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Landscaping your property—whether it’s a small city courtyard, suburban lot, or rural acreage—can increase your home's energy efficiency, save water, sequester carbon, improve the air and water quality, and foster wildlife. Choosing the right trees, shrubs, hardscaped surfaces, decorative mulches, and other landscape materials—and putting them in the right place—can help make your yard green in more ways than one.

Increasing home heating and cooling efficiency

US home heating systems pollute the air with more than a billion tons of CO₂ every year, as well as about 12 percent of the nation's emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.[1] About 78 percent of single-family homes in the US use some type of air conditioning. Nationwide, air conditioning accounts for about 9 percent of residential energy consumption.[2] The Union of Concerned Scientists analyzed the ecological impact of the most common consumer actions and products and ranked "home heating, air conditioning, and water heating" fourth in its list of the "seven most harmful human activities" [to the environment].[3]

A well-designed landscape can greatly reduce the amount of energy used for home heating and air conditioning. Properly positioned trees can save up to 25 percent of energy consumption for home heating and cooling. US Department of Energy (DOE) computer models show that just three properly placed trees will save from $100 to $250 in yearly energy costs.[4] One government study found that properly planted windbreaks slash heating bills by as much as 15 percent.[5] Adding the right trees to an unshaded home can reduce summer air-conditioning bills by 15 to 50 percent. One Pennsylvania study found air-conditioning savings of up to 75 percent for small mobile homes. The DOE estimates that, on average, energy-efficient landscaping saves enough money in heating and cooling costs to return your initial investment within eight years.[4]

Trees not only make it cooler inside: they make it cooler outside. A Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory study discovered that daytime summer air temperatures are 3 to 6 degrees F (2 to 3 degrees C) cooler in tree-shaded neighborhoods than in treeless ones.[4]

Improving air quality

Landscape plantings can not only save on home heating and cooling, they can also improve air quality. Trees are natural air cleaners. A tree's leaves remove smog-inducing pollutants and greenhouse gases from the air—including nitrogen oxides, ammonia, sulfur dioxide, and ozone. One 80-foot beech tree can remove the same amount of carbon every day as that produced by two single-family homes.[5]

Whether you live in the country, the city, or suburbia, your landscaping can make a difference. If you have a large rural property, consider this: The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that one acre of trees absorbs six tons of carbon dioxide and produces four tons of oxygen, or enough oxygen to meet the needs of 18 people for a year.[6] If you're a city-dweller, consider this: Along our city streets, there are about 60 to 200 million spaces that could be planted with trees. Planting trees in all these empty city spaces would absorb 22 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, saving $4 billion in energy costs.[7]

How we care for our landscapes also affects air quality. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that gasoline-powered landscape equipment, including mowers, trimmers, blowers, and chainsaws, are the cause of over 5 percent of urban air pollution.[8] Using human-powered tools, such as push mowers, hand saws (when possible), and other eco-friendly landscaping tools can help improve air quality.

Saving water

Tending to our lawns and landscapes is also a major source of water consumption. Yards account for the most home water usage, followed by toilets and showers. According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), 26 billion gallons of water are used every day in the US. About 30 percent of this—7.8 billion gallons—is for outdoor use, mostly for landscaping.[9] Choosing the right watering system can make a big difference. Homeowners who use a handheld hose to water landscape plantings consume one-third less outdoor water than those who use automatic sprinklers.[10] Landscaping with native or drought-resistant plants or replacing some of your lawn with a ground cover or moss can also reduce your outdoor watering needs.

Fostering wildlife

Wild animals need food, water, cover, and an environment for raising their young. About half of the 188 animals that are listed as endangered or threatened, including 17 bird species or subspecies, rely on wetlands (ponds, marshes, and bogs) for their survival. Wetlands are dwindling: the number of wetland acres in the US decreased by half between 1780 and 1980, and about 70 percent of those remaining are in unfavorable condition.[11][12] Using toxic synthetic chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and weed killers can harm adjacent wetlands and the wildlife that rely on these precious natural environments.

Pesticides used on lawns, gardens, and landscapes may also be having an unexpected, and devastating, effect on honeybees. In late 2006 a mysterious illness struck US honeybees, killing over 30 percent of the nation's 2.4 million honeybee colonies. This disease, dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), is a serious problem for US agriculture since bees are needed to pollinate 35 percent of the nation's food supply. To date, CCD has affected honeybees in 35 states. According to honeybee expert Maryann Frazier, senior extension associate in entomology at Pennsylvania State University, this is "the worst crisis we've seen in the history of beekeeping in this country." One suspected cause of CCD is a class of agricultural insecticides called neonicotinoids. One such neonicotinoid called imidacloprid, most often marketed under the brand name Merit, is commonly used to kill white grubs (beetle larvae) on lawns and ornamentals in commercial and residential landscapes.[13][14][15]

While home landscaping practices could be contributing to decimation of honeybees, organic gardening and landscaping practices can be a significant part of the cure. According to Organic Gardening magazine, suburban backyards and city gardens support as many native bees as farm fields and forests—maybe even more. Landscaping practices such as planting native wildflowers, fruit trees, and flowering shrubs; adding water features such as birdbaths; and avoiding plastic weed barriers and heavy mulches can protect and nurture native bees and help save our native pollinators.[13]

External links

• US Department of Energy - Landscaping for Energy Efficiency Find out what climatic region you live in and how that effects your landscape strategy. Also find tips on landscape design, selecting the right trees and shrubs, how to plant trees, and more.
• US Environmental Protection Agency - Water Efficient Landscaping: Preventing Pollution and Using Resources Wisely Learn how to plan a water-efficient landscape, how to choose water-saving landscape irrigation methods, and study examples of water-thrifty landscaping projects.
• US Department of Agriculture - Colony Collapse Disorder Find out more about what may be killing the nation's honeybees by watching this USDA video.