Native Landscaping for the Frugal Enivironmentalist

What comes to mind when you think of landscaping?

Probably something like heavy equipment, ornamental plantings, laying down weed barrier and highly processed wood chips as mulch and heavy crushed stone or masonry mined and transported across the country.

That's about what runs through my mind when I think about it.  But none of these things have what could be called a stellar record for reducing environmental impact.  You need petroleum to run the Bobcats and trucks to haul the ornamental invasive plants around.  Those invasive plants then escape the landscaped areas and impact the surrounding environment by suppressing native species and destroying native ecosystems.  While the stone and masonry itself is not to damaging to the environment the processes by which it is harvested, processed and transported is damaging. 

With all this in mind how was I to create the landscaping that I wanted without causing any undo environmental impact.  I chose to use one of the oldest methods know to environmentalists and I recycled.

Using the humble brick, a shovel and a garden rake my girlfriend and I  laid out the basic design of a flat curve running from the back deck to the fence on the edge of the yard.  We did this using bricks that had been pulled up from a old patio on the property.  Later in the year near the end of February I will broadcast seed of native grasses and native flowers into this landscaping form.  When sprouted these plants will provide a eye catching, beautiful landscaped area full of native Texas plants and recycled bricks without spending undo amounts of money and having very little environmental impact.

This landscaping will also serve as a line between the raked, mowed and otherwise manicured part of the lawn; separating it from the space where we let the needle and leaf fall form a natural mulch.  This will create a "wild" part of the property which will add diversity to the house and help reduce its environmental impact.
  
Until next time my fellow environmentalists

Josh     

Update on My Texas Winter Garden



Greenhouse Lettuce

So far I have had good growth on on my garden both inside the greenhouse and outside.  I will note that the greenhouse plants are doing much better than the ones exposed to the elements.  Both types of spinach and lettuce that I have planted in the greenhouse are about 2x the size of the ones in plots outside. 



Dead Tomato Seedling

I also am having good growth in my cover crop bed with the winter rye and hairy vetch growing well andso far they have been very frost tolerant.  We have had some cold temperatures here the last few weeks and that did kill off my cherry tomato plant.  It was not a cold tolerant species and I was simply curious to see if the added protection of the greenhouse would save it.  It appears that on this scale at least that answer is no. 


Exposed Lettuce

A couple considerations I will have to keep in mind is that the area is the am protecting is not large therefore it isn't buffered as well against the temperature swings like a larger enclosed structure would be.  Also most greenhouse plastic is 6 ml and I am using 2 ml plastic because it was the easiest and cheapest available to me.

So far the experiment is going well and overall I am getting the results I expected from my research and small scale experiments.  I will also note at this time that I am not getting the growth I was hoping for due mainly to the cooler temperatures and the lack of sunny days.

Until next time my fellow environmentalists.

Josh