This
article originally appeared in Pacific Horticulture magazine, Winter
1998. Reprinted by permission.
Part
Two- IMAGINING A BETTER GARDEN
Imagine
a garden that rarely needs pruning, watering or fertilizing. One
where natural controls usually take care of pest problems before the
gardener even becomes aware of them. A peaceful garden where the
sound of blowers, power mowers or chain saws never intrudes. Imagine
a garden that also serves as a climate control for the house, keeping
it cool in summer and warm in winter, a garden that traps rainwater
in an attractive streambed to deeply irrigate the trees and recharge
the ground water, one that provides habitat for wildlife and food for
people. Imagine a garden that truly works. This is the sustainable
garden, not barren or sacrificial , but as lush and beautiful as any
other without all the struggle and waste. Yes, it is just that
simple.
Southern
California landscape consultant Randall Ismay has calculated that 80
percent of the total cost of a garden over its lifespan is
maintenance labor and materials. Only 20 percent, then, goes into its
design and construction. That is often partially attributable to
unrealistic limitations on the designer’s time and corner-cutting
on the installation, but for the most part, that 80/20 split is due
to poor design that creates a permanent maintenance burden far
greater than is necessary. It is through ignorance and carelessness
that we create gardens that are needlessly needy.
On
another front, most of the materials that go into the initial
construction of the landscape -- the concrete, lumber, stone and
gravel, and all the rest -- are either non-renewable or severely
damaging to their environment of origin. Consider decomposed granite,
a popular granular paving material that is attractive, inexpensive,
easy to install and permeable to rainwater . On those counts it is a
sustainable material. Yet, it is a soil type that is strip-mined from
once -pristine mountains.
It
is unfortunate that even proponents of sustainable landscaping have
for the most part ignored these off-site impacts and satisfied
themselves with creating gardens that, while they may be internally
more sustainable than conventional ones, pillage nature in the course
of their development and so are mere symbols of sustainability.
Indeed, their hypocrisy does violence to the idea of sustainability.
So,
what’s a better way? How does a sustainable garden actually work?
Here are some of the nuts and bolts of this evolving approach to
gardens... BUT WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
In
the old xeriscape days, some people were afraid that the government
was going to come and take out their lawn and replace it with cactus
and rocks. Similarly, sometimes the idea of a sustainable garden
conjures up the image of a barren, sad place that bears little
relationship to the gardens we know and love. What will you have
to give up to gain all these benefits? And what will it look like?
Well,
the truth is that a sustainable garden can look pretty much like
any other garden. Sustainability is independent of style. A Japanese
garden can be sustainable. So can an English border, a desert garden,
you name it. About the only thing you might have to forsake is that
acre of bluegrass in the front yard, but even that could be more
sustainable if it were replaced with a yarrow lawn that uses half the
water and requires mowing only a few times a year.
Design
your garden in whatever style you want, applying the principles of
sustainability as you go.
FIRST
PRINCIPLES
THE
GARDEN AS A SYSTEM. First and foremost, a sustainable garden is a
system, just as nature is a system, just as the human body is a
system, or for that matter a computer or an automobile or a toaster
oven. It consists of a complex of interrelated parts that work
together to create a functioning whole. Just as your body remains
alive and healthy due to the combined and harmonious workings of the
respiratory system, the circulatory system, the endocrine system and
all the rest, so a well-designed garden will thrive when the insect
system, the soil system, the water system, the plant system, the
drainage system and many others are united in the common task of
preserving the integrity of the whole. Until the garden is designed
and managed as a system, our relationship to it will be primarily
reactive -- pulling weeds here, cutting back overgrown plants there,
watering when rainfall is insufficient for proper growth, fertilizing
when the native soil cannot bear the demands for nutrition placed
upon it by hungry exotic plants.
RELATIONSHIP
TO PLACE. No system that is placed in an unfavorable environment
will ever function successfully. Imagine a car in a world with no
gasoline. For the garden to work well, it must have a finely-honed
relationship to place. This means using plants from appropriate
climates that will survive for the most part on what nature offers
here and now, without subsidies from outside. The natural soil
will be hospitable to these plants without the need for amendments
and fertilizers. The natural rainfall will be adequate to meet their
water needs. The temperatures will be agreeable to them without
artificial modifications of the microclimate . In other words, the
garden will be adapted to the carrying capacity of the land.
The
hardscape elements -- patios, walkways and the like -- will be placed
to take advantage of natural site features and microclimates and will
be built of simple materials, preserved in a state of nature or
nearly so, and that come from on site or nearby.
