Transcript

Landscapes Matter | Sara Bendrick | TEDxSolanaBeach

[Music] We have the power to create incredible outdoor spaces for our homes. But how do we do it in a way that is unique to our family, that serves our community, and is considerate to our environment? For centuries, we've been poking and proddding our landscapes, trying to make them our own, whether that be for food, for livestock, or just garden spaces. As a landscape designer and contractor who also works in the media, I've had the opportunity to work and see yards across the country. And in my experience, I've noticed there's quite a disconnect between people and their landscapes. We want our landscapes, but we hate the idea of maintaining them. And for all intents and purposes, we no longer need our landscapes to produce for us. Which leaves us with the question, what do we do with our landscapes? If you're like most of us, you place a lawn, dogeared fence, some basic shrubs, maybe a patio or two without much thought into why or if these spaces truly serve our families, our community, and our environment. For all intents and purposes, landscapes have become decorative or supplemental to our homes, not essential to our fabric. Which leads some of us to some creative solutions, and some of us not so much. Instead of being an afterthought, what if we thought of our landscapes as an integrative part