Sustainable Landscapes 101

What if you could have a beautiful garden that also put a “Mona Lisa smile” on Al Gore’s lips? And what if your yard thrived without toxic chemicals and reduced your energy and water bills?

It’s not only possible, it’s easy. Just adopt a few simple sustainable landscaping practices to have a positive impact on your pocketbook and the environment.

By now, the principles of sustainable landscaping are becoming more commonplace, but you’ll still get a variety of definitions depending on who you ask. Sustainability is certainly about eliminating the use of toxic substances, conserving resources, recycling and reducing waste. But there’s also a strong connection between landscaping and climate change. By implementing a few common sense changes in the design and care of your yard, you can start making things better.

The simplest approach is to create a garden that mimics nature. You won’t see a gardening service driving through the Los Padres National Forest turning on sprinklers, spreading fertilizer, or raking leaves. That’s because our back country has evolved into a system that doesn’t need anything more than what nature provides. No extra water, no hedge trimming, no insecticides.

In our own yards, we can copy this idea by selecting plants that thrive on little or no supplemental water. Nurseries are filled with California native plants and plants from Mediterranean climates just like ours. These plants are all adapted to our dry summers and when properly placed in the garden, can be pest-free. The result is minimal irrigation and healthy plants that don’t need to be pampered.

That big patch of green in your front yard might be another place to do something positive. The monetary cost of maintaining a typical American lawn approaches $1500 a year for water, fertilizer, weed killers, labor for mowing, and maintenance on the equipment. The environmental cost comes from gas-powered tools that can be 20-30 times more polluting than an automobile engine operated for the same amount of time. One more piece of the environmental equation – the nationally advertised lawn products we dump on that patch of green are mined from the earth, refined and processed, packaged and shipped. All of these activities consume energy and produce CO2 - another strong argument for removing lawns that do not provide true recreational value.

What about those energy bills? “Passive solar” is one answer. That big evergreen tree on the sunny side of your bedroom looks majestic, but wouldn’t it be nice to get a bit of morning sunshine through the window on a chilly morning? Deciduous tree to the rescue!  In the winter, the bare branches let the warmth of the sun in so you can turn the thermostat down sooner, save a few dollars and consume less energy (there’s that carbon thing again). When the warm days of summer arrive, the leaves will be filled in keeping the house shaded and cool. Even better – if you have an air conditioner, place a shade tree nearby so the unit starts with cooler air and doesn’t have to work so hard.

I can hear the cry – deciduous trees equals raking leaves, and that’s work. Not necessarily. Let’s go back to our natural system analogy. Back in the mountains - - where never is heard a discouraging rake - the leaves decompose, the nutrients reenter the soil, and the cycle starts again. This is what mulching is all about, but you don’t have to purchase and haul bags of the stuff from the local garden shop. No packaging, no shipping, no carbon. If you pick the right plants to grow under your trees, the leaves can just fall through the shrubs and stay on the ground. Less work, greater water retention, more fertile soil – you get the idea. But if you absolutely have to rake the area, please add the leaves to your compost pile. You do have a compost pile, don’t you?

As you can see, there’s nothing mysterious about adopting sustainable gardening practices. It’s a common sense approach that benefits the environment and saves you a pile of money, all the while reducing some of the drudgery that can steal your weekends away.

Is that a smile I see in the corner of Al’s lips?

(First published in Santa Barbara Homeowners Magazine - March 2008) 

But how about designing with nature and not pushing uphill to work against it?

Living here in Santa Barbara, CA, I look out at the Santa Ynez Mountains every day. Tons and tons of native chaparral vegetation that bursts with shades of blue Ceanothus flowers and the rusty branches and trunks of Manzanita, then becomes dotted with stunning wildflowers in the open spaces. Cool canyons shaded by sycamore trees. It does this with no help from me or anyone else, thank you very much. It’s a natural system. No weekly gardener, no “projects” over the three-day weekend.

Here’s my philosophy about the “tip” on adding all that organic material to your soil—go with the flow. Why pay good money to add stuff to the soil, then rototill until the natural, living web of life that makes up soil is disturbed? Did you know there are billions of living organisms in a handful of soil? Who are we to mess with that?

What about selecting plants that are either native to your area, or from other parts of the world similar to yours? Stands to reason that there’s somewhere in Europe or Asia, or South America with a climate just like yours. It also stands to reason that plants from those regions need the same conditions and shouldn’t have to be put on “life support” to thrive.

So I get to play with plants from Chile, Australia, South Africa, Italy, France, Spain, Libya, and my home state. They’re all adapted to a Mediterranean climate – dry summers, wet winters, mild temperatures, low nutrient levels. Most need little or no fertilizer, can get by with minimal summer irrigation, and if I create a lot of diversity, no pests. I use good design to create interest–form, foliage color, texture, contrast, harmony–it doesn’t have to be only about big fat flowers. I work with what nature gave me and create beauty with plants that thrive on their own.

I’m all for a bit of homemade organic compost, but please respect the structure of the soil and minimize turning or tilling the soil unnecessarily.

Your garden AND your lower back will thank you.

Just before dawn, as an waning moon sets over the gnarled and twisted trees, a barely visible white oval, perched on a slender filament, slowly splits open, revealing the hideous baby within. (Pretty spooky so far, eh?). Barely newborn and craving its first meal, this grotesque creature prowls for a living meal. (O.K., now I’M getting creeped out.) The sun breaks the horizon and the creature’s neighbor begins to stir. Suddenly aware that a terrible fate is about to befall it, the neighbor, disoriented, attempts to escape, but it’s too late. It becomes baby’s first meal and the taste of living flesh is forever imprinted in its young mind. Sorry. Not flesh; make that “chitinous exoskeleton.”

