind of knew or kind of thought they knew, but it was a lot of education of: “Well, it’s more than residential.” We do everything from municipal planning to streets to parks to you name it, all these different things. Vermont has a really strong planning presence.

The team that I joined here at DuBois & King was originally planning, specifically transportation planning. I’ve been shifting that to include more landscape architecture, but just explaining to people what does the landscape architect do? in addition to or as much as a planner does, and what are the other benefits of landscape architecture.

“PEOPLE ARE VIEWING VERMONT AS KIND OF THIS HAVEN TO GET AWAY FROM CLIMATE CHANGE.
WE’RE NOT.”
—EMILY LEWIS, ASLA

HAND: What you’re saying makes me feel like part of what we’re fighting, and I think as a profession we’re fighting, is [for] recognition in the skills that we have. I think the recent designation [of landscape architecture] as a STEM field is critical because we’re not just residential landscape architects planting plants. We all know that. Does the public know that?

BONNIE KIRN DONAHUE: I don’t know if it’s because of the way that Vermont developed—we have these really interesting little tiny developments relative to the rest of the country, tiny developments connected by rural, natural, wooded spaces that make people wonder how [landscape architecture] fits in. I do think, in my job too, I’m having to educate people all the time about what landscape architecture is. It’s how people move through and enjoy spaces outside. It’s how we get from place to place. But Vermont definitely seems more engineering-focused to me, which is really surprising coming from Philadelphia, where I did not get that same sense.

LEWIS: My firm is overall an engineering firm, so I’ve done a lot of education of folks here in all of our different departments with site/civil/transportation engineering, stormwater management, water resources, and it’s very much on the individual level. Educate one person and then they get it, and then educate the next person and they get it. I would say that’s been largely positive. I am being brought in at the very beginning, written into the proposals for our water resources and stormwater projects. 

So, it is a lot of education, but I am seeing it be positive. I personally don’t feel like I’m just banging my head on a wall trying to say the same thing over and over.

LAM:  Vermont reached an important inflection point with the recent flooding; can we talk, in maybe a speculative way, about how you think things might change in the future because of this?

STEPHEN PLUNKARD, FASLA: I’m on the board of selectmen for the town [Cavendish, Vermont] on the energy committee, so I’m sort of involved right now with crisis management. We had our select board meeting last night, and everything seems to be coming together pretty well. I mean, Hurricane Irene was a really good prep for us, for this. The volunteer organizations were already in place, so that was good.

The shelters were set up just within a day, and we lost three railroad bridges. Most of the town roads were lost, so we’ve been getting food and resources to people using all-terrain vehicles. We have two fire departments two miles apart, but they’ve really been pretty active. The thing I tried to emphasize at the select board meeting last night is that we had the flood in 1927, which wiped out pretty much half the town, and we’re still facing the same issues. When it floods, it does the same thing.

What I’m trying to convince the select board to look at is not repeating some of the same things. The town manager is going to identify those areas that seem to be continuously flooding, and we’re going to look at the possibility of closing roads, creating cul-de-sacs, and looking at sort of environmental considerations a lot more, specifically in terms of flooding. One of the interesting things about the town is we don’t have zoning, but what we do have, what we’re working on right now, is site plan regulations. I’ve really been encouraging them to make stormwater management a big part of the regulations, which I think we will probably do.

LAM: Can you tell us a little bit about Cavendish? Where is that and what is the nature of that place?

PLUNKARD: We’re in the southern part of the state. We’re two miles from a major ski area, the Okemo Mountain Resort. The town has a population of about 1,500 people. The village has probably about 800. During the winter seasons, we have a lot of winter residents, so it goes up to maybe 3,000. We’re basically a suburb of Ludlow, the ski area town, and one of the things that’s happening here is that we’re on the verge of possibly having to close the school, because a lot of the houses are getting bought up for twice their value and being converted to bed-and-breakfasts. So, our school only has 65 students now. That’s kind of the issue that we’re facing.

LAM: When you say that the same kinds of things are happening now that were happening in 1927, when you were first flooded historically at this level, what kinds of things were you talking about?

PLUNKARD: We lose houses in susceptible areas, roads get washed out, bridges, railroad bridges, car bridges, culverts need to be sized. One of the problems we have in Vermont—and I’ve worked since 1978 pretty much throughout the state, and it doesn’t really change—is that because of the way our environmental permitting is set up, we tend to look at things on a project-by-project basis. 

What we should be doing is calculating based on the watershed, because we have multiple projects in the same area that obviously impact each other. And as far as I know, there isn’t a movement in the regulatory environment to really do that. But that’s one thing we do need to do, because obviously that’s part of the problem: We’re not looking at it holistically. We’re looking at it on a project-by-project basis.