In
the ancient days of Japanese gardens, the designer would spend a year
on the site, watching the sun come up and go down again, every day
for a complete cycle of seasons. In this way, he was able finally to
understand the site well enough to make propitious decisions in
creating the garden. Today, we expect drive-by design and we get the
results we deserve.
HOMEOSTASIS.
Nobody gardens nature . Have you ever wondered how that works? A
natural ecosystem exists in a state of active balance, remaining
stable until a triggering event changes the rules for a time. A
hillside of 20 year-old chaparral is an example of what botanists
call a "climax plant community." That is, one that has
reached its mature state and will remain quiescent until it is
disturbed, typically by wildfire. In the climax condition, natural
processes go on at a languid pace -- weeds are shaded out by the
dense canopy of Ceanothus and toyon and sage, animal burrows are
undisturbed by land movement, plants gradually grow larger, insect
populations remain stable. Biologists define "homeostasis"
as "tending to maintain a relatively stable internal
environment." By designing a garden in which the plants are
given a favorable environment and room to grow, it is possible to
create a homeostatic condition that will serve the garden and the
gardener well for decades to come. In ignoring this principle. we
create gardens that are sub-climax plant communities, always in a
state of instability and therefore demanding of much care and many
resources.
INPUTS
AND OUTPUTS: A properly designed garden brings in fewer materials
for its construction and later for its care, and generates little in
the way of greenwaste , air pollution and other flows to the outside
world. Let’s think for a moment about what comes and goes in the
garden and how we might use less without giving up any of the things
we want.
INPUTS:
BUILDING MATERIALS: Consider first what is on the site that might
be utilized to advantage. Boulders can be rearranged into an
attractive retaining wall or dry streambed , for instance. Soil can be
molded into adobe blocks and those can be used to build walls and
other structures. Poles cut from that stand of weedy Eucalyptus trees
can be used as lumber for arbors, fences and other garden woodwork.
Similarly, whips pruned from fruit trees can be woven together into
an attractive fence or trellis. The more you can use from on site,
the less damage you do to other places, the less pollution is caused
by trucking things in from far away, and the more money you save.
In
many cases, materials of some kind will need to be brought in,
especially where structures and paving are involved. Turn to re-used
materials like railroad ties and broken concrete for your first
choice. If they don’t satisfy, select from materials such as
wood that come from renewable sources rather than things like
concrete that, though abundant, is non-renewable. Also consider the
"embodied energy" of the material: the total energy that is
required to produce and deliver the material to you.
Minimally-processed materials like lumber and decomposed granite and
gravel have a low embodied energy, while things like brick, tile and
concrete have a high embodied energy. Don’t forget recycled
materials -- plastic lumber made from soda bottles and wood waste for
example. There are even ways to treat ordinary soil so that it will
solidify into a solid surface for walkways and roads. Finally, ask
where things come from and consider the impact your purchase will
have at the source.
INPUTS:
WATER: Conserve water by selecting plants that are native to a
climate similar to yours and that are known to be drought-tolerant.
Then provide a high-efficiency irrigation system such as drip and
learn to manage it properly, applying only enough water to replace
what is used up. Mulch all your plantings to reduce evaporative
losses from the soil, which can be significant. Keep weeds down; they
use water too. Consider planting less densely to match the biomass
to the carrying capacity of the land. And of course, reduce lawn
areas to only that which you will use functionally, not ornamentally.
Finally, where it is appropriate and safe to do so, grade the site
(and perhaps build a dry streambed or percolation basins) to keep
valuable rainwater on the site. You might even consider installing a
cistern or other rainwater storage system to hold water for use
during the dry season. It is possible to have a full, attractive
planting with little or no supplemental watering during normal
rainfall years. Remember, nobody waters nature.
INPUTS:
FERTILIZERS: Minimize the importation of fertilizers by selecting
plants that have low nutrient requirements and by fertilizing less
often at lower application rates. The best fertilizer is compost
that has been made from the very plants you’re fertilizing,
plugging another leak to the outside world. If you do have a lawn,
use a mulching mower that finely cuts the clippings and blows them
back down into the lawn, possibly the world’s shortest trip to the
compost pile. This is called "grasscycling " and it
really works.
INPUTS:
PESTICIDES: Similarly, reduce the need for pesticides by planting
pest -resistant varieties and giving them satisfactory growing
conditions. Just as a person thrives with a good diet and plenty of
exercise and sickens in the absence of these things, so it is with
plants.
