Naturescaping Basics: Reducing Carbon Footprints in the Yard

Changing the landscaping outside of the home to naturescaping often comes with a side effect: more community involvement to encourage naturescaping principles. Neighbors or passersby might comment, ask questions, since the yard where grass once stood now captivates attention with drifts of lovely flowers and often the appearance of butterflies, dragonflies, and birds. There are other side effects too, here, listed below which are some of the benefits to home dwellers who naturescape.

How Naturescaping Benefits the Environment

Long ago, mowers were a necessary part of ‘fitting in’ with the neighborhood association. Often producing the chuffy emissions of old school mower motors, husbands and heads of households could be seen nearly every weekend out mowing, trimming, and edging the yard. Today, however, this is not necessary. Mowers have changed, for one thing, adhering to new lower emission standards, but there is an even better way than buying a new, sometimes costly mower, and the neighborhood association can approve whole-heartedly. That change is naturescaping.

Naturescaping’s Key Principles

• Designing the yard for little to no mowing.
• Planting varieties of plants for less watering and fertilization.
• Growing yard and garden without chemicals harmful to the environment, water, animals, and humans.
• Creating an attractive outdoor oasis for family, friends, and pets as part of the home.

And, last but not least, keeping weeds (especially dandelions) to a minimum, approved by the neighborhood association-like guidelines, if there are any.

These key principles help to lower a household’s carbon footprint by consuming fewer water resources. Planted specifically to retain as much moisture in the soil, these gardens always tend to require less watering. Rain gardens near downspouts are a part of the naturescape plan, and they make good use of run-off water as a natural ‘spring’ almost eliminating the need to water that particular part of the garden. These also keep water that would normally run into the street’s overflow drain in the yard, absorbed by the rain garden.

This alleviates all sorts of toxicities from entering the water supply and area streambeds, as rain water would out in a forest or field. However, blocked by rooftops, pavement, and vehicles, this type of run off often ends up not being absorbed by the soil and rather filtering itself back into streams and even water treatment plants. Less sprinkler-type watering also leads to lessened amounts of run-off draining into the storm drains. Drained water from naturescaped gardens also holds less to zero toxic particles from pesticides and herbicides which are not ‘cleaned’ out once they have seeped into water treatment plants or streams. This is because there is no known way to ‘clean’ such chemicals out of water, as of yet, and no known way to safely dispose of them, either.

Naturescaping requires little to no mowing as the gardens are designed with minimal lawn space. The types of ‘grass’ planted are often native, ornamental, and rather than requiring mowing, mound up to form shelter for birds, insects, and other animals as part of a natural habitat out in the yard. Another side effect might be more bird singing heard during springtime. The presence of ‘good insects’ like ladybugs, butterflies, pollinating bees, and preying mantises. These bugs provide natural prevention to pest infestation for plant life in the yard.

Planted in drifts with trails and art abounding in the yard, a quiet, contemplative landscape offers a place of refuge to family and friends, too. Naturescaping is intentionally not a down-sizing as one might think about when thinking more ecologically, but rather sometimes a measurable improvement. Some naturescapers even feel they might not have ever had such a beautiful yard, had they not ‘switched’ from the confines of the need to mow lifestyle to creating a natural oasis right outside their home. This is done by planting in drifts lush, tolerant plants proven to flourish within a naturescapers particular zone. This is also done by planting indigenous – native – plants that might have once grown wild in the same area before urban housing cleared the fields.

The Time Has Come to Naturescape

For this reason, specifically, naturescaping’s time has come. Many indigenous plants have now gone extinct due to urban sprawl, and even rural housing developments have moved the confines of wild, native plants too far from their original habitats to have continued on in numbers not considered endangered, or possible even become extinct. So, no need to feel deprived, just a quick look into the plans and designs of naturescapers and it is easy to see that naturescaped yards are an improvement over lawn intensive yards. The requirements of effort and upkeep (once the work of the change over is done) are much lower but the satisfaction is much higher by everyone around the home – even the fish in the neighboring stream.

For information about where to find indigenous bulbs to plant, as well as some very rare and exotic varieties, read this article, written by Kara Smith.