Yard and Garden Care

In a sustainable landscape, resources such as sunlight, water, and wind are managed to create diversity and abundance. In this landscape, nature—plants, soil organisms, animals—does most of the work. Your job, as designer and steward of the land, is to create strong and healthy partnerships between the natural elements.

The Living Green Expo showcases beautiful and productive lawns and gardens done in ways that minimize their use of inputs that are environmentally unfriendly, composting, protecting and conserving local water resources, and more.

The challenges of the yard and garden

Imagine a beautiful and abundant landscape that provides for humans as well as the rest of nature… a landscape that yields fruits, medicinal herbs, vegetables, nectar-rich plants. A sustainable landscape does just that, producing yields for today and many years to come. In a sustainable landscape, resources such as sunlight, water, and wind are managed to create diversity and abundance. In this landscape, nature – plants, soil organisms, animals – does most of the work. Your job, as designer and steward of the land, is to create strong and healthy partnerships between the natural elements.

Ten Things You Can Do

1. Observe your landscape. Take advantage of the free resources – sunlight, wind, water – on your land. Make a map of where they are located so you can begin to manage them.
2. Feed the soil and establish a diverse soil community. Use compost instead of synthetic fertilizers. Compost provides a full complement of soil organisms and the balance of nutrients needed to maintain their well-being. A healthy soil minimizes weeds and is key to producing healthy plants.
3. Cover the soil. Protect it from wind, rain, and hot sun by covering it with plants or mulch. Wood chips, plant leaves, grass clippings, and hay are all mulches.
4. Capture, store, and reuse water. Water can be stored in plants, healthy soils, ponds, and rain barrels. Use these and other features to diversify the landscape.
5. Experiment with a green garage roof. Turn an unproductive space into a productive one by purchasing a kit and replacing shingles with plants.
6. Use native plants as the backbone of your landscape. Native plants have adapted over time to the local environment and support native animals. Annuals, ornamentals, and other plants can be added to provide food for you, increase plant diversity, and meet your individual tastes.
7. Create a multi-layered and multi-aged landscape. Seven layers are available for planting – tall trees, short trees, shrubs, herbs, groundcovers, roots, and vines. Experiment with layers you haven’t worked with before.
8. Place plants in communities. Locate plants in communities using companion planting, polycultures, and guilds to strengthen partnerships and minimize inputs of labor, water, and nutrients.
9. Optimize plant diversity. A diversity of plants helps insure healthy soils and plenty of food in wet seasons, dry seasons, and everything in between.
10. Focus on perennial plants. Perennials—plants that live for more than one year—are more efficient at capturing sunlight and turning it into yields. Perennials also mean less work for you and less disturbance of the soil.

More Yard and Garden Learning Resources

• Backyard Landscaping: This article on the NextStep web site describes several resources that provide homeowners and others with information to create outdoor spaces that are functional, maintainable, environmentally sound, cost effective and aesthetically pleasing.
  
• Permaculture is a design system for harmoniously integrating the natural world and people, based on sustainable agriculture. See this article on the NextStep web site to learn more about this approach.