Growing a Greener World Episode 910: Sustainable Landscape Design

[Music] the 2018 Subaru Crosstrek built in a zero landfill plant so you can roam the earth with a lighter footprint [Music] Subaru proud sponsor of growing a greener world [Music] I'm Joel amble when I created growing a greener world I had one goal to tell stories of everyday people innovators entrepreneurs forward-thinking leaders who are all in ways both big and small dedicated to organic gardening and farming lightening our footprint conserving vital resources protecting natural habitats making a tangible difference for us all they're real they're passionate they're all around us they're the game changers who are literally growing a greener world and inspiring the rest of us to do the same growing a greener world it's more than a movement it's our mission [Music] the goal of any landscape designer usually boils down to one simple thing it hands the natural beauty of the location but achieving that goal is rarely simple because so much is dictated by the site itself the environment the location the topography enhancing the natural views while minimizing others the history of the property the existing wildlife even access into the landscape itself each of those presents its own set of challenges in bringing to life the goals of the client when you add to that the mandate that the design has to have a light environmental footprint and then be self-sufficient after the crew leaves that's a tall order for any designer especially when you consider that the property is over eight acres in size and isolated on an island with some of the most majestic views you'll ever see and it's a once-in-a-lifetime project for any designer lucky enough to get the job especially with lots of design lessons that anyone can apply at home well that's our story today welcome to Whidbey Island at the northern end of Puget Sound in Washington State you'll find Whidbey Island 30 miles north of Seattle it's the largest of the islands that make up Island County 37 miles from end to end it ranges from 10 miles wide to just a mile and a half wide in some places 80,000 people live on Whidbey which is also home to a sizable community of artists musicians and writers and while many of them no doubt draw inspiration from the panoramic views of the Cascade Mountains and the natural remote setting there are other features of the island that can make it challenging for certain artists gardening in the mystic North West presents a lot of opportunities I don't see them as challenges Stacey crooks is a nationally recognized landscape designer gardener horticultural educator and a native of the Pacific Northwest so we here have glacial till which is left over from the last ice age that came through here about 17,000 years ago and basically it scraped all the soil off the top of the surface and we have a lot of rock and sand and hard glacier to a lot of granite that's predominant in the Cascades so the challenges are finding plants trying to establish plants in this glacier till that will thrive and be sustainable a lot of people say oh you must have so many options how many you know all these plants these would grow in the Pacific there's all the perennials and everything grows so fast here and they're successful in the Pacific Northwest because they're tailored to the Mediterranean palette so we're the same as the Mediterranean Chile parts of Australia parts of South Africa and we can grow all the plants here in the Pacific Northwest that grow in those regions they're all like regions we have three or four months of dry weather and we have lots of rain in the wintertime in comparison to the East Coast it ranked where it rains all summer here it doesn't rain it all in the summer I have a very small plant palette I have a true tested drought tolerant plant palette that I use and it never lets me down [Music] Stacy would need a good go-to bag of tricks for the project that came her way in 2013 a new client approached Stacy a writer who was building a home on Whidbey Island on the area called midden Cove in the eighth-and-a-half surrounding acres would need a special touch she called this her sanctuary when I first met her she said this welcome to my sanctuary and it was really important to her that I understood what that meant to her it's about the land it's about the light it's about not intruding on the space and the beauty of the land itself and in this particular garden which is on the Puget Sound has reflection of water a lot of blue sky open sky so I don't like to compete with the view so the most important thing for the client is they bought the property with a view so they want to enhance the view they don't want to compete with it it was an old orchard and she wanted to keep it open we didn't want to plant a lot of trees here but we wanted to create a garden that was beautiful tranquil functional and aesthetically beautiful and Stacy's client had one overriding mandate that would drive everything this particular piece of land here is eight and a half acres and I was asked to do a light footprint when I built this garden so there's no fences it's open to the deer I got to create meadows the deer sleep in the meadows here there's lots of rabbits lots of birds owls mice all different kinds of birds here work on the epic project spread out over four years but to walk through now it's a stunning landscape that looks magazine cover perfect but also 100% natural what's even more impressive is that Stacie stuck to her directive and created a totally sustainable landscape in the process [Music] you know Stacy in the last few years of our traveling the country to film shows in different gardens and landscapes I am seeing more and more of these meadows as an element of that overall design and I have to say I love it it really provides that soothing feature and it connects the landscape from one area to the next - so when I got to design this garden it was one of the major components that I wanted to really bring into the design so this meadow wraps all the way around this 8 acres and I used it wherever I could keeping in mind that there was mowed paths for people to visit and stroll along them and walk their pets and but it brings in the insects and the birds and the deer lay in here and take naps in the sunshine and it's only mode once a year right it's only mode in Sept in August so you've got low maintenance which is a big part of water a sustainable design no water it's attracting wildlife lots of insects and birds yep so it's kind of the best of all worlds it's a win-win it really is if you've got the space to do it it's it's beautiful most people think they're quite easy you to stop mowing your grass and you have a meadow but it's really quite the long process it took about five years to get it to where it is now it's two years of eradication of stripping off the top layer of thistles invasive species and and everything you don't want in your lawn and then letting it sit go fallow and eradicating the things that come up through the seeds that are still there or that are