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When the Grass was Greener

Once upon a time, there was a castle guarded by soldiers. Enemies obscured by the trees would sneak close to the castle, so the soldiers reduced the threat by removing the trees. Without the trees, the land filled in with grasses, thyme, and chamomile. Animals began to graze in these new fields, keeping the plants low. The soldiers could see clearly across the land, and the sheep were fat and happy. The castle prospered, and everyone who visited wished their land could be so grand. The other land owners cut down their trees and filled in their land with grasses. The smell from the grazing animals wasn’t ideal, so they brought in men to cut the grasses low instead.

The “green carpet” surrounding the finest castles and estates in the 16th & 17th century became a status symbol, and planted the seed for the sod lawn we’re all familiar with today.

In the United States after WWII, automobile technology and availability took off. With the open road ahead of them, well-to-do folks left the cramped urban conditions of the cities, moving outward to new suburban neighborhoods.

Planners like Frederick Law Olmsted and Abraham Levitt gave the people sprawling neighborhoods, with acres of lush green grass. With the popularity of the 2-day weekend on the rise, homeowners indulged in their green Edens. This ignited a new chapter for the centuries old status symbol of the turf lawn – now repurposed for mini-golf and lawn bowl rather than spying enemy invaders and feeding livestock.

“No single feature of a suburban residential community contributes as much to the charm and beauty of the individual home and the locality as well-kept lawns” – Abraham Levitt

Ingrained into the new vision for the American Dream, well-kept lawns became the golden standard. With an estimated 30 to 40-million acres of the United States serving as an irrigated sod lawn today, this status symbol is butting heads with our resources and priorities.

The cold hard truth about lawns are that they are a water hog, high maintenance (what other non-food-production plants do you cut weekly, fertilize seasonally, and treat with chemicals?!), lawns are a food desert for animals & insects, and they do nothing for our groundwater while the water runoff often pollutes creeks and streams with high nitrogen fertilizers, causing harmful algae blooms. All of that lawn maintenance also creates air pollution and noise pollution from mowers, blowers, and trimmer equipment.

A renovation project where Outdoor Design Group helped our client reduce their turf lawn.

But lawns can be great in the right location!

This is where “active-use” vs. “passive-use” spaces come into play. Lawns can be very durable, and are amazing for active children and pets. Maintaining a lawn to play and entertain on is a lovely idea. Kentucky Bluegrass has been a popular turf choice for decades, but climate suited alternatives like Dog-Tuff Buffalo Grass, Bermuda grass, or “steppable perennial lawns” made up of creeping thyme or clover can serve the same purpose as high-water turf lawns with fewer drawbacks.  While choosing the right type of lawn for your environment is a start, reducing the overall amount of lawn is still the key to a progressive and sustainable landscape. Maintaining any type of lawn on the side or front of your house where no-one ever spends their time is wasteful for you, your wallet, and the environment.

Steppable groundcover used with other perennials, step stones and mulch.

Consider ditching the golf-course-quality front-yard peacocking and save that neighborly competitiveness for the holiday light display. Instead, beef up your shrub beds, add some neat planters, and opt for native seed mixes that include drought-tolerant grasses & wildflowers. Keep your lawn only where you will use it, and plant a nice tree just west or south of it to keep it cooler and healthier during hot sunny days.

A front yard filled with a diversity of ornamental grasses, perennials, shrubs, landscape rock and mulch.

This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects.  For more information about our business and our services, click here.

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Photo of the Day: Before and After of Street Median Landscape

Today’s photo is a recent view of a portion of one street median renovation we designed in Lakewood Colorado. We designed several landscape plans for this renovation project, consisting of many miles of existing street medians in that city, that are slated for renewal. It was an interesting and challenging project to work on, and the city staff were great to work with. We look forward to seeing how these designs grow and flourish over time!

Landscape median in Lakewood, Colorado
Before renovation photo of the same median as above, but with camera looking north.

This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects.  For more information about our business and our services, click here.

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Project Highlight: Church Landscape Addition & Renovation

In 2016, the congregation of Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Longmont, Colorado decided to expand their existing building to better serve their growing congregation. The proposed addition to the existing building would impact the existing landscaping, so our company was hired to design the renovation and adjustments of the landscape around the building.

