SPROut, the Sustainable Plant Research and Outreach Center, is offering a couple of upcoming all-day workshops of note. The details:

Ecological Design Principles for Water Treatment – Saturday, Sept. 26
Ecological design principles have been the basis for many commercially-available, plant-based engineered systems for water treatment such as Living Machines, Eco-Machines, and Lake Restorers. Applications of these principles have been rapidly evolving into new technologies for treatment of rain barrels, stormwater, greywater, irrigation run-off, and agricultural wastewaters. This course will provide foundations of ecological design, from which you can begin to develop your own systems. The day will begin with a 2-hour lecture on ecological design concepts and various applications for plant-based water treatment. A tour of SPROut’s Ecoreactor will allow participants to examine up-close a model of a plant-based water treatment system in tanks. Participants will then collectively build a table-top version of a tank system. The day will conclude with a tour of the Oregon Garden’s treatment wetlands and innovative floating wetlands that integrate ecological water treatment with nursery crop production.

Green Roofs and Living Walls – Saturday, Oct. 3
The day will begin with a 2-hour lecture on green roofs and living walls, covering the basics of roof and wall types, design, layered components, functions, and benefits. Green roofs and living walls will be explored in the context of horticultural applications that provide ecosystem services to the built environment. For the remainder of the morning, the class will tour several projects at The Oregon Garden that apply ecological horticulture to the sustainable landscape, including raingarden, green roof, floating wetland, tunnel green roof, living wall, biofilter strips for parking lots, and constructed wetland bog filters. The afternoon will be split between two installations. First, the class will layer and plant a green roof on a tool shed (using multiple planting techniques), where the waterproof membrane, edge boards, and gutters have already been installed. Second, the class will install growing media and plants into modular units of a custom living wall, while exploring the structural challenges that accompany the vertical dimension.

To register, go to the Natural Resources site at Chemeketa Community College, http://www.chemeketa.edu/programs/natural/#fallhort. For more on the workshops, visit SPROut on the Web.