Madrone Landscapes

by Rick Mathews

There are so many things one can do in the landscape, and along with the functional features, one must consider the materials needed to create your landscape.

This has to do with style, as well as function, not to mention budget. It also has much to do with resource efficiency, a cornerstone of the sustainable landscape. Re-used materials, or materials found on site can often be incorporated into the landscape to beautiful effect.

For example:

* used brick
* broken concrete
* used lumber
* railroad ties or other timbers
* boulders and rocks

Recycled products are making huge strides into the landscape and construction industries. One can only get the feeling that we’ve just scratched the surface of finding uses for recycled materials.

So the sources of our resources are important to consider. How were they produced? Our friend Owen Dell asks us to “consider the ‘embodied energy’ of the materials: the total energy that is required to produce and deliver the material to you.

Minimally processed materials like lumber and decomposed granite and gravel have a relatively low embodied energy (though extraction issues remain), while things like new bricks, tile and concrete have a higher embodied energy. Ask where things come from and consider the impact your purchase will have at the source.”

We mentioned extraction issues. A couple of examples are the strip-mining for decomposed granite, or clear-cutting and old-growth issues for forest products like lumber and premium fir-bark, which then must be shipped hundreds of miles to the market. Locally produced mulch from tree crews often serves just as well as fir or redwood, at a fraction of the cost and impact to the environment.