LEWIS: I was talking with one of our engineers the other day, because I was noticing that a lot of the places that were affected by this storm were not affected by Hurricane Irene and vice versa. Two towns near me, Northfield and Bethel, were hit really hard by Hurricane Irene, but didn’t have too much damage with this storm. Part of that is just the nature of the storm and where the rain fell, and the geography of Vermont makes that very interesting.

I think a lot of the improvements that were able to be done after Irene—improving bridges, increasing the size of culverts, property buyouts of houses that were in the floodplain—really did make a big difference. But those things were done because they had FEMA money from Irene. Most of our towns can’t afford to just be proactive and do that.

HAND: We’ve got one response to the issue, even though the manuals say there are 10 different things that you can do in terms of stormwater permitting. I think that’s part of it.

One of the interesting features, and I’m sure there are other parts of the country that have this, is to think about our geography, right? We’ve got hills and mountains and then valleys and a lot of the rivers, and a lot of the development happened in the valleys along the rivers. I live on a hill, and you go straight up the dirt road, and every year, they dig out the swales so the water just courses straight down.

Bonnie, this is probably an interesting question for you too. The state’s put these requirements in about municipalities updating their roads and culverts, but the idea of channeling the water, getting it down, and flooding those rivers that much faster, versus forcing it off into meadows and forests at the side of the roads, have we thought about that? Is there a solution where the water isn’t being channelized to evacuate it and get it down [the mountain], which ultimately goes to the rivers and just increases the amount of water within that area?

PLUNKARD: I think people are beginning to recognize how important wetlands and storage are, but we still have a long way to go. And this is probably speculation, but I would say most dyed-in-the-wool Vermonters don’t really appreciate stormwater management. As much as people from out of state and consultants are criticized for making it an important issue, I think most of the regular folks, unless they’ve lost their house or been flooded, they really don’t see it as a big issue.

At my house on Main Street, I have the overflow of the Black River behind my house, within 30 feet of my house. I had 12 feet of water running through, and the noise was unbelievable, just the roar of the water. And that channel was created in the 1927 flood, which actually made national news. 

LAM: Bonnie, can you talk a little bit more about road planning and these upgrades to transportation infrastructure that you’re working with right now, and how that’s been affected by what’s going on?

DONAHUE: In Vermont we are working with infrastructure or road paths that have been in place for a very long time, and we’re not building a lot of new roads right now; we’re working on maintaining what we have. Maybe that’s unique about Vermont—we have what we have. How can we make what we have the best we can for the situation that it’s in? 

The roads follow the river a lot of the time in Vermont. So that does create a lot of challenges for transportation. I believe that the state learned a ton from Irene, and so anecdotally, it does sound like there have been a lot of improvements from that time that we’ve made.  

I think that’s a good example of what happens in Vermont, which is scale. We can talk about the river right next to our house and what’s happening in our community, and it’s very important, and we can know it really intimately. I guess maybe there are regions that we think about, but in Vermont we can get really granular with our focus as a profession of landscape architecture and just as people. And then there’s the state level, which is looking more at the larger scale and how things relate to one another. And I think the question is, how can they come together more?

“I HAD 12 FEET OF WATER RUNNING THROUGH,
AND THE NOISE WAS UNBELIEVABLE,
JUST THE ROAR OF THE WATER.”
—STEPHEN PLUNKARD, FASLA

LEWIS: A couple of things that you all have said, I want to build on. I think as landscape architects, we’re kind of in that unique position where we’re involved with engineering but also ecology. When we’re looking at things such as needing to upsize our culverts so that more water can go through them during storm events, at the same time can we upsize our culverts so that there are better fish and amphibian passages through them, and we’re not cutting off passage through our streams?

My job really is within communities across the state. I feel like I sometimes know other communities better than mine, because mine, I just live here, but other communities, my job is to literally look at all the plans they’ve done and to understand as much about that place as I can. 

But one of the things I’ve learned is that our towns are so small. Stephen said that Cavendish is about 1,500 people. That’s pretty normal here, and a lot of our towns don’t have the bandwidth to even write grants or go and do these things on their own. So there is a lot of opportunity, and I think folks are starting to realize this more and more, to partner with other towns when it comes to writing grants.

LAM: Do you sense that’s because it hasn’t really sunk in yet, and that these events are still perceived as once in a century, or is it something different?

HAND: I think that’s the biggest talking point out of this, the fact that we’re a decade out from Irene, which was a huge event in the state, and now you’re seeing a lot of similar issues within 10 to 11 years. It has to be, look, this is not a far-off thing in the future, this could be a reality. I hope it would help bring people to the table at all levels—our stubborn residents up to town and state government officials—to plan for what we need to do to be smart about (1) how we develop, and (2) how we maintain, which is what Stephen’s getting at, and then be ready. We can’t always just rely on insurance coming in and saving the day or the federal government coming in with disaster relief money and fixing things. That’s kind of always been our response.

