May 19, 2009 from Your Daily Thread Written by Candice Dickens-Russell
Candice is writing a green home remodel series for YDT as she fixes up her first home. Read part one of her quest to keep her green promises while not breaking the bank here.
Let’s just say that our new yard was not designed with the environment in mind. Grass and other thirsty plants covered the grounds and I fantasized about bulldozing it all and starting from scratch. Instead, my husband, Scott, and I decided to keep our green promises and focus on the yard’s environmental performance – specifically, how water is used and how to increase our ability to sequester rain water on the property.
In Los Angeles, we spend a lot of money and energy importing water to the region, but then waste what little rainfall we get by paving over all of our surfaces and directing runoff to storm drains and out to sea. We want to make sure our yard holds on to as much water as possible. Here’s what we did:
1. They say that to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs and evaluating water use on your property is no different. We ran the hose to assess how water flows across the yard and determine where best to set up water capturing features.
2. We exaggerated natural depressions in the land to create swales to capture water and allow it time to sink into the ground. The largest swale is vegetated and we toss yard waste into the space. In another, I created a decorative “riverbed” using smooth stones.
3. Next we planted trees and climate appropriate plants making sure to build berms to direct and hold water around each.
4. Once the plants were in, we added plenty of mulch to planters to absorb water and nourish the soil.
5. We decided to keep some of the thirsty plants but moved them to shadier areas of the yard and cut their watering frequency by 75%.
6. Finally, we ordered a rain barrel from Home Depot online. This 60 gallon tank captures water that falls onto the roof and directs it into the barrel where it’s stored until we need it for irrigation.
While we probably won’t be featured in Sunset Magazine anytime soon, these simple changes have increased our ability to hold water on the property, and therefore cut down on the amount of potable water needed for landscaping. And we’re not done yet.
To learn more about residential stormwater management check out TreePeople’s Rainwater as a Resource Report.
About The Guest Contributor
Candice Dickens-Russell is the Youth Program Manager and CREEC Coordinator at TreePeople. She has worked as a Secondary Education Program Coordniator for TreePeople’s Generation Earth program and as a youth program coordinator for the Earth Resource Fund in Costa Mesa. She serves on the South Bay Business Environmental Coalition Board, the Green Advisory Board of the California Conservation Corps and the Los Angeles Environmental Education Fair steering comittee.
