Water saving, weed-free yards are a must have in most communities. It’s a way to keep your spaces wildfire safe, drought tolerant and tidy. So what do you do to get that?
Everywhere you turn rock much is proposed to lower your weeding and improve your water consumption.
I want to propose another solution. Creating an ecosystem in your yard instead.
That sounds like work you might say. I throw down a truck full of rocks and Bam! yard done.
Cost to install a rocked front yard
Rock mulch for a yard
- A) 4 yards of rock with delivery, because not everyone has a 3 ton truck ($1000)
- B) Fabric to cover soil ($120)
- C) Dump fees for garbage created during installation ($25)
- D) Roundup to deal with weeds monthly ($53)
Total: $1200
Care time: first year 0, then an hour weekly to a complete overhaul by year 10.
Multiply your materials by 3-4, for a decent estimate of what professional installation will cost.
Or Do I create a garden?? I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
A good landscaper will work with you over the season to make sure all the elements are installed right, and will return to teach you how to maintain it.
What is the upside to all the effort? Well, for one, no weeds.
No Weeds
Lies you say, Weeds grow everywhere. Well lets reframe that thinking. What is a weed: Just a plant that cant be controlled. So we need to make spaces for plants that can be controlled. The better the soil, the more water it holds, the healthier these plants: less weeds for you.
Weeds grow in the absence of other plants to reduce soil erosion from wind and water. Let’s say you choose the rock mulch, weed-free option. Weed seeds will exist below the fabric placed down with your rocks. They will exist in the air being blown around and find nooks in between your rocks to rest. Next season you are not weed-free and low maintenance anymore. What is your game plan?
- A) Ignore it.
- B) Get out the round up weekly.
- C) Call a company to bring out the extra strength weed killer?
- D) Do it all again in 5-10 years.
Let me show you my yard. It is ten years old this summer. Planted in 2013, it was an experiment yard as we bought a new home and the soil was destroyed by the house builders. We wanted to see what would grow with little to no care, including water. With had 4 small kids, myself in school and working there was limited time. All our money went into buying a house, so our landscaping budget was low. This might be a similar scenario for many.
Solution:
We put in a rain barrel. Best $70 spent. This holds enough water for my plants for the whole season. I don’t water often. Watering deeply, less often is preferential to the right type of plants to get their roots to dig deeper and be stronger.
The plants chosen are full sun, drought tolerant plants. click the link to find some of your own new favorites to try. These bad boy periwinkles could be weeds in a yard with better soil or less drought conditions, but here they are survivors. Their shallow roots make them an easy removal plant if they creep away from where I want them. Low and behold, I love these easy little plants.
I add mulch every year. Twice a year. Spring is wood mulch from the local supplier, Topspray. In fall is the addition of leaf mulch. It breaks down over the next spring and feeds the soil. I don’t blow away my leaves I add to them. Leaves breakdown feeding my soil well.
Leaf Mulch
Poplar leaves sometimes get a bad rap, but I think this is because the leaves are so big and leathery, and break down so slowly that they tend to ‘pancake’ into a barrier. If you have poplar, chop them up with the lawnmower before composting them or using them as winter mulch. Oct 26, 2008, Calgary Herald
Mulch cools the soil, reducing evaporation in the summer. It smothers weed seeds, keeping them dormant, and when they do sprout, the mulch is soft and makes it easy to pull out the whole root. Good bye weeds. I weed 2 or 3 times a year. That’s right. As often as my neighbors, I am not out there nighttime gardening to magically make my yard weed free. I let my yard do that for me. *Mulch depth is important, 2-3 inches, or to your first knuckle suppresses weed, holds in moisture and does not drown your plants! also note how black the soil is near my finger tip. ALL leaf and mulch broken down to feed my Grey/clay substandard soil!
Oh yeah. I also have this beauty here. Lupins. (Mine are pink in the photo)
These are soil fixer plants. Their roots break up the clay soil and let the water get down deeper. Their nitrogen fixing nodules in their roots help feed the soil rather than deplete it like a some can.
I have another secret weapon. The Log. This baby houses decomposers that break down my leaves and tunnel though my soil. To control them, I have a bird bath to invite birds to come and eat all the insects they want. I have never had an aphid or a white fly outbreak in this yard. So yes, It took time, and some knowhow to create this yard, but the result is a weed free space, that takes little to no time to maintain, and I can feel good that it is an eco system in my front yard. It cost me the price of a handful plants, a rain barrel and a hoary knife (my recommended garden tool of choice). That and $50 in mulch every year, and I don’t need to have a rock slide in my front yard to have a tidy, drought tolerant space.
How much will your new yard cost?
Cost for a DIYer:
- log sourced
- birdbath (found object)
- Trees (2) 10g Trees ($150)
- Shrubs (6) 2g plants $25
- Bulbs, $10 a pack every year (pick naturalizing bulbs, they reproduce, and your patch gets bigger every season)
- Zone 3 hardy garden favorites: Sedum, Bluebells, Dianthus, periwinkle, daylily, Bergenia, Iris, geranium, Yarrow (ask a neighbor, or, these can be found at swap meets and every fall when gardeners are splitting their plants)
- Other plants $25 a year at the garden center to get cool additions off the clearance rack.
- Truck load of compost $35
- Truck load of mulch $50
Price: $585
Care time, 1 hour a week for the first year, reducing to 1hour a month after that.
Hire a company like Blossoms and Stone, Multiply your materials by 3-4 (do you want all the plants right now, or will you add to it?) and you have a decent estimate of what professional installation will cost.
Professional maintenance by Blossoms and Stone is $65/man hour and we will help you every step of the way making your project uniquely yours.
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