14 Jun The Conservation Chronicles, No. 3

A Regionally-Appropriate Landscape Aesthetic

[NOTE:  I originally began drafting this piece in the fall of 2009, after THAT long, hot summer.]

I guess I should start this with a full disclosure.  The picture is of my front yard.  I’ve used this picture because I’m going to tell you to look at it and you will see that it looked just as good in September – this picture was taken before the rains came [in 2009] – as it did in April, after this long, hot summer.  But I’ve got to come clean on something first.  I LIKE my native landscaped front yard.  In fact, I like it so much I guess I’ve become a native plant snob, because I walk around my neighborhood and am bored by the plain grass front yards, with maybe a few shrubs and flowers huddled up against the house.  So I’m biased in regard to the very theme of this chronicle.  Which just highlights what the title says – landscaping style is an aesthetic.

Another thing I notice when I walk around my neighborhood is that people don’t appear to much use their front yards.  In particular, they don’t play games or roll around with the kids or any of the sorts of things for which turf is a particularly good surface.  So turf front yards don’t have any inherent utility for most households.  There is no compelling reason for large swaths of turf to dominate the landscape.  Indeed, the predominance of turf front yards IS an aesthetic.  And like mine did, an aesthetic can change.

Whoa, you may say, people have turf because it’s a lot of trouble to install and maintain all those native plants.  Okay, we’ll talk about installation below, but maintenance?!  We occasionally pull weeds – my wife calls it “sprouty duty” because we try to nip unwanted plants as they appear – a task which can be minimized by ample applications of mulch (which also reduces runoff and minimizes evaporation losses) and there’s very occasional pruning to be done.  We add mulch about once a year.  Very little watering, which is all drip and hose end.  No mowing, no sprinklers to set out and take in or in-ground irrigation system to program and maintain.  No fertilizing.  No spreading of chemicals and such to control weeds and pests.  So, I rather doubt that people favor turf yards because they require less maintenance than a native plant landscape.

On installation, I’ll grant that not everyone will take on the digging out of turf and laying down walks and building rock planters and trellis structures as I did.  It has indeed been quite a task, albeit one in which I took great pleasure, accomplished slowly over several years.  So for retrofits, transforming yards from turf to native-scapes is probably only for those captivated by the aesthetic.  Or who are well-heeled enough to hire it done, of course.

But again keep in mind that the growth in peak water demands will be driven by the growth in irrigation demands, so in regard to water use new construction is the more profitable focus of a regionally appropriate landscape aesthetic.  And what is it that “demands” a turf yard be installed in the first place except a sort of inertia – that is what seems to be “expected”.  But why could the front yard not just be mulched and delivered to the owner as a blank palette, allowing each to choose his/her aesthetic?  A REGIONALLY APPROPRIATE LANDSCAPE ETHIC WON’T BLOSSOM IF IT IS ALWAYS USURPED.

This is certainly so in larger projects, like apartment complexes.  On a bike ride about a month ago, before the rains came, I went by this large expanse of grass fronting a fairly new apartment project.  And I wondered – Why is this grass so green and closely cropped late in a very hot and extremely dry summer?  Why isn’t it left to grow longer, to be more drought tolerant, and perhaps to “brown up” just a little?  What function does it serve?  Does it really need to be manicured turf to serve that function?  Is there turf that would demand less water?  Why is this area covered with turf rather than with landscaping that would need little irrigation, like native wildflowers?  What motivated these choices?

As implied above, I expect that the major motivation was inertia, with a perception of lower first cost probably playing a role too.  It is very likely that spreading “hydromulch” to establish a turf is the most first-cost efficient way of “landscaping” a large expanse of area to be left in a pervious condition.  But might not native wildflowers also be “hydromulched”?  And might not large pervious areas be left undisturbed to begin with, allowing the native landscaping to remain, by carefully “footprinting” the site and restricting such areas from disturbance during construction of site improvements?  So indeed is it an expectation that these pervious areas are to be greenswards that rules the day?  Is this just an aesthetic?  And is this aesthetic itself simply presumed to be expected, or is it an actual, consciously-expressed preference, supported by market research to make the project more “sellable”?

But even if the latter is the case, isn’t that just an expression of a regionally-inappropriate landscaping ethic?  Given the water realities of this region, isn’t it time to reorient the market to a regionally appropriate ethic?  And again, such a reorientation is very unlikely to occur if the landscape is always usurped by the imported “turf ethic”.

All concerned should be seeking means by which a regionally-appropriate landscape ethic can be instilled and fostered.  Agents with jurisdiction over landscaping, such as the City of Austin, should consider limiting irrigated turf – perhaps even outlawing it in some circumstances, such as commercial projects – in favor of much less thirsty native plant landscapes.  It’s an aesthetic – a regionally-appropriate aesthetic – and we should be promoting and fostering it, not usurping it.