When
pests do show up, practice a little benign neglect first. Think of
insects as co-inhabitants of the garden and remember that for most
pests there will be one or more kinds of predators that can show up
to keep the situation under control, at no cost to you. If a pest
problem begins to get out of hand, import an appropriate ben-eficial
insect as your first line of defense. Beneficials are efficient and
voracious and never take a day off. Besides, learning about the
relationships between insects is as much fun as learning about
plants. Only if the beneficials don’t work (and please give them
time to do their job) then you might consider using a least-toxic
pesticide like insecticidal soap to knock down the population.
If
a plant suffers from chronic, disfiguring pest damage, consider
replacing it with a more appropriate species. Remember that of the
hundreds of garden chemicals, only a handful have ever been tested
for their effects on people, animals and the environment. Besides,
volatilization of garden chemicals contributes to air quality
problems.
There’s
one other secret about avoiding pest problems and that is to build
diversity into your plant palette. A mono-culture is much more
vulnerable to pests and diseases than a more complex blend of things
from many plant families.
INPUTS:
HERBICIDES: Rather than applying herbicides, keep weeds down by
avoiding large expanses of low-growing ground covers that provide
newly-germinated weed seeds with a perfect environment for their
development. Use a drip irrigation system to keep the soil dry and
therefore unwelcoming to weeds. And mulch! Apply 3 to 4 inches of
organic mulch such as shredded bark or tree chips in all planted
areas. (Avoid letting mulch pile up around the trunks of plants,
and watch out for tree chips that contain lots of live seeds or come
from diseased trees.) Hand pull weeds when they’re young,
remembering the old gardener’s adage, "One years’ seeds is
nine years’ weeds."
INPUTS:
FOSSIL FUELS: Fossil fuels are used in the garden in some sneaky
ways. Of course, trucking materials from afar and making trips to
the landfill burns gasoline, but do you realize that many chemical
fertilizers and pesticides are made primarily from petroleum
byproducts? And of course, all that gas-driven equipment uses
petroleum, too. By planting right-sized plants that don’t need
cutting back so often, and by keeping their growth steady with a lean
diet of organic fertilizer and water, you’ll be reducing the need
to use all that equipment to cut them back and haul them to the dump.
(And don’t forget that the soft new growth stimulated by
fertilizers and water and constant pruning makes the plants more
susceptible to pest infestations.) If you do need to prune, use hand
tools rather than power tools to eliminate one more source of fossil
fuel use.
INPUTS:
TIME: A sustainably designed and managed garden will require much
less time to care for, because it is inherently stable. By taking our
cues from nature, we adopt the self-maintaining character of the
natural environment. A plant with room to grow is one that doesn’t
need to be pruned. A healthy plant is one that doesn’t need to
be sprayed. A building material that is at or close to a state of
nature (such as a boulder) doesn’t need to be cared for like many
highly-refined materials systems (painted wood, for instance). And
build things to last so that you don’t have to replace or repair
them for a long time.
INPUTS:
MONEY: A garden that uses so few materials and requires so little
care has just got to be less expensive, right? Right. Even if the
design and installation were to cost more (which probably won’t be
the case) the garden will still be much cheaper to live with because
there’s not much to do but enjoy it. You’ll start getting a
return right away and it will continue for the life of the garden. In
fact, one of the best things about a sustainable garden is that it
gets easier and easier to live with, because it grows more and more
stable as it matures. Compare that with a traditional garden that
demands more and more time and money as the trees and shrubs get too
big and need to be cut back oftener and oftener, as the thirsty
plants grow larger and need more water, and as the poorly-built
structures need constant tinkering to keep them from falling apart.
With a sustainable garden, you time and your money are yours to
enjoy.
OUTPUTS:
GREENWASTE: The biggest item on the output side of the ledger is
the trimmings that leave your garden and go to the dump. Why have we
accepted this for so long? By and large, the only reason for trips
to the dump is that the plants don’t have enough room to grow.
Why plant a 20 foot tall plant when you want a 6 foot hedge? Why
plant a 100 foot tall tree in a small patio? And why, please tell me,
put Juniperus tamariscifolia, which grows up to 20 feet in diameter
(you could look this up) into a 5 foot wide parking strip? Yet these
things are done all the time, and not just by naive amateurs either.
Yes, you might have to wait an extra year for a right-sized plant
to grow to the size you want, but you’ll be saving yourself a
lifetime of cutting and hauling and looking like a fool.