Gotcha! You were picturing something like the Gerber baby, but with a hideous misshapen mouth. Nope. Just our friend the lacewing larva, out for a quick snack, biting through the luscious, crunchy surface of a destructive mealybug.

I’ve known for a long time that beneficial insect beat out toxic pesticide sprays any day. That’s why it’s usually rare to hear anyone complain about ladybugs in their gardens. But my visit to Lotusland yesterday helped fill in the blanks. Owen Dell and I were taping a new segment for our TV show, Garden Wise Guys, at the Ganna Walska’s Lotusland insectary and butterfly garden. Lotusland has been pesticide-free for years, and their insectary gardens are strategically placed to offer good habitat for good guys.

Virginia Hayes joined us on camera on very short notice and shared some very cool information with us. Virginia is not only Lotusland’s curator, but also writes a delightful weekly column for the Santa Barbara’s weekly Independent chock full of great garden info.

We stumbled through a few hours of taping and will probably end up with about 5 minutes of information and madness. No, not fair–I stumbled, Owen nailed it, and Virginia was as smooth as silk. But what I learned in those few hours should be shared with all of you.

Here’s a quick preview of what you’ll learn when this segment airs in mid-fall. We hope to add one more good reason for you to abandon the use of toxic chemicals in your landscape and adopt a more sustainable model for your maintenance.

First, beneficial insects come in all shapes and sizes, but what most have in common is that they are first attracted to your garden by a source of food (generally nectar-bearing flowers), then take up residence to lay eggs. When the babies hatch out, they’re the ones that eat the larva and adult pests in your garden. If you get this part right, you have an endless supply of garden helpers.

Next, the more diverse your offerings, the more diverse will be the range of beneficial insects. The tiny good guys generally seek out small flat flowers that have their sweet nectar within easy reach (native Buckwheat, parsley, carrots), whereas the dudes and dudettes with long “drinking straw” feeding tubes can slurp nectar out of deeper tubular flowers, like the plants in the mint family (sage, lavender, Lamb’s ear).

To be sure they will set up housekeeping and hang around to feast, be sure there’s some dense cover. Planting a few of the big ornamental grasses work well and they look great year round.

I continually extol the virtues of mulch as a way to keep down weeds and conserve soil moisture, but it’s got an equally important role. The insects that inhabit your decomposing mulch can also act as a food source during certain parts of an insect’s life cycle. So keep that mulch layer nice and thick and you’ll get even more benefit!

With all the big Hollywood film industry folks that live around here, maybe this blog will get me my first horror flick screenwriting job. Hey, I guy can hope!

Bearing in mind that I’m writing from southern California, here’s your next question. If the average annual rainfall in Santa Barbara is between 18 and 21 inches, and we only received 6 this year, and a chicken gets on a train in Miami heading north at 60 mph into a 6 mph headwind, how long will it take to water your lawn when the reservoirs go dry?

O.K. I’m ready to rant. That’s not usually my style. I try to gently convince people of my views without putting any guilt trips on them. I’d hate to make anyone feel uncomfortable. I’ve never been a hardcore activist about much of anything—more of a quiet “you have your opinion and I’ll have the right one” manifesto.

But a recent LA Times article (Public Enemy No. 1, July 5) about the astounding impact of our obsession with lawns has got me cursing out loud about the gardens I see in this town and around the nation.

Would someone PLEASE tell me why there are lawns in front of houses? The kids are in their rooms playing computer games, chatting on AIM, or downloading pirated videos, so don’t tell me it’s about a place for them to play. Lawn in the backyard? Maybe. Into nude sunbathing? Get a chaise lounge and place it on your permeably paved patio. Something for the kids and dog to cavort on? O.K., there’s nothing to completely take the place of a patch of turf, but how many thousand square feet do you really need?

Let me go on record as stating that a lawn that is not used for recreational purposes is an act of environmental arrogance. (Geez, I can sense someone out there feeling uncomfortable—better pull back. NO! I’m going to overcome the “everyone has to like me” urge.) I’m talking about arrogance in the form of a blatant or ignorant disregard for the multiple environmental impacts of growing turf, at least the way the vast majority of people approach it.

Arrogance is the use of toxic pesticides to maintain that perfect suburban carpet. I screamed at my radio this spring when those lovely folks from Scott’s Lawn Care Products unleashed their campaign about protecting our kids from “nasty bugs.” They don’t really define “nasty.” I’m not sure if it’s a Donald Trump “you’re fired!” kinda nasty or “Mature Audience” nasty, but we’d better make sure we indiscriminately kill everything, just to make sure.

Arrogance is having an irrigation system that hasn’t been adjusted for the season, checked out for leaks or had the heads fine-tuned to keep them from soaking the sidewalks.

Arrogance is having your gardener run their inefficient mower that spews 10 times more emissions per minute than a car. Then, since no one is enforcing the local ban on gas-powered blowers, the clippings are blown into the gutter and then on to the creeks. Since most folks don’t really care if the gardener complies with the rules (the faster they mow, hoe and blow the less you have to pay), we have the insult of all that dust and exhaust going airborne with the grating noise as the sound track.

Ya get the idea? Do you really have to have it? Imagine life without a lawn. Imagine a diverse, low water-using palette of texture and color that attracts birds and other fun critters.

Consider taking the pledge. Join a support group for the forlawn (use a pun, go to jail). Be the pioneer on your block. Murder your lawn and set yourself free! Up next - murder without herbicides!