LEWIS: I’ve always been a believer that climate change is real. I guess we’ll start there, but seeing, at the same time, the storms that have come through, just a decade out from one of the biggest ones the state had ever seen, combined with the effects from the wildfire smoke up in Canada, which is not something that we have typically had to deal with, combined with higher heat, where we’ve had some record temperatures here while at the same time hearing about the records that are being broken down in the Southwest. And we’re also already getting climate refugees moving into Vermont.

For me, this is the first time that it’s not just intellectually understanding climate change, but actually seeing it and feeling the impacts on all of these different things. People are viewing Vermont as kind of this haven to get away from climate change. We’re not. We’re dealing with impacts just as much as everyone else is. I think for me this year, I’m really seeing that very front and center.

LAM: Do you feel like the conversation is changing in the places that you live? 

HAND: The most prevalent response I’ve seen in planning has really been around fuel, both vehicular and housing heating. The climate action plan at the state level is very much about trying to think about alternative fuel types and responses to that and buttoning up homes to reduce heat loss. It might help with the long-term implications, but we’re talking about current events and immediate responses that are needed now. We need to do a better job of more holistic planning and design and development or redevelopment to deal with the immediate impacts that are much more life-threatening. I think there are short-term and long-term impacts on what we’re seeing, and facing us, as Emily was saying, are those more immediate impacts.

DONAHUE: I have an example that I could offer. We had Irene and we made a change, and I think it’s for the better now. In Northfield, Vermont, during Irene, these houses were flooded on this lovely little street that had been there forever, and we had a really forward-thinking zoning administrator who helped the community get FEMA money, and FEMA bought out some of the properties. What we were left with was a big open space next to the river. So she and the community got money from FEMA, and I think probably raised money otherwise, and developed a park that’s meant to be more flood resilient.

They cut down the banks and graded the land so that when it floods, the water will come in and settle out rather than just blow through the rest of the town and go up on the banks. The park has this lovely meadow, and we have native plants. There are walking paths and a little pavilion, and there’s also a lawn space, and it’s just become this gem of the community that people have been loving and using.

And then this storm, it flooded all the way up to the street. But a lot of us who live right down the street, me included, we noticed that our homes did not flood as much as they had in the past. So, though I think we did get a little less water than Irene, we saw [the park] holding the water like it was supposed to. It’s full of mud now, which is unfortunate, but it’s doing its job.

We came together, worked with local, state, and federal partners, and now we have this lovely community space that also is protecting our neighborhood. I’m sure there are more of those stories, but I’m hopeful that that’s an example of how, at a very small scale, we can continue to learn from these experiences and work within our existing infrastructure to make Vermont better and safer.

HAND: I think it’s a good way to represent that the landscape can be sacrificial, because what we’re talking about here is trying to protect human health and safety. We put all these strong, rigorous infrastructure things up that battle against nature, and nature wins. You potentially lose human life plus all this expensive infrastructure, versus what is the cost of that park to buy the houses out and develop the park? I think that’s a really good example of working with nature and natural regeneration in a way that helps protect human life as well as infrastructure uphill.

LAM: What would it take in each of the particular areas that you’re living in to get more of that kind of landscape architecture built? Does it come down to relationships and one person’s vision being able to bring everybody on board, or is it policy?

HAND: We’re about relationships, and I think we need to do a better job of getting out of our offices, out of the building, and getting into the statehouse, getting into our local municipalities, and doing a better job of saying, “Look, there’s issues here for sure, but we have the skills and the knowledge to solve those issues and start the conversation at least.”

I think as a profession, we’re really good at seeing all the different sides of an argument and an issue and trying to come to the best compromise and the best solution. I think myself, as a landscape architect, I always feel like I’m the one who’s bringing everyone else together, the architect, the engineer, the builder, all of them. 

DONAHUE: I think if we can get more involved in our communities—volunteer your time, talk to your local select board. I’ve learned that as you get more involved, give some of your time, you get to know people. They do start to understand landscape. I think you can bring your creativity in. You can really make things very simple. I think that’s the goal, too. We don’t need to do everything perfectly.

We can simplify landscape architecture, use our creativity to help jump-start some of these things. And then again, also looking for funding. Funding is an issue for small towns—helping them get grants, doing drawings for them. It will pay off if we are contributing at this tiny scale. And big things I think happen out of that, especially in Vermont. I hope more landscape architects will do that. It’s been very fulfilling.