What’s the Problem With Conventional Landscaping Practices?

It’s clear that the soil is critical to our survival as a species. The soil grows our food, medicines, flowers and trees, purifies our water, and sequesters carbon, just to name a few of the ecosystem services it provides.  And how does the soil accomplish these tasks?  Beneficial soil microbes are largely responsible. Those tiny critters can do it all without any help from us humans. In fact, when humans decided that it was necessary to help plants grow by pumping chemicals into the soil we began causing a multitude of problems. We need to learn to see soil as the vast, complex, living, breathing ecosystem that it is.

Many of our conventional landscaping practices have disturbed, or even obliterated the natural balance of life in the soil, and thus continue to compromise the environment as a whole.  Chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides not only require excessive consumption of fossil fuels in their manufacture and transport, but they also cause pollution of our air and water, upset the equilibrium of soil life, and can actually kill the microbes in the soil. 

Research shows that synthetic nitrogen actually degrades soil by destroying soil carbon. Commonly used herbicides such as Glyphosate not only kill beneficial microbes, but they often encourage excessive growth of fungal diseases and other pathogens. Conventional landscaping and farming practices cause depletion of soil organic matter, which in turn contributes to leaching of nutrients, soil compaction and water runoff, leading to unhealthy rivers and dying estuaries. 

So what can we do to turn this around, to heal the damage that's been done, to maximize soil life, to support this living, breathing organism that is soil? How can we help ensure that our landscapes are vital and healthy regenerative ecosystems that not only conserve water and resources and contribute to the health of our environment, but will also enhance human health and well being for generations to come?

During the coming weeks and months we’ll talk about the many facets of the Regenerative Landscape: building soil health by balancing the soil biology, increasing plant vitality, the use of sustainable maintenance practices, how to increase biodiversity and habitat, ways to increase carbon sequestration, water-conserving irrigation practices, reusing water, growing edible plants, and much more! We invite your feedback…

Post by Suzanne Schrift