Incorporating Eco-friendly Practices into a Landscape Design in the Rockville and Manakin-Sabot, VA Areas
Sustainable landscape designs can elevate the look, deliver superior function, and provide low maintenance requirements for your Rockville and Manakin-Sabot, VA, property. incorporating eco-friendly practices into a landscape plan means you get all the colors and textures, and comfortable outdoor living, with a lot less work. See how the pros create elegant spaces with an eye to the environment.
Outdoor Living Areas and Other Hardscape Spaces
Choosing “green” methods for outdoor living starts with planning from the ground up to ensure a uniform design that emphasizes best practices. Building a functional driveway or patio can ensure you have durable, stable surfaces for all your outdoor plans.
One way to achieve the functional, lovely outdoor living areas you want is to utilize permeable pavers which allow water to seep through the small cracks between paving stones, reducing run-off into nearby streams and allowing pollutants to filter back into the ground instead of rivers. With the variety of colors, textures, and shapes of permeable pavers, outdoor spaces have a custom look while protecting the land.
Recycling old stones, bricks, and other materials into charming benches or stacked stone walls not only lends a one-of-a-kind aesthetic to your hardscape areas like patios and walkways but they let you create something new out of existing resources.
Less Grass and More Plants
Planning strategic grassy areas means less mowing and watering with a big impact on beauty. Carefully curated grassy spaces that follow the curves of the landscape design or form grid patterns to enhance a contemporary landscape deliver stunning areas with less maintenance.
Native plants need less water, no chemicals, and little weeding because they have adapted to the climate and soil conditions, thriving in every season and returning each year better than the last. Instead of building a fence for privacy, plant a living screen of fast-growing evergreens or a hedge of boxwoods that fills in quickly. This creates a habitat for woodland creatures, birds, and butterflies, too.
Utilize Rocks
Replacing mulch with round river rocks is a way to protect the shrubs and plants in planting beds without having to replenish them once or twice a year. Large landscape boulders add visual weight and size to planting beds, especially when accompanied by a recirculating waterfall that spills over the stone into a pond.
Drainage problems in the landscape can be solved with a rock swale that diverts standing water away from the planting beds and grass to a spot where it can spill with no damage. Moisture-loving plants and shrubs that attract birds and butterflies turn what was once a problem into a delightful floral garden space for wildlife. Accented with wispy ornamental grasses that sway and add movement, this area can become a wonderful focal feature.
Smart Irrigation
Smart irrigation takes the approach that no water should be wasted by operating an efficient system that can prevent watering during rainy days, delivering less water to shaded spaces, and ensuring sunny areas get the right amount of water to ensure consistent growth.
Wi-Fi-enabled controllers minimize water waste by adjusting to environmental conditions like rain, wind, and temperature, designed to water the grass and not structures. You can adjust the irrigation in any part of the landscape from an app on your smartphone, further ensuring eco-friendly practices.
Related: Landscape Design Techniques the Pros Use in the Midlothian and Rockville, VA Areas
With one lawn mower and a lot of determination, Josh Goff started Commonwealth Curb Appeal in 2004 as a way to make a living while spending time in the great outdoors.
In 2007, he traded the lawn mower for masonry and carpentry skills and began building outdoor living spaces. By 2015, he was named among the Top 40 Under 40. Over the years, the company has grown into the full-service landscape design and build firm it is today.