So
plant the right size plants and then allow them to grow naturally,
pruning only to remove crossing or damaged branches. By fertilizing
and watering less, you also generate less greenwaste . Then, recognize
that greenwaste isn’t really waste at all, but a valuable element
in the garden system -- feedstock for your composting operation. Chop
it into small pieces, pile it up (half green stuff and half brown
stuff), squirt some water on it and you’re on your way to a supply
of compost that can be returned to the garden to supply valuable
nutrients and beneficial soil microorganisms. Throwing away garden
trimmings is like burning dollar bills.
OUTPUTS:
POLLUTED RUNOFF: Fertilizers and pesticides leach out of the
soil with each irrigation and find their way into the groundwater,
streams and the ocean. If you don’t use them in the first
place, you won’t have to worry about this problem. And if you grade
the site to retain water, any bad stuff you do have around will stay
around.
OUTPUTS:
AIR POLLUTION: Similarly, the volatilization of fertilizers,
herbicides and pesticides into the atmosphere won’t be a concern if
you don’t introduce them into the garden in the first place.
According
to the New York Times, a lawnmower operated for an hour emits as much
pollution as driving a car 50 miles. Far worse, in two hours, a
chain saw emits as many hydrocarbons as a new car driven 3,000 miles!
That’s not a typo. When the California Air Resources Board added
up the pollution from all the power equipment used by the landscape
industry, loggers and arborists , it equaled that produced by 3.5
million cars driven 16,000 miles each. That doesn’t even count
equipment used by homeowners. Reduce this problem by cutting way back
on your use of gas-driven garden equipment, especially two-cycle
engines that power chainsaws , weed whackers, blowers and hedge
trimmers. Use hand tools or electric tools instead. And remember that
because your garden is designed to require little pruning, you’ll
be needing this equipment less anyway.
OTHER
CONSIDERATIONS
HARVESTING
FROM THE WASTE STREAM: We can go beyond merely minimizing our
consumption and waste. The garden can actually reduce overall waste
by harvesting materials from the waste stream. Here are a few
suggestions; with a little imagination you can come up with more.
Glean feedstock for your compost pile from restaurants and grocery
stores. Try coffee grounds and discarded produce, for instance. Use
chips from tree trimming operations in the neighborhood to mulch your
beds; tree companies are usually happy to drop off chips for free or
for a modest fee. Better yet, use the wood as lumber for garden
projects such as benches, fences, etc. Broken concrete can be stained
with ferrous sulfate fertilizer to look like stone and then stacked
to make retaining walls or set in a bed of sand to make stepping
stones or a patio. Waste of many kinds from construction projects can
be turned into small structures or garden art. One of the nicest
planters I’ve ever seen was a discarded brake drum from a large
truck; these can be obtained for very little money from a
heavy-equipment mechanic or a junkyard. There’s a mountain of
interesting material going right by your house every day on its way
to the landfill. Use your imagination and make use of some of it.
PROBLEMS
NO ONE HAS SOLVED YET: Until they learn to make pipe out of soybeans
(not so wild an idea as you might think), we’re stuck with PVC pipe
and all its drawbacks. For now, use drip tubing where you can; it’s
made from non-reactive polyethylene that doesn’t contain dioxins
and doesn’t require solvents for assembly.
Many
recycled mulches are made from construction waste that may contain
lead and other contaminants, or from chipped trees that may inoculate
your soil with oak root fungus and other diseases. Plus, some of
these materials can be very flammable, especially during hot weather.
For now, I recommend using caution when purchasing these materials
and if there is any doubt, use shredded redwood or fir bark instead.
As
far as I know, no one has come up with a durable, hard paving
material that’s also sustainable. For now, we’re stuck with
concrete. In fact, paving materials in general tend to be destructive
at their source. Use mulches in pathways where there is minimal
traffic and save the hard stuff for the front walk and other public
areas. If you must use concrete, specify a high-flyash content mix
that uses waste from coal-burning power plants, and is much stronger
and more durable than conventional concrete.
GO
BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY: Unlike buildings, gardens are naturally
solar-powered. They are also capable of producing food for people.
Plant an orchard and a vegetable garden. Make use of the productivity
of your land to grow food instead of just flowers. It’s sure to be
superior in every respect to those supermarket tomatoes that we all
like to belittle. If you produce more than you can eat or preserve,
give the rest away to a homeless shelter or rescue mission. Or to the
neighbors; they like ripe tomatoes and juicy plums, too.
Don’t
forget the wildlife. Provide shelter, nesting materials and food for
birds, mammals and other critters. Grow plants that attract
beneficial insects and they will reward you by patrolling the garden
for you.
It’s
time that gardens began to give back rather than take, to become part
of the solution to our problems rather than part of the problem.
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