Design Influences
I met with a young woman today, interested in applying to the Landscape Architecture program at UT-Austin. She asked me who I considered as my design/ecology influences, so here were the names that I came up with.
Roberto Burle Marx
- Ian MacHarg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_McHarg)
- Luis Barragan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Barragán)
- Roberto Burle Marx (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Burle_Marx)
- Garrett Eckbo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Eckbo)
Of course, I was introduced to these names, and many many others, though the outstanding professors at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Architecture.
Grass in the Austin Landscape
Every discussion about landscape design in Austin revolves around grass. There is no single opinion about the topic of grasses. In fact, we hear things like this all the time:
“I want to do the right thing, but I still love my lawn” ”all my grass died this summer, is that bad?” ”grass won’t grow in the shade” ”grass won’t grow in the sun” ”really, it looked great last year” ”I want more grass” ”I want less grass” ”I love tall grasses” ”I hate tall grasses”
Inland Sea Oats in a "featured concentration" in an Austin landscape design by Ecotopes.
Determining a new client’s values related to grass is one of the first things that Ecotopes must understand. We need to know how fiercely a client will defend their position on the subject of grass, so that we can achieve a balance between their requirements and our overall ecological objectives. One of the ways Ecotopes does this by defining the roles that grasses play in the landscape. In the broadest categories, grass is either used as a concentration in your landscape or as part of a mosaic.
CONCENTRATIONS: grasses that are dense, contiguous and unified; the cultural “default”
- Surface [active] - a low-growing and durable place that requires more frequent maintenance for routine uses like playing, entertaining or relaxing. This is your typical turf grass lawn.
- Surface [passive] - a low-growing vegetative layer that requires minimal maintenance for infrequent or occassional use. This is an area that’s similar to lawn, but isn’t commonly used for outdoor activities.
- Swath – a sweeping gesture in the landscape of a single, continuous band of taller grass
- Feature – a single objectified grass specimen or a small collection of grasses, made to stand out for emphasis
MOSAICS: grasses that are a part of a more diverse collection of vegetation; the ecological “default”
- Biofilter – The deep roots + stems of a variety of grasses are effective for trapping + metabolizing contaminants while physically holding soil in place against water flows
- Habitat – grasses play a significant roll in biodiversity to support native habitats
- Buffer – a collection of grasses and other plants can be used for visual screening or cushioning, creating an effective backdrop
December Showers in a Texas-sized Drought.
Image courtesy of Wade Kolb of Hydro Catchment Systems in Austin, TX
We got a lot of rain this weekend. It’s certainly a welcome sight considering Austin has been in a drought for a year now. The thing is, we’re not supposed to see this much rain in December. October and May are our rainy months. This should be even more proof to the naysayers that there is some strange stuff going on with climatic change.
In December, the average rain days are under 8 days/month and the average rainfall is between 2.44″ and 1.88″, depending on which climatic data you look at for Austin. We saw about 1.5″ of rain just this past weekend – the norm for all of December. But we’re still not caught up. The Austin American Statesman said in an online article today:
For those keeping score at home, Austin has recorded about 1.5 inches of rain in December and just over 16 inches in 2011. That still leaves us more than a foot below normal rainfall for this time of the year.
We don’t know how much La Niña will affect our climate in Austin. But we do know that there are plenty of plants that have seen this and weathered the storm. They can handle the changes and don’t need to be coddled like tropical, exotic, invasive, or even many adapted species. There are plant species endemic to the Blackland Prairie to the east of Austin, and the Edwards Plateau to the west, which can share some characteristics with the Chihuahuan Desert, as discussed further here.
But in the mean time? Get a rainwater harvesting cistern. Use the right kind of irrigation (like drip over spray heads for planing beds) while your new landscape of native plants is becoming established, then turn down the water usage once they are settled. Let leaf litter and cedar mulch protect the plant’s roots and help break down pollutants and runoff. Keep the rainfall onsite and don’t let it shoot of into the city’s storm system by mimicking dry creeks.
Make your yard replicate a natural system as much as possible without being a leach onto the city’s resources.
Next year we are probably going to see stage 3 restrictions, meaning no hand watering at all. What will your yard look like if you stop watering? That will tell you so much about your plant choices. You never know when we’ll see a surprise shower like we saw this weekend. It could get stranger and stranger from here on out.
Design: austin central texas design Gardens James David landscape landscape architecture Texas
by Steve Shelton
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Virtual Reality Photos
This is one of the virtual reality photos I made when I was in landscape graduate school…James David’s place (the superduper landscape architect from GARDENS, that we all miss).
CLICK this link gardens1
Scroll left or right to experience a 360 view of the garden.
