Landscapers choose edible, drought-tolerant yards over green grass
At the close of one of the hottest, driest summers in decades, many of the neatly manicured lawns of Boulder have prematurely browned.
Good riddance, say Joshua Smith and Bill Melvin: The time is ripe for a change.
"Water is becoming more and more of a precious resource, yet you see sprinklers running round the clock trying to keep the grass green," says Melvin, a graduate of CU’s College of Environmental Design.
Adds Smith, who has spent the past 30years heralding the virtues of functional, ecologically sustainable landscaping:
" A lot of people don’t know there is an alternative that can be just as pretty. That’s the niche we are trying to fill."s
In hopes of spreading the word that a yard can be more than a sea of green or a place to have an occasional barbecue, Smith and Melvin this simmer formed a new partnership, Ecoscape Environmental Design. The company design drought and fire resistant landscapes that attract wildlife. And you can eat or use for medicine many of the plants in these yards.
The designs work with everything form quarter-acre backyards to 200-acre properties.
The two are among a handful of Boulder landscape designers sharing a similar philosophy: Rather than sucking water, chemicals, time and money, a yard can be virtually self-sustaining, even functional, and still be beautiful.
While it’s happening slowly, the idea appears to be catching on.
" It’s a good idea, and there is real interest out there, but there is a lot of anxiety about what it is all about," says Jim Knopf, a Boulder landscape architect who teaches workshops on xeriscape, and other water-conserving alternatives.
Knopf says that while his workshops are always packed, many have a misconception that alternatives to their high-maintenance Kentucky bluegrass lawns will be more expensive, or less beautiful.
People also don’t know how to go about changing what they’ve always known, says Mona Newton, executive director of the nonprofit Boulder Energy Conservation Center.
To encourage that, the city of Boulder now offers rebates for people who use more drought-resistant grass. It also employs a water conservation specialist who makes house calls, offering free assessments for people wanting to switch to a more water-wise landscape.
Still, roughly50% of all watering goes to landscaping during the growing season, Newton says.
"You tend to plant what you knew," Newton says. "Instead, we need to celebrate what we have. There are so many trees and shrubs and flowers and groundcovers that can really work well in our climate and don’t require nearly as much water."
While water conservation is important, Ecoscape Environmental Design’s mission goes beyond that, say Melvin and Smith. They want to restore the land to a more natural state that "mimics the self-reliance, diversity, and resilience of natural systems."
At one 180-acre tract up Sunshine Canyon, the duo had thinned more than 10 acres of trees to mitigate fire danger and rejuvenate ground cover. The change had already begun to attract more birds, according to landowner David Tresemer.
In Tresemer’s front yard, downspouts form the roof feed rainwater into a network of swales bursting with native plants.
The deep purples of double bubble mint, a Colorado endangered species, burst waist-high form a bed of vivid color. It makes great tea, Smith explains.
Nearby is a healthy batch of Maximillian sunflowers, great for weed control, Smith says. Wild yarrow offers lovely white blossoms, but it also can be used as a broth.
Each Ecoscape Environmental Design client gets a booklet explaining the edible, and medicinal, values in their yard.
"We try to educate people about the lost lore," Smith says.
While functional, ecologically sensitive landscaping may be the exception in a sea of neatly manicured lawns today, Smith predicts a day when the tide shifts out of necessity.
"There are no questions about it. There will come a time when if we don’t start doing this, we won’t be allowed to landscape at all," he says.
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The xeriscaped garden around this home on Sunshine Canyon Road is shaped by large flagstones and plants that need little water.
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Bill Melvin of Ecoscape believes in functional, ecologically sustainable landscaping.
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