Going Green With Your Santa Cruz Landscaping Service
Being environmentally friendly isn’t only good for the Earth. Most of the time, it’ll also be good for you as well. You’ll save money on your energy and utilities, and you can often make your home a safer and healthier place for your family. Tips on how to keep the inside of your home more environmentally friendly are easy to find. But to have a completely “green” household, you’ll also want to consider how your Santa Cruz landscaping will affect the environment.
Being more environmentally friendly with your landscaping design is easier than you might think. Here are some simple solutions that will turn your Santa Cruz landscaping design into an eco-friendly one!
Water-Wise Plants
One of the resources your landscape will inevitably use the most of is one of the most valuable on the planet: water. There’s no getting around water when it comes to maintaining a Santa Cruz landscape or garden. But there are a lot ways to limit the amount water you need to use. Decorating your garden or landscape with flowers and other plants that are “water-wise,” which simply means that they need less water than others, will make sure you’re not using up the local water supply. These plants can survive in the driest of conditions. Sage, purple coneflower, and yucca are some examples.
You can also use mulch to reduce the amount of water you need. A six-inch layer of mulch will help retain water and keep out weeds that can use up a lot of your plants’ water supply. And finding organic mulch is easier than you may think. Use shredded leaves, compost, or shredded newspaper as great alternatives to chemical-rich store-bought mulch.
Use a Mediterranean Layout
Mediterranean style lawns and landscapes include large, open courtyards that are easy to maintain and require less water. Because of the weather and culture, people in the Mediterranean enjoy gardening, dining, and socializing outdoors frequently. This type of landscape is conducive to those activities. You’ll find gravel beds are prevalent, along with concrete walls. These will often be decorated with vines, topiary trees, and other water-conserving plants. A Santa Cruz landscaping professional can help with you with the design and get you the best end results. We can also help maintain your landscape for you afterward, and using one landscaping company for all your needs means fewer resources, which is also great for the environment.
Install a Rain Garden
A rain garden is a small hole that allows water run-off from driveways, roofs, parking lots, and other urban features to be absorbed back into the ground. By letting rainwater back into the ground, you’ll reduce rain runoff, improving the quality of any nearby bodies of water. And you’ll improve local water quality and water cleaning efficiency.
Your home and Santa Cruz landscape are a part of the entire community, so making sure you’re not harming anything is a great move. Contributing to environmental improvement is even better, and it’s good for you as well!