The built environment and the way we design our buildings and green spaces help create our sense of place and determine our character as a community. But it’s not just as simple as putting down good plans on paper. It takes a comprehensive effort and commitment from everyone not only to design livable, smart, sustainable communities but to keep them clean.

Green

Jeff Carbo, there's way more to landscaping than planting a few trees and making a yard look pretty

Jeff Carbo, there’s way more to landscaping than planting a few trees and making a yard look pretty

Jeffrey Carbo is a landscape architect with over 35 years of experience in professional practice, and the founding principal of CARBO Landscape Architecture in Baton Rouge and Alexandria. The range and scope of Jeff’s concerns include environmental conservation, the historical and cultural context of local and regional landscapes, and the attention to design detail in the numerous places and gardens that the firm has created. Jeff is a graduate of the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture and his firm’s projects have a unique design perspective that have influenced decision-makers to follow the themes of historic and cultural influences in design and construction detailing, with reference to the French, Spanish, Creole and American cultures

Clean

Kelly Hurtado, the impact of trash on our waterways and public health is significant and serious

Kelly Hurtado, the impact of trash on our waterways and public health is significant and serious

Kelly Hurtado is co-founder of the Louisiana Stormwater Coalition, a nonprofit organization established in 2021 with a mission of helping to clean up Baton Rouge’s polluted watershed, which is littered with bottles, cans, and trash. The organization is trying to help come up with a long-term program for stopping littler at its source and trapping it before it enters the creeks and bayous that make up the area’s watershed, which flows into the Gulf. Kelly is a Baton Rouge native and LSU graduate who has worked in philanthropy as a fundraiser for Our Lady of the Lake Foundation and, prior to that, as a publisher of InRegister magazine.

Kelly Hurtado, Stephanie Riegel and Jeff Carbo, Out to Lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard

Kelly Hurtado, Stephanie Riegel and Jeff Carbo, Out to Lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard

Out to Lunch is recorded over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. Photos by JT O’Neal.  And you can check out more lunchtime conversation about Baton Rouge’s green spaces and organic farming.