Landscape Service Water Xeriscaping: bermuda herbicide horticultural vinegar irrigation landscape maintenance landscape service native plants nutsedge watering weeds xeriscape xeriscaping
by ecotopes_angelica
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How to Spend Less Time Working on Your Yard.
Many people come to us asking how to spend less time watering, weeding, fertilizing
and mowing. They want a landscape that will cost less to maintain than a typical lawn and provide habitat for local wildlife. They want to use native/xeric plants so they don’t have to cover plants in the winter and water like crazy in the summer. All of this makes sense and is completely possible by using native plants. But it won’t happen over night, I’m afraid.
I should also point out that most of our clients come to us after having a wasteland surrounding their house until they can’t stand it anymore. They want a landscape that requires no work, but to be realistic, there wasn’t much work they had been doing up to this point. Because, would you water a bunch of weeds masquerading as a lawn? So to be fair, having a new landscape will be more work than doing nothing. Especially for the first year.
A recent client: before our landscape design/installation.
After. Fill disclosure - there is about one week left of finishing touches. But you can appreciate the difference, I'm sure.
It takes about one year for plants to become established. You have to water daily for the first couple of weeks (depending on the plant and season, of course), and it can begin to taper off to a couple of times a week, then once a week. And during the rainy seasons, you only have to water as the plants show signs of stress. Having a drip irrigation system is much more efficient than a spray head, hand watering, or hooking up a soaker hose. The water goes right to the plants roots, waters for a set time, and then turns off by itself, without you having to remember that it’s been 15 minutes. So the first way to spend less time working on your yard is this:
Have a d.r.i.p. irrigation system installed in your landscape.
A drip to a possumhaw holly on one of our projects.
I know that the City of Austin gives higher rebates for replacing your lawn with plants and not having irrigation, but we have seen a huge success rate for clients that have opted for us to install a drip system. We use the term d.r.i.p. to mean Design Reduced Irrigation Program. It’s not a good idea to just put spray heads to saturate your yard, especially if you have turf as well as planting beds. Using the right tool for the job can save you time, money, and resources. Let’s all nod our heads to this one.
Nutsedge. Image from http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/83540/
While our build crew is out on your property digging trenches, removing bermuda (can you ever really? It’s the worst thing ever), digging post holes for fences, and creating earth works, soil is moved around. You know what’s been under that soil for 20 or 40 years, just waiting to be exposed to water and sunlight? Seeds. Weed seeds. And by removing/reducing the existing turf, you have removed the thing that has obscured the weed up to this point. You might not have known what nutsedge even looked like until it’s not being blocked by a web of turf. Now that there’s nothing holding it back, it can thrive in your new decomposed granite pathway. Weeds are crafty. And patient. While you think you’re getting rid of a whole mess of them, another set is ready to pop up and take over. The moral of this story is:
Don’t expect your new landscape to be weed-free initially.
We know that we need to come treat new flares of nutsedge and the never-dying bermuda (see this post for a refresher on types of grasses). It really does take time to kill these things. And you have to do it carefully and with successive treatments. Landscape fabric can’t even solve this problem because nutsedge will burst through and bermuda doesn’t care about your stupid fabric. Seeds land on top so the fabric didn’t do anything in the first place. A sod-cutter is indeed a great tool used to get as much of the genetics as possible. Only using a tiller would just knock the weeds down a couple of inches, and believe me, they can pop back up. Even raking after you till to get every scrap of root you see won’t be enough. And you wouldn’t want to just remove the top 4″ to 6″ of soil because a) this is way to expensive and b) there are wonderful nutrients in the top soil. Your solution, my friends, is treatment.
Bermuda grass. Image from http://www.calflora.net/bloomingplants/bermudagrass.html
We use horticultural vinegar, which is much stronger than your grocery store vinegar. It’s a broad spectrum herbicide, meaning it targets any plant it touches. Don’t just go spraying this on all of your new plants because you will be sad. Think of Round Up, which is broad spectrum. But horticultural vinegar is organic and doesn’t have a lingering effect. Don’t let your pets run around in it – wait a couple of hours – but then it’s fine and you can eat the veggies growing right next to your now-dead weed. Round Up is dangerous and could have disastrous effects on a growing fetus. Don’t use it. Yuck. We also use a species specific herbicide (as opposed to broad spectrum), to treat nutsedge and bermuda without hurting the other plants in close proximity.
Now that your plants are getting established and you’re seeing less weeds, what about feeding the plants? We use organic products from the Natural Gardener. Giving your plants a boost from John Dromgoole’s Ladybug products, including John’s Recipe.
http://www.ladybugbrand.com/products/Johns-Recipe.asp
This fast-acting and economical fertilizer is perfect for all plants. John’s Recipe™ is a blend of seaweed, Medina Soil Activator, humic acid, and molasses, along with emulsified and hydrolyzed fish. John’s Recipe™ contains no artificial chemicals and will not pollute. The fish products are a nitrogen source ideal for all plants. Seaweed contains trace minerals and growth enhancers that promote strong root systems and help plants deal with stress. Medina Soil Activator stimulates beneficial foliar and soil microbes. Humic acid unlocks soil minerals, stimulates enzymes and amino acid activity, and encourages beneficial microorganisms. Molasses is a source of carbon, B-vitamins, and is food for beneficial microbes.
