Eco friendly landscaping can help reduce water consumption, conserve energy and support biodiversity. A green landscape design also adds value and makes your home more appealing to potential buyers, so read on to learn how you can get one and benefit from it, yourself.
Benefits of Sustainable Landscaping for Your Home
Sustainable landscapes are eco-friendly, using less water and energy for maintenance while decreasing soil erosion, pollution, fostering biodiversity, and providing services such as carbon dioxide absorption, air cleaning, energy savings, and increasing energy efficiency.
Sustainable landscape design can range from as basic as planting native species in your lawn, or more complex structures such as rain gardens. By choosing permeable materials like pavers and gravel instead of traditional concrete, brick, or asphalt structures for walkways, driveways and patios – storm water will permeate through rather than runoff away from your property.
Plants and trees in your landscape help reduce air pollution by absorbing carbon dioxide, ozone, sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides while producing oxygen. By including native species into your landscaping plan, fertilizer and pesticide use are reduced significantly – helping protect the environment, human health and animal habitats alike.
Mulching with organic materials such as wood chips or shredded bark helps save moisture by limiting soil evaporation, moderating temperature fluctuations, and suppressing weed growth. Utilizing water-efficient irrigation methods like drip systems or soaker hoses reduces wasteful irrigation practices and overwatering issues; adding native or drought-resistant plants or hydro zoning (combining similar needs plants into groups) are also effective techniques for decreasing your home’s water usage.
According to Virginia Tech, maintaining an attractive landscape can add up to 15% value to your home, with potential buyers viewing flower beds, native plants, permeable pavers and permeable pavers as signs of good care and an eco-conscious lifestyle.
Planting shade trees can save money on cooling bills in summer while deciduous ones will shed their leaves during autumn for increased sunlight into your house and thus lowering heating costs in winter – saving both time and effort spent maintaining your landscape so you can put that energy towards other aspects of the home or even taking a vacation!
Native plant species require less water as they are better adapted to local conditions and less likely to spread invasively. Mulch, made naturally from leaves, branches, and yard debris such as leaves or branches from trees, also helps conserve water by keeping soil moisture levels consistent while controlling weed growth and preventing erosion.
Reducing concrete and asphalt use by replacing it with pavers, gravel and other eco-friendly surfaces like pavers and gravel is a way of increasing sustainability for hardships like walkways, driveways and other hardships. According to this website, using permeable pavers on sidewalks and patios porches helps decrease storm water runoff that enters sewer systems or lakes and rivers and causes flooding or other environmental problems.
Environmentally friendly landscapes create a healthy and comfortable living environment. Shade from deciduous trees and other plantings help cool the house in summer while still allowing sunlight into living spaces during the winter. Planting native weeds and wildflowers increases biodiversity while providing important shelter for pollinators such as birds, bees and insects.
Understanding how different elements of your landscape interact is also crucial. A strategically placed tree or shrub can provide shade for an AC unit, thus lowering its energy costs; similarly, windbreaks may help decrease heat transmitted through walls and windows; while solar-powered landscape lighting converts sun rays into light during nightfall reducing costs even further.
Implementing Water Conservation in Your Landscape Design
Water conservation is essential when creating a sustainable landscape and various methods can help minimize its environmental impact such as planting drought-tolerant plants, using efficient irrigation systems and including rainwater harvesting features. During periods of extreme drought it may be prudent to delay planting new plants until their root systems can establish themselves more thoroughly – this requires additional water resources that would otherwise go to waste.
Apart from using sustainable landscaping methods, it’s also important to think carefully about where plant material comes from and harvesting methods. Locally-grown materials will reduce energy usage during production and transportation; similarly when selecting building materials such as fences, retaining walls or compost bins; look for recycled rather than new products like brick and stone pavers as an energy saver.
Landscaping your landscape can also help minimize environmental impact. Pavers and retaining walls help water percolate into the ground rather than evaporate, delineating lawn and garden areas while helping prevent erosion.
Hardscaping elements added to your landscape can help improve soil condition while simultaneously creating wildlife habitats in your locality. This will benefit local ecology by providing shelter and food sources for animals that live there as well as preventing soil loss through erosion. Planting ground cover plants will help stabilize soil particles while simultaneously protecting surface layers against wind or foot traffic wear-and-tear erosion.
Creating a sustainable landscape requires much more than selecting suitable plants; it requires knowledge on how to utilize and install features like water irrigation systems properly, creating green landscaping that is both eco-friendly and cost effective. When applied properly, green landscaping becomes both eco-friendly and economical.
Implementing eco-friendly landscaping means using native plants and trees, which have proven more adapted to local climate than foreign varieties, requiring no special care or chemicals for growth? Wildlife habitats and pollinator-friendly areas can also promote biodiversity in your yard or garden.
Integrating drought-tolerant plants (like these: https://www.southernliving.com/garden/drought-tolerant-plants) into your landscape design is another eco-friendly step you can take towards making your home more sustainable. These species of plant are more adapted to survive in dry conditions of a drought and require little or no additional irrigation water, saving money on bills while helping preserve natural resources.
Hardscaping can also help create an eco-friendly landscape. By selecting eco-friendly materials like flagstone, brick, concrete pavers and gravel for patios, pathways and retaining walls – as well as providing natural water flow – hardscaping provides an effective means of delineating lawn and garden areas.
As part of your efforts to be more eco-friendly, recycle yard waste. Instead of bagging fallen leaves or grass clippings, add them directly to the compost bin where they’ll decompose naturally, returning nutrients back into the soil. Schedule water features during cooler hours of the day when evaporation rates are lowest and reduce energy costs further by scheduling their operations during these times.