Sustainable Landscape Principles

Plant Selection

Traditional garden design arranges individual plants for purely aesthetic purposes. Ecological garden design draws on plant communities to create aesthetically pleasing extensions of  natural systems. Plant communities occupy every conceivable place in nature, from sun to shade, from fertile to infertile soil. Rather than try to create conditions in which to grow the plants he has in mind, an ecological planter seeks out plants suited to the conditions of the site. This enables the planter to explore many wonderful plantsthat cannot survive in traditional rich garden soil.

NATIVE PLANTS

From a north American caterpillar’s point of view, a plant from China might as well be plastic – it is just as inedible. 90% of all butterflies’, moths’ and skippers’ larvae are able to eat only the specific plant to which they are adapted.

Locally native plants are the basis of every local ecosystem – without them the system degrades. Using native plants in the garden restores the local ecosystem.

Rain Water

Moving storm water off the property as quickly as possible has been a design rule for many decades. Driveway oil and lawn fertilizer flushes into our rivers and oceans, killing the fish and the birds and animals that eat them. A little stream that ran through a forest becomes an eroding torrent when the forest is cleared and houses or parking lots are built – water does not soak into parking lots the way it does into forests.

Ecologicwater that falls on the property on the property. The downspouts from the roof lead to rain barrels. The ground around the driveway slopes not toward a storm drain, but to a rain garden or planted swale. The water sinks into the ground as it would have in the original forest, where pollutants are taken up and used by plants or filtered out in the soil.

Shores

The shores of streams, rivers, lakes, and bays are centers of animal and plant life. The greatest diversity of plants grows there and therefore the most food. Many animals and birds use shores as primary travel corridors, as they search for food plants and animals. Where people clear the woods or marsh down to the water and mow a lawn instead, they do critical damage to wildlife habitat. The increased sun exposure to streams warms the water, making it less livable for the many cold water species such as trout. When the water level rises during storms, there are no tree, shrub and marsh grass roots to control erosion and pollution.

A shoreline thick with plants provides great ecological benefit, and as understanding of this increases, so people’s desire for an expanse of lawn right to the water’s edge will diminish.