Lawns, Gardens & Landscapes

Residential Water Use Lawns, Gardens & Landscapes

Lawns, Gardens & Landscapes

Your landscape includes your lawn, trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetable garden, and groundcovers. The lawn is likely a prominent part of your landscape. While the lawn may need watering and frequent care, it adds beauty to the community and a well-maintained lawn offers many benefits:

  • absorbs rain water runoff
  • decreases soil erosion
  • promotes neighborhood pride
  • reduces the urban heat island effect
  • increases property values
  • provides space for recreation and relaxation

Don't Let Leaves Smother the Turf

Leaves
Leaves. Useful to the tree. Great for jumping in. Not much fun to clean up. Find out what you should be doing with those fallen leaves to let them help you and your landscape in the long run.

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Smart Gardening: Converting to No-Till for Home Gardeners

onion garden
I often hear from vegetable or flower gardeners who are unhappy with their soil quality. They routinely incorporate organic matter in the soil each fall, but are still disappointed with their heavy soil. Why aren’t they developing beautiful crumbly dark brown soil that’s easy to plant and great for vegetable root crops? Routinely tilling your garden soil each fall and spring could be the culprit.

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Mulch in the Landscape

pile of mulch

Mulch is very important to the overall health of our plants, but are all mulches created equal? Some may have more benefits than others and some may not be as helpful as we think they are.

Benefits of Mulch

Mulch, when properly applied, can provide a lot of great benefits to our plants, including:

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Efficient and Effective Tree Watering

mulching a young tree

Drought conditions have led to stress in established trees and difficulty starting young trees. With the need for supplemental watering, correct irrigation practices are important to tree health and efficient water use.

Fall is tree planting time and an important time to water established trees in the absence of adequate precipitation. Whether a new tree or an established tree, correct watering is important. Too little as well as too much water can lead to tree stress, a decline in growth, and water waste.

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Boost Landscape Appeal with a Curb Strip Garden

Many urban landscapes have a forlorn narrow planting strip between the curb and sidewalk, otherwise known as a “hell strip”. Healthy curbside plantings help filter and absorb rainwater, preventing landscape fertilizers and other pollutants from entering storm drains.

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