Note: This article is a preview. The Program is coming Fall 2022!

The Monarch Level of Landscape Transformation Certification recognizes outstanding achievements in creating truly sustainable, societally transformative landscapes! It is the second highest level we recognize, and only the most cutting edge and dedicated stewards will bring their landscapes to this high level.

The Transformative Landscape Recognition Program is the most ambitious and most sustainable certification for eco-friendly landscapes, and those that have the Monarch badge will be truly beyond-regenerative. Those that provide food, or medicine will offer the safest and most regenerative produce on the market.

A monarch-level certified landscape will be proven to steward water, regenerate soil, fight climate change by sequestering carbon and reducing fossil fuel use, protect biodiversity, increase local food security, avoid harmful and polluting materials, and create social change by reducing reliance on the systems that are driving climate change, causing mass extinctions, creating pollution, and exploiting people in the process.

While a monarch level landscape will be a bulwark for native plants and pollinators, it will go far beyond these to provide benefits on all these other areas of landscape sustainability, as well.

The Transformative Adventures Certification criteria were developed over 6 years of research, through meetings involving hundreds of professionals in the sustainable landscaping industry, and then endorsed by hundreds of signatories to date.

The Monarch Level Certification Criteria:

I. Societal Impact and Food Security:

-Grows some food, medicines or materials for human use on site.

-Reduces the site stewards’ consumption of corporate products by 10% or more.

II. Water:

-Catches and infiltrates water for at least 60% of site. Submit map of infrastructure to catch and infiltrate >60% of water on site, including runoff from impervious surfaces like buildings and parking lots, by using rain gardens, swales, infiltration basins, trees, forest cover and other green infrastructure.

-Uses water wise holistic techniques. Has a plan to save water and reduce landscape irrigation using deep organic mulches, living mulches, appropriate plants, forest cover, or other effective strategies.

-Has plan to catch and infiltrate, or otherwise appropriately treat approximately 90% or more of rain water on site. (Monarch)

III. Pollution:

Reduces Fossil Fuels – No aesthetic lawn mowing. (Functional lawns are perfectly fine if utilized for recreation)

-No (or rare) fossil fuel mowing on sites under ¼ acre.

-For larger sites, mown grass is limited to pathways and used recreational areas. No aesthetic lawns.

Carbon sequestration – the Transformative landscape should sequester carbon as it develops.

-40% forest where appropriate. At maturity, polyculture tree canopy (minimum 3 species) will cover > 40% of sites with >30 inches of precipitation or more. (Submit site plan map showing 40% tree coverage.)

-Healthy diverse polyculture grassland, pasture, savanna, prairie or other native ecosystem for climates where forest is not appropriate.

-Holistic or regenerative management of any grazing systems.

-No monoculture plantings for productive areas like farms or gardens. (Monarch – Polyculture has been shown in multiple studies to be a key indicator of carbon sequestration.) This should be shown on submitted designs.

IV. Sustainable materials:

Concrete. The concrete industry is responsible for a massive amount of pollution and atmospheric carbon.

-Limited use of new concrete pavers, bricks and landscaping blocks, less than 10%. (Use for required infrastructure or to supplement used and recycled materials is acceptable.)

-Use of recycled materials wherever possible for landscape features, retaining walls, and pathways.

-No new concrete materials, or where necessary, low-carbon sustainable materials or re-constituted materials are used. (Monarch)

Plastics. Agricultural and landscape fabrics are the fastest growing cause of plastics pollution of water and land, and are strongly associated with microplastic and phthalates contamination of food.

-No new plastics pledge. Applying for Transformative Landscapes recognition constitutes a pledge to reduce, or at least to not increase plastics use in the landscape, for management or production purposes. (Monarch level.)

-Adopt a plan to reduce or eliminate plastics for management or production purposes. (Monarch, Submit plan)

V. Biodiversity

-Use of multiple plant community or ecosystem types: forest, meadow, prairie, intensive gardens, wetland, hedgerows, etc.

-Integration of wildlife habitat features, such as rockeries, brush piles, bat houses, native pollinator habitat, etc.

-Season long blooms, something is flowering all through the growing season.

-Provide wildlife food sources: a variety of nuts, seeds, fruits, native flowers, that are shared with wildlife.

-Provide multiple water sources: birdbaths, ponds, water features.

-No spraying of pesticides or herbicides. (Organic sprays acceptable for production purposes only.)

-High biodiversity site: >200 species/acre, or includes endangered species. (Monarch, submit plant list.)

VII. Soil creation.

Many of the above criteria are also proven to contribute to soil creation, but these additional factors are special indicators of soil creation.
-No annual mechanical tillage, including the uses of “tilthers” or harrows.
-No synthetic fertilizers
-No monoculture plantings
-Minimal bare soil. Use of mulches or permanent ground covers.
-All fertility, compost, organic fertilizers, and mulches are grown on site or from a waste stream (Monarch)
-Submit plan to grow fertility on site. (Lunamoth.)

-Provide wildlife food sources: a variety of nuts, seeds, fruits, native flowers, that are shared with wildlife.

-Provide multiple water sources: birdbaths, ponds, water features.

-No spraying of pesticides or herbicides. (Organic sprays acceptable for production purposes only.)

-High biodiversity site: >200 species/acre, or includes endangered species. (Monarch)

VII. Soil creation. Many of the above criteria are also proven to contribute to soil creation, but these additional factors are special indicators of soil creation.

-No synthetic fertilizers

-No monoculture plantings

-Minimal bare soil. Use of mulches or permanent ground covers.

-No annual mechanical tillage, including the uses of “tilthers” or harrows, or tillage is reduced to less than 20% of the site in any year. (Monarch.)

-There’s an effort to grow fertility and mulch on site. (Monarch, submit plans showing fertility systems including carbon cropping, biomass plantings, fertility hedges, Nitrogen fixers, or other fertility systems.)