being dropped by Birds thistles things like that and then we amended the land with chicken manure turned it all over and created a base for hydro seating and we seeded it with a meadow seed and so they were treated like a lawn in the beginning so we irrigated them the first two summers and cut them like a lawn we cut them long but we cut them so that the root systems could develop deep and then last summer was the first summer it was the fifth summer we cut them but when we cut it last August I thought it would just be a big tangled mess but they just cut it with a big field mower and just let it lay and it went through the winter like that and and all the new grass and all the new it just became its own fertilizer like when you thatch your lawn and it came right up through and it was just it's been beautiful there's a lot of wildlife out here now more than there was before by keeping large open areas that are uninterrupted you create an open flight pattern you're going to get bigger birds you're gonna get more woodpeckers and sparrows things that fly faster in groups and colonies and they're gonna you're gonna have more space they're going to come in because they can see they're safe they have great places to land and hide so in it encourages more habitat activity and more exploration and searching for food and there's just a lot more birds here I know there's more birds here than when I first came here and the deer rolling around they just sleep in it I mean they've sent me pictures here where they'll get up in the morning there's like deer sleeping all over the out of the photos it's pretty amazing actually the meadows have been really for me the just the really glory this property has really been terrific to watch it happen the natural lay of the open land also gave Stacey the opportunity to create another of the landscapes key features a bog I came here in June and I was here evaluating everything working with drawings and bids and contractors trying to figure out what would we would do and get the final plan done and what it would cost and I watched the bog in the stream and they never let up that was wet moist soggy the whole time all through August into September so I knew I was gonna get to build a real bog in a place that it should be you're not successful if you try and change the natural topography the too much of the grade has to stay pretty much the same I have never had success building a bog that wasn't actually already there it's just if you've already got it you can't fill it yeah it will come back it will just seep up it just needs to be there so we've enhanced it we eradicated a lot of the weeds out of it the blackberries and things like that and the alders that we're growing in it the seedling alders and scraped the bottom added more subsoil with clay in it and then planted pussywillows and Gunnar is and things that you would natural things that involve and it's full of horse tails but those that's where they want to be and you can't fight him you gotta learn to love them if you chop one up you're gonna have 50 if you pull it it's gonna spread underground into more so we decided to leave the horse tails and I think it's really pretty it's pretty I mean it's part of it it's just part of it and they're not anywhere else because we haven't disturbed the soil that's another reason not to change the topography every time you change it something's gonna happen it's gonna change a lot of things not just one thing not just the shape but it's going to change it's going to change its own little ecosystem if you can work with the natural topography your light years ahead of trying to change anything because it's already here it's already settled [Music] whether it's dealing with the existing lay of the land are working within her self-described small plant palette of proven performers not fighting Mother Nature is one of Stacy's top tips for home gardeners - you can't emphasize it enough to use the right plant in the right place so it's a it's also about the combinations of the right plants so I always try and put like plants together plants that require a little more water and let the other plants that need no water move together so you're not only saving resources those particular gardens are going to be more successful than mixing them up I always say read the tags if you're not sure and if the tag isn't clear and you're and there's no tank find a nurseryman and ask them before you invest your money and buy this plant that you're going to take home and plant in the wrong place it's gonna get too big it has to be peeled prune all the time you're losing resources not only you but the water and you know the fertilizer everything that that plant is going to require it needs to go someplace where in theory you shouldn't even have to prune it you shouldn't have to deadhead it you shouldn't have to do anything unless you choose to [Music] well Stacy this is that section between the garage and the entrance into the house there was that bare space and you had an idea for how to fix this area so that it was really attractive and you did that with ground cover and then those ferns coming up through tell me about your design well this is one of my go-to plant combinations in this situation but also in lots of other areas of the garden that you don't want to have to maintain so the pachysandra creates this really lush carpet that's evergreen and glisteny in the winter and the new growth is shiny it has flowers at some point the bees come in here and then I add I like to add my favorite fern which is the autumn fern brilliant is the variety of it with its bronze fronds and this time of year things are just kicking up spring you know it's post spring and it's evergreen it actually will turn green eventually this one here starting to turn green those are the new fronds that just pop right up they this is all you need in this space I mean it's there's a little bit of how can a clog grass and there's the native sword ferns to wrap around the perimeter of it to bring this into its own space its own garden but this is goat no maintenance go to no water it's tough it's it's totally sustainable in a low light situation it's a low light situation it can handle a little bit of Sun the Pakistani won't be as lush when you could be a okay thing but this is true tested you can't can't lose and these plants are really easy to find in any nursery great combination for a lot of parts of the country yeah [Music] Stasi worked in lots of big masses of plants often huge swathes of the same variety it's a necessity when you're filling an 8 acre garden but it's a technique that works in yards of any size I think in terms of big brushstrokes and I do this even in small gardens the difference might be three of one thing or five of one thing or thirty of one thing or 70 of them it's just more plants same plant but more of it so and I do have combinations where different strokes like I'll do a stroke of lavender and a stroke of Heather and a stroke of Paris and a stroke of Nandina and they all they all have the same requirements