The remodel of the building will be done in multiple phases. So far, phase 1 of the renovations has been constructed.

The rendered landscape plan for the Saint Francis of Assisi Church.

Like many church construction projects, this one had to be cost conscious. Due to budget constraints and various budget reviews, the proposed plantings were adjusted several times during the planning stages to best fit the current needs of the budget.

One particular technical challenge was the assessment and modification of the existing irrigation system and pumps. Our irrigation specialist was dispatched to the field multiple times to work with the Church’s maintenance crew to puzzle out the best way to adjust and modify the existing irrigation system. In the end, we were able to bridge the new and existing irrigation systems into a cohesive whole.

From a planting design perspective, the client had a few key points they wished to address: Blend new and existing plants seamlessly;  create a low maintenance & low water use landscape; and add seasonal focal points to pair with the liturgically appropriate seasonal milestones that are critical to the Church.

Our team worked with the Church’s maintenance team to ensure the plantings and other landscape elements would be low maintenance. Hearty and reliable plant species were chosen for the design. We also wanted the new plantings to blend seamlessly with the existing landscaping. In addition to these criteria for the plants, we also ensured the plantings in the expanded parking lot would not obscure any critical sight lines for pedestrian and vehicle safety.

To create seasonal focal points, we considered different plants that might be at their peak during significant seasonal holidays. One good example of this is forsythia shrubs with their glorious yellow blooms that appear close to Easter, a very significant holiday in the Catholic Church. Not only are the seasonal focal points a visible manifestation of seasonally significant biblical events, these planting nodes provide attractive backdrops for photo opportunities during church sponsored events such as weddings.

Working on the landscape renovations for the Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church was a wonderful experience for our design team.  It was satisfying to help the Church achieve their landscape design goals for their congregation and stay on budget.

This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects.  For more information about our business and our services, click here.

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Project Highlight: Olde Town Arvada Landscape Makeover

Some of our favorite projects here at Outdoor Design Group are the landscape renovations. These kind of projects can be quite challenging to work on, but they often turn out to be the most rewarding once the project is completed, the site takes on a fresh new look and the plants have begun to fill in and show off.

A recent project for a non-profit organization near our office was completed a couple years ago, and the landscape plants have been looking great ever since. The landscape areas around the entrance to this organization’s building face mostly south and west with ample amounts of sunshine. With this in mind, we knew we could design a xeric planting plan that would look great throughout a long hot summer, replacing the old plants on site that were more water needy.

And because of the south facing entrance, we had the opportunity to utilize plants that are typically a little too frost tender for the Denver area. But that southern entrance to this building gave us warmer micro-climates we could play with to plant more unique varieties of plants for our area, such as Desert Willow and a selection of cacti.

Luckily our client on this project was a wonderful partner in the endeavor and was very open to the idea of a new landscape of low water and native plants for their freshly renovated office building. The before and after photos shown below offer a glimpse of the transformation:

Painted Lady Butterflies enjoying the xeriscape plants at this Olde Town Arvada landscape makeover.

This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects.  For more information about our business and our services, click here.

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New Bill Seeks to Encourage Use of Xeriscape in Common Areas

As water prices rise, and the climate warms, water conservation is becoming even more important. Colorado’s current population is estimated to be 5,695,564, nearly 700,000 higher than in 2010. That 13.2 percent growth is the fourth highest among all states over that time period.

All these new residents continue to put a strain on water supplies. It makes perfect sense then, to encourage Xeriscape, which, as we’ve written in the past (the-7-principles-of-xeriscape-revisited-30-years-later), is a form of landscape design that requires much less water.

We are pleased to hear of HB19-1050, a new bill in the Colorado General Assembly, that encourages the use of Xeriscape in common landscape areas.

Here is a summary of the bill:

Section 1 of the bill augments an existing law that establishes the right of unit owners in common interest communities to use water-efficient landscaping, subject to reasonable aesthetic standards, by specifically extending the same policy to limited common elements, which are owned by the community and available for use by some but not all of the unit owners.

Sections 2 and 3 extend existing water conservation requirements, currently applicable only to certain public entities that supply water at retail and their customers, to property management districts and other special districts that manage areas of parkland and open space.

This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects.  For more information about our business and our services, click here.

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