Using organic fertilizers makes a big difference over time.
Plants stress less during the climatic extremes and bounce back quicker. Using chemical or petroleum-based fertilizers are like hooking your plants on street drugs. They can’t perform without a hit, and then when they do get a fix, they over perform and then stress out. You’re not doing your plants any favors by using any of those.
Once you have your watering, weeds, and fertilizers under control, let’s talk actual traditional beautification. This is what most people want to see (or have been led to expect) when we come out for our Landscape Steward Plus Service Package. Mowing, edging, pruning, and blowing. You have a choice – you can use leaf drop as mulch, or send it to a compost pile, or send it to the landfill. You can use a buffalo grass or zoysia and not mow it, letting the shaggy, natural texture change the face of the lawn. Or you can mow and stay hooked up to the standard in cookie cutter landscapes. Some people have a hard time letting this go, even though they have opted for a a different kind of landscape system. And lastly, when plants go dormant, they might look “barren.” They are hard to identify. When you create a habitat for local wildlife, they come visit, bringing both native and non-native seeds. You will have volunteers pop up. We identify these volunteers and either a) protect them during our weed treatment sessions, b) relocate them (you might not want a pecan tree growing under the power lines, for instance), or c) remove them (like pesky Chinese Ligustrum).
Decide how much you want to work in your landscape.
Is this really the coveted landscape? Or at least, should it be? Image from http://bighow.info/bh-fertilizers--their-uses.
Once you become familiar with native plants, and your standards for the look of your landscape adjust to using plants from your region, your time spent maintaining them will indeed become less and less. Every year the system becomes more efficient and self-sustainable. But it doesn’t just happen when your installation is complete.
Ecology Xeriscaping: austin central texas chihuahuan desert design ecotone edwards plateau humid subtropical landscape landscape installation native plants rainfall urban heat island effect
by ecotopes_angelica
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Xeriscaping in Austin Doesn’t Have to Mean Cactus.
The term xeriscape (xe·ri·scape) has been defined as:
a style of landscape design requiring little or no irrigation or other maintenance, used in arid regions.
We have been hesitant to use this term to describe our landscape designs for a number of reasons. It has a stigma attached to it to mean dry, desert-like, and very little diversity in plant type. But so many people use this term to explain that they don’t want a lawn anymore. So we, Ecotopes, need to embrace xeriscaping, but adjust the definition so that it can work for Central Texas.
Before
After
Austin is not arid. It is certainly in a drought right now – and there’s no way to predict how long this drought will last – but it is actually humid subtropical. Central Texas and the hill country see “hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters.”
Fortunately, there is a desert nearby with which we do share climatic conditions. The urban heat island effect makes this area, the Edwards Plateau, have a genetic resonance to the Chihuahuan Desert. Because the roads, parking lots, and rooftops all reflect heat and prevent rainfall from being absorbed. Otherwise, Austin would be more densely vegetated. It would be a savannah, covered with some trees and short grasses because of the thin soil.
Handy Urban Heat Island Diagram from SustainableCities.net
The Chihuahuan Desert sees more rainfall than the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts, mostly falling in the monsoon of late summer. It’s one of the most biodiverse places in the world. As the Cretaceous sea began to draw back 65 million years ago, plants that thrived on this kind of edge conditions popped up. Many species died off as conditions changed and the water kept receding. However, many adapted. And that’s why we see so many wildflowers here.
Image from BestTourism.com
Both the Edwards Plateau and the Chihuahuan Desert are found in West Texas and where they come into contact, they overlap and share characteristics of both regions. There is a shared ecotonal boundary. And because of the urban heat island effect found in Austin, there are those climatic characteristics found in Austin, too.
With that background, we know a few things:
- Austin is not in a desert
- Urban heat island effect means rain doesn’t count as much, concrete makes it hot
- Austin can feel like the where the Edwards Plateau overlaps Chihuahuan Desert.
So we can use plants found in the overlapped ecotone in Austin landscapes. To get rid of your lawn and the time/resource suck, you can indeed use native plants. You will water less (after they become established) and not work as hard over the summer and winter to keep plants alive.
Let’s redefine xeriscaping for Austin with all that we know, shall we class?
Xeriscaping is a style of landscape design/installation that uses plants that have adapted to the climatic conditions of the region to use little or no irrigation and reduced maintenance.
