Naturescaping Basics: Reducing Carbon Footprints in the Yard

Reducing carbon footprints often means scaling down or increasing efforts, but natural landscaping means less mowing and watering, and a beautiful yard.

Changing the landscaping outside the home to nature-scaping often has a side effect: more community involvement to encourage nature-scaping principles. Neighbors or passersby might comment or ask questions since the yard where grass once stood now captivates attention with drifts of lovely flowers and often the appearance of butterflies, dragonflies, and birds.

Other side effects, listed below, are some benefits to home dwellers with a natural scape.

How Naturescaping Benefits the Environment

Long ago, mowers were necessary for ‘fitting in’ with the neighborhood association. Often producing the chuffy emissions of old-school mower motors, husbands and heads of households could be seen nearly every weekend mowing, trimming, and edging the yard.

Today, however, this is not necessary. For one thing, mowers have changed to new, lower emission standards.

Still, there is an even better way than buying a new, sometimes costly mower, and the neighborhood association can approve wholeheartedly. That change is naturescaping—a sustainable alternative that reduces yard maintenance and supports eco-friendly practices, much like how services such as PaperWriter, a research paper writing service, help students streamline their academic workload while focusing on more important priorities.

Naturescaping’s Key Principles

• Designing the yard for little to no mowing.
• Planting varieties of plants for less watering and fertilization.
• Growing a yard and garden without chemicals that are harmful to the environment, water, animals, and humans.
• Creating an attractive outdoor oasis for family, friends, and pets as part of the home.

Last, keep weeds (especially dandelions) to a minimum, as approved by the neighborhood association, like guidelines, if there are any.

Water Conservation Benefits of Rain Gardens in Naturescaping

These key principles help lower a household’s carbon footprint by consuming fewer water resources. Gardens planted specifically to retain as much moisture in the soil as possible always tend to require less watering.

Rain gardens near downspouts are part of the naturescape plan. They make good use of run-off water as a natural ‘spring,’ almost eliminating the need to water that particular part of the garden. These also keep water that would normally run into the street’s overflow drain in the yard, absorbed by the rain garden.

Reducing Toxic Runoff and Protecting Water Sources

This alleviates all sorts of toxicities from entering the water supply and streambeds, as rainwater would flow out in a forest or field. However, blocked by rooftops, pavement, and vehicles, this type of runoff often does not get absorbed by the soil and filters itself back into streams and water treatment plants.

Less sprinkler-type watering also leads to less run-off draining into the storm drains. Drained water from naturescaped gardens also holds fewer to zero toxic particles from pesticides and herbicides, which are not ‘cleaned’ out once they have seeped into water treatment plants or streams. This is because there is no known way to ‘clean’ such chemicals out of water yet, and no way to dispose of them safely.

Minimizing Lawn Maintenance and Encouraging Wildlife Habitats

Naturescaping requires minimal mowing as the gardens are designed with minimal lawn space. The types of ‘grass’ planted are often native, ornamental, and rather than requiring mowing, mound up to form shelter for birds, insects, and other animals as part of a natural habitat out in the yard.

Another side effect might be more bird singing heard during springtime. The presence of ‘good insects’ like ladybugs, butterflies, pollinating bees, and praying mantises. These bugs provide natural prevention against pest infestation for plant life in the yard.

Creating a Natural Oasis with Native Plants and Artistic Landscaping

Planted in drifts with trails and art abounding in the yard, a quiet, contemplative landscape also offers a peaceful refuge to family and friends. Naturescaping is intentionally not a downsizing as one might think about when thinking morogically, but rather sometimes a measurable improvement.

Some naturescapers even feel they might not have had such a beautiful yard had they not ‘switched’ from the confines of the need-to-mow lifestyle to creating a natural oasis right outside their home.

This is done by planting in drifts lush, tolerant plants proven to flourish within a naturescaper’s particular zone. This is also done by planting indigenous – native – plants that might have once grown wild in the same area before urban housing cleared the fields.

The Time Has Come to Naturescape

For this reason, specifically, naturescaping’s time has come. Many indigenous plants have gone extinct due to urban sprawl, and even rural housing developments have moved the confines of wild, native plants too far from their original habitats to have continued in numbers not considered endangered, or possibly even become extinct.

So, no need to feel deprived, just a quick look into the plans and designs of naturescapers and it is easy to see that naturescaped yards are an improvement over lawn-intensive yards.

The effort and upkeep requirements (once the work of the changeover is done) are much lower, but the satisfaction is much higher for everyone around the home, even the fish in the neighboring stream.