Bowdoin College
OP-9: Landscape Management

207 acres included as follows

The campus quadrangle and area - 97 acres

Athletic fields - 60 acres

The Bowdoin Pines - 50 acres

Total area excluded consists of college owned lands that are not on the main campus. They include: 

Bowdoin College Scientific Station - 200 acres 

Schiller Coastal Studies Center - 120.5 acres

Brunswick Landing - 127 acres

Total off campus - 447.5 acres

The Town of Brunswick’s aquifer protection zone includes Bowdoin’s Whittier Field, home of Bowdoin’s football team. Because of this designation, the College began treating the field organically in 2002. Utilizing an organic program of aeration, compost tea, and hand weeding, over time the College has developed a completely organic means of caring for the landscape. Bowdoin has expanded the organic treatment across 60 percent of the central campus, including the Cleveland Quad, main quad, Coe Quad, and the president’s residence and guest house. We also add organic treatments to our athletic fields quarterly. The treatments utilize ingredients such as corn gluten, seaweed, bone meal, and manure, and pest deterrents such as red pepper and garlic oils.

Facilities management monitors all turf areas and landscape materials for pests, weeds, fungus, etc. and reacts to what it finds. Certain areas have greater monitoring than others, such as the athletic fields, the main quad, and areas around academic buildings. These areas have a lower threshold of tolerance for pests, etc. and get treated accordingly. Bowdoin's facilities management horticultural practices are designed to maintain healthy plants or dense turf in an effort to prevent weeds or pests from becoming established. Some examples of this plan are: trimming trees, fertilizing turf with compost tea, aerating lawns, and maintaining proper moisture levels in the soil to help maintain healthy plants.

Native white pines account for over 50 percent of the approximately 1600 trees on campus, with red oak and sugar maples dominating the remaining species. The pine remains the predominant and signature tree on campus, although throughout the College's history large deciduous trees have been planted on the campus. The health of the trees is improved by increasing diversity of non-invasive species. Bowdoin's tree inventory requires planting of underrepresented and unrepresented native trees in order to avoid the introduction of monocultures. In site design, native shrub species are planted to minimize the impacts of the development process, reduce water use, and to reduce alteration as well as ecological disturbance. Site design strives to reconnect fragmented landscapes and establish contiguous networks with other natural systems both within the site and adjacent systems beyond its boundaries. Campus design standards attempt to avoid major alterations to sensitive topography, vegetation, and wildlife habitat.

The campus landscapes with native species that do not require irrigation. High-visibility grassed areas of campus do receive water during dry weather. In recent years, as a means of conserving water, the College installed a below-ground irrigation system on athletic fields at Pickard Field and the main, Cleaveland, Baxter and Osher Quads. These systems monitor the moisture in the soil and only water accordingly. The systems are automated to operate in the early morning hours before the sun rises to reduce evaporation during the watering cycle. The campus maintains a mowing height of 2.5 to 3 inches, which encourages deeper root growth and subsequently reduces the need for watering. Utilizing mulching mowers, grass clippings are left on the lawn. On the rare occasion when they need to be removed, the clippings are composted.

Organic material is collected, and a contractor removes it and incorporates the material into their compost. Some compost is used on campus along with mulch purchased from another vendor.

Bowdoin has been converting it's equipment to plug-in electric, including all push mowers and string trimmers, two ride-on zero-turn mowers, and roughly half of the leaf blowers. During the winter months, the campus has decreased the number of sidewalks it plows to reduce damage to the surrounding grass, but also as a means to reduce gasoline usage for the plow trucks.

https://www.bowdoin.edu/ir/data/buildings.html