4 Ideas for Eco-Friendly Landscaping in a Modern Home
Many modern homeowners believe that creating an outstanding, beautiful outdoor space mostly has to be at the expense of the environment. However, that notion is quickly shifting among eco-conscious homeowners who desire to balance sustainability with trendy landscaping ideas for an impressively attractive modern home.
Whether you’re looking to incorporate plants, trendy water features, or recycled materials into your landscape, there’s no limit to what you can achieve with the right ideas. Here are four outstanding landscaping ideas that will help you design an eco-friendly space in an attractive modern home design.
Plant Drought-Tolerant and Native Plants
Before you choose exotic plants you’ve admired to have in your yard for a long time, start by planting native ones that have a higher chance of survival. Native plants have evolved in your local climate and are more likely to do well with less water, maintenance, and fertilizer than exotic species. They also offer natural, important support to native wildlife, birds, and insects.
Once you have the right choice of native plants, you can couple them up with a few drought-resistant plants to blend in well. With the help of expert guidance, these plants can perform excellently well in your privacy edges, garden beds, and focal plant pots.
Ensure you research the right plants for your local area to improve the chances of survival and flourishing. For instance, if you’re landscaping in Toronto, you may go for Toronto natives like Black-eyed Susan, Switchgrass, and Wild Bergamot.
Limit the Use of Concrete
Whenever it’s time for incorporating hardscaping elements into a landscaping project, cement almost always takes the center stage. It’s a useful material that can be used to build different types of outdoor features, from waterfalls and firepits to retaining walls and pavements. However, excessive use of cement in your space can be harmful to the environment, especially because they don’t degrade easily.
If you experience constant rain and floods in your area, concrete driveways or pavements can add to the problem by limiting the effective penetration of water into the ground. When they crack, they may mix with the soil to degrade its quality, making it challenging to achieve successful gardening or green landscaping projects.
The best way to minimize the use of concrete in your space is to replace it with a more sustainable material whenever possible. For instance, you can use sustainable pavers instead of concrete pavers to achieve a higher aesthetic and water drainage value. The easiest way to achieve all these is to work with experienced landscapers who know the right materials to use in your space in place of concrete.
Conserve Water Intentionally
Water conservation might look like an easy sustainability goal to pursue, but without intentional strategies in place, you may not achieve any meaningful progress. The excitement of achieving a green space may cloud your efforts to conserve water while pursuing this dream. A green and healthy yard is a great landscaping goal to set, but you can always achieve it with water conservation ideas in mind.
For instance, instead of overhead irrigation, which wastes water, you can opt for efficient irrigation solutions like drip irrigation or a smart irrigation system for effective results. You should also consider installing rain barrels for collecting and storing rainwater for irrigation during the dry months. Also, consider mulching your plants to maintain a healthy moisture content and to protect younger plants in your garden.
Incorporate Sustainable Lighting Solutions
Effective lighting is crucial for the creation of a lively, inviting outdoor space that’s also safe at night. However, the outdoor lighting needs to be sustainable if you’re to enjoy uninterrupted sessions of well-lit nights and ambiances. Whether you’re incorporating step lights or string lights into your space, you can only enjoy optimal performance when you consider lighting factors such as:
- Lumen and brightness: Consider a bulb’s lumens output when shopping, to ensure you get enough brightness for your intended purpose. A bulb’s lumens are the measure of the total brightness it can emit, often ranging from 50 to 1300 lumens for different outdoor lighting purposes.
- Halogen vs. LED: Halogen bulbs are today mostly preferred for their lower initial costs compared to LED lighting. Beyond that, LED bulbs are more beneficial in many ways, including longevity of performance, energy efficiency, and lower heat emission.
- Color temperature: If you’re targeting different ambiences for different areas in your yard and different events, then color temperature is a crucial consideration. Measured in Kelvin (K), color temperature indicates the warmness or coolness of a bulb, with warm temperatures ranging from about 3000K and cooler ones ranging from 4000K and more. Warmer colors tend to perform better for accentuating different areas in your landscape than cooler ones.
Remember to work with a skilled electrical team to help you choose and install your lighting solutions for effective performance.
Successful landscaping in modern homes should focus on sustainability to help in the fight against the rising carbon footprint across the globe. Every little effort, like the ideas above, goes a long way in promoting a greener, more sustainable world.
