We're Surrounded -- High Maintenance Landscaping

Drive around town and 99% of what you'll see are landscape beds made to need more investment and with little wildlife value. The spaces require herbicides, annual wood mulch applications, and provide little in the way of habitat. Not to mention the environmental impacts of herbicide and mulch production, transportation, and the minimal water infiltration and air-cleaning these sparsely-planted beds achieve.

When folks drive around town and see these "professional" landscapes, they'll probably tend to think this is how their home landscape should look, too -- after all, it's how the big guys do it.

Here are two landscape bed examples that could use some re-imagining as a way to inspire their communities to garden smarter:

You'll notice the first example does at least have a few plants, but even this number is about 10% of what it should be. You can see how rainwater, in part from the sidewalk, has washed mulch away -- meaning it will need to be reapplied probably several times a year. The planting certainly won't help shade out or compete against weeds, and hopefully you agree it just isn't pretty even if everything was leafed out. Where are the layers, the different textures and colors? These plants were doomed the minute they were put in the ground -- spread too far apart in a bed that will fight climatic conditions and lose.  What is an alternative? A mix of native sedge and then forbs that stay relatively tidy, like prairie alumroot, pale purple coneflower, lead plant, butterflyweed, dotted blazing star, nodding onion, and aromatic aster -- a solid layer of plants placed on 12" centers.

This second bed perhaps has trickier issues, being an island in a strip mall parking lot. You can see the landscape company simply put down as much mulch as the bed could hold in hopes of suppressing weeds -- which won't work at all because plenty of weeds germinate and do fine in thick mulch like this. But the larger issues this sort of bed faces is people walking through it and doing damage. What could we do? Perhaps a ground layer of sedge and wild geranium to add spring and summer blooms. At least the ground will be covered and you won't need annual mulch and as many weed control treatments. You wouldn't want to put shrubs in here that would block sight lines or scratch cars. Perhaps a stone pathway through the middle from left to right would also alleviate trampling of new plants.

If businesses added up how much they spend on landscape maintenance over the course of 1-2 years, I wonder how it would compare to a one-time planting with the right plants in the right configuration. Do you have a parking area, business frontage, or neighborhood entrance you'd want grown more sustainably and beautifully? We'd like to see it, and certainly to help design a more wildlife and people-friendly space. Keep in mind there are studies out there that show business beautification in the form of plants can increases consumer spending -- although I hope our goal would also be to provide for pollinators and clean air and water. Plants do so much for us!