and the same needs and they blend together but by creating plants big brushstrokes you have this flow and this rhythm that is created the eye travels through it it doesn't stop and focus on like one thing here one thing polka dots you don't want to do but no onesies is what we call it [Music] many people shy away from planting in large masses the closer they get to the house because they're worried about overcrowding the home or visually overpowering it but Stacy says that's exactly where you need to be paying the most attention to your plantings the numbers the sizing the colors those are the details that can accentuate the home best Stacy what strikes me as we walk this landscape is that you have lots of pops of color everywhere but then as we come up to the house I really feel this sense of calmness and the soothing feel around well I do that on purpose because I really like to anchor the house into the landscape so it's not just like The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy just dropped it on the landscape I like to bring in the colors the stone and the trees and the foliage color on the Evergreen material just to settle the house into the landscape and I think if people want to have bright borders or some bright pops of color that's another place to have their bright color maybe that they look out across into their landscape at but around the house it's something that you walk into every day back and forth you look out the windows and I think a calmer palette is much it makes people much much happier they just find that works much better that way I like it but Stacy also points out that sometimes inspiration for what goes in the design of a garden should come from what's outside the garden I call that borrowed landscape so on every job that I start and other designers do the same thing you look around at what you can use for for your benefit so I look around to see how much deciduous materials out there and how much evergreen materials out there do I and if there's if that deciduous tree loses its leaves in the winter do I want to block the neighbor's house so I might want to put an evergreen tree there to block that so I try and think of what's around me before I actually plant on the property that I'm working on so and you can do colors too for instance if there's a large red maple in the distance you can add a small red maple on the property that you're working on and then it stacks up and looks a lot bigger and the property looks a lot larger and the scale changes it so right so that's that's a it's a good it's a really good tool to use for looking at evaluating any property any yard and it can be done anywhere anywhere and then I look at what shape should it be is it a rectangular modern house or does it have a peak does it have any round shapes in it do I want to create a round Terrace to anchor the shapes on the house to the patio you know I try and tie it all together a little bit this house here has a round roof has a shape domed roof so there's no straight lines on this property none not one they're all curves which creates this fluid feeling like the water you hear and the air movement and the roads the driveway and everything has a fluid movement here nothing's stagnant here everything's moving around I wanted this feeling because you can really feel it on this property the corridors with the big yellow Cedars behind me and the Bert the beech trees and the walnut trees that we're here that have been here since the 30s and there's breeze corridors through this property which kind of influenced or definitely influenced how I wanted to how I was drawn through the property through the land this all sounds kind of you know mystical but land does speak to you I do believe that and this particular piece of property is it's pretty pretty awesome it's pretty magical it really is [Music] stacy's core principles for sustainability aren't highly technical or overly complicated they're the things gardeners have always done and things you can do in your own landscape regardless of size the right plant in the right place working with what nature has given you not adding anything unnecessary and that goes right down to fighting the urge to give those plants a chemical boost so when I plant any garden I only fertilize once I use a organic five five five multi-purpose with microbes a little handful in each hole that's it I never fertilize again it seems to me that people that fertilize all the time the plant will outgrow what it says it's going to grow there's more foliage less flowers less blooms it'll be leggy it just out grows the size that it's just been overfed you know and it's just going to grow too much and it's not going to maintain the scale and the flow of the rest of the garden that you wanted like the tags like your homework like you planned the more educated you are the more sustainable your garden is going to be because it can you know it'll thrive on its own with very little care it doesn't stage stainability doesn't mean to me native wild you know let it be let nature take care of it sustainable to me just means that the garden can sustain itself without much care from you because the plants will have their their needs met you will not have to you know take care of them they'll take care of themselves that's what sustainability is all about and you'll have great pleasure and you'll be proud of what you did and you'll have many years of a healthy garden to enjoy [Music] very few of us will ever have to design a visually stunning ecologically sustainable landscape over eight and a half acres on a place like Whidbey Island but the more I walked around mid and Cove and after I got past all those jaw-dropping views I kept thinking about that old saying how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time because as overwhelming as everything about this epic landscape project was Stacey tackled it one fundamental concept one basic gardening truth one environmental practice one bed one plant at a time and that's why this landscape worked and that's why all successful landscapes work hopefully today you found something to inspire you to create a more sustainable and attractive landscape in your own home garden if you'd like to learn more about Stacey and her work or watch this episode again you can do that on our website under the show notes for this episode and the website address that's the same as our show name it's growing a greener world calm thanks for watching everybody I'm Joel ampel and we'll see you back here next time for more growing a greener world [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Growing a Greener World

Views: 45,442

Rating: 4.9607291 out of 5

Keywords: sustainable, landscape, plants, planting, landscape beds, native plant, whidbey island, pacific northwest, seattle, cascades, landscape design, plant design, meadow, glacial till, meditteranean climate, wildlife, birds, low maintenance, hydrozone, garden, gardening, expert

Id: G5KIUmfEe7U

Length: 25min 5sec (1505 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 03 2018