Go Green in Your Backyard
By Bonna L. Nelson
Just in time for spring here are some eco-friendly tips that will help you go green on the outside of your home and create a safer, healthier environment for yourself, your family, visiting wildlife, the Bay, and the world. It is easier than you might think to green your home and yard by implementing environmentally safe practices.
Landscaping
“It is important to strive for working with nature—not against it,” advises Britt Slattery, senior conservation biologist at the National Audubon Society. “Changing certain practices may increase costs and effort initially but in the long run will reward the homeowner with savings realized in terms of time, money, energy, and a healthier yard.”
Here are some eco-friendly landscaping practices that you can easily incorporate into your routine at home:
Grow a Greener Lawn
Reduce the size of your lawn. With gasoline-powered equipment accounting for over 5 percent of urban air pollution, less lawn is better. These are some of the benefits you’ll reap:
- You’ll use less gasoline or electric energy to run your mower, blower, and trimmer.
- Your power equipment will emit less air-polluting carbon dioxide.
- You’ll use smaller amounts of chemicals such as fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides to maintain your lawn.
- You’ll save time and labor.
In place of lawn, plant native plants, meadowlands, woodlands, or a healthy vegetable garden. Leaving the grass clippings in place after you mow provides natural fertilizing nutrients, reducing or eliminating the need for synthetic fertilizer. Mowing a little higher crowds out weeds.
Increase your energy and improve your fitness while also improving the environment—use a manual mower. Of course, an electric mower is another option. If you must use a gas mower, be sure to change the oil and air filter frequently to reduce the fumes it emits.
Plant Native
When planning your landscape think native. Native plantings are suited to your soil and environment. So compared to plants native to other regions they grow well and need less attention and less water. They also attract native birds, butterflies, and other wildlife, including beneficial insects. Native plants have evolved over millions of years and form an integral part of the life cycle of local wildlife. They already are resistant to the region’s pests and diseases, reducing the need for pesticides and reducing your landscape maintenance and labor costs.
You can find a large variety of native trees, shrubs, grasses, vines, groundcovers, and perennial flowers in local nurseries.
Plant Trees
Trees and vegetation provide shade, which can reduce air conditioning costs by up to 20 percent and serve as a windbreak in the winter. Densely planted trees can block up to 95 percent of sunlight and 75 percent of heat in the summer.
In one year the average yard tree cleans 330 pounds of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and 10 pounds of pollutants, including four pounds of ground-level ozone, improving air quality.
Trees also control storm water runoff and soil erosion and absorb nitrogen and phosphorus—two river and Bay pollutants. Woodland trees also provide living shoreline buffers; contain sediment, nutrients, and toxic substances that would otherwise flow into the water; and provide wildlife habitat as well as flood control and protection.
Use Compost to Create Nutrient-Rich Soil
Set up a compost bin to reduce the amount of garbage your household sends to the landfill. Adding compost and other organic matter to your soil provides it the best source of nutrients and beneficial organisms, slows its drying during droughts, prevents soil erosion from heavy rainfall, keeps plants healthy enough to withstand weather stresses, and reduces the need for synthetic fertilizers in home gardens
Your yard waste; leaves; grass clippings; and food wastes, such as vegetable scraps and fruit peels, can turn into a very nutrient-rich soil amendment for your lawn and other plants in just a few months. Composting bins vary in cost from a few dollars to several hundred. Using them can make a significant dent in household waste sent to landfills. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 25 percent of the 245 million tons of garbage going into U.S. landfills comes from yard clippings and food!
Reduce Chemical Use
Whenever you use chemicals at home you are exposing yourself, your family, your neighbors, your pets, wildlife, and beneficial organisms to risk. Choose natural alternatives to fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides.
Welcome beneficial organisms (a.k.a. enemies of pests) such as toads, dragonflies, ladybugs, and lacewings into your yard; use less-toxic alternatives; plant natives; and reconsider the old-fashioned solution—to pull weeds and pluck insects manually. Also, keep bushes and limbs away from your walls and roof to keep insects and other pests from climbing onto them.
Hardware stores, nurseries, and garden centers are increasingly carrying selections of healthier pest control products: oils, powders, soaps, baits, and sprays.
Hardscapes and Exterior Building
Having a new a patio, deck, or driveway installed this season? Green materials for hard surfaces and building are more readily available than ever and the choices are many. Here are some ideas for finding products and materials that minimize negative impact on the environment.
For hardscapes (sidewalks, patios, retaining walls, driveways), choose porous or pervious systems such as crushed stone, porous paving stones, porous aggregate, open-jointed blocks, and porous asphalt. They are more environmentally beneficial than impervious surfaces like asphalt and concrete.
Attractive and cost-effective, porous hardscapes absorb rain, melting snow, and runoff from paved or impervious surfaces; reduce storm water runoff; and reduce contaminants and pollution in surface water. The water that is absorbed into the soil from pervious surfaces is of better quality than runoff entering waterways from impervious surfaces because the pervious surface systems filter some pollutants out of the water.
Consequently, increasing the quantity of pervious surfaces in the region can improve water quality.
If you are adding a room or deck or doing other remodeling, choose eco-friendly building products such as salvaged or reclaimed bricks, lumber, and fixtures; materials made from recycled plastic, wood, or tires; or agriculturally-derived materials such as straw. Other environmentally sound options include using building materials with exceptional durability, such as fiberglass-insulated windows; forest stewardship-certified wood products; and rapidly renewable products such as natural paints made from biodegradable agricultural products.
Choose exterior finishes, caulks, wood, and paints with low volatile organic compounds (VOC) to reduce toxic gas levels, thereby improving air quality. Select siding materials such as natural stone and roofing materials such as slate or recycled materials that also reduce toxic and other harmful emissions.
To control storm water pollution install storm water collection systems such as rain barrels under downspouts. Green roof systems, another option, collect storm water, reduce heating and cooling costs by providing insulation that helps regulate indoor air temperatures, and clean the air.
Bonna L. Nelson is a writer and photographer living in Easton. She is on the board of trustees of the Pickering Creek Audubon Center, a 400-acre wildlife habitat and environmental educational center dedicated to community-based conservation of natural resources on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
Visit the following links for a list of local native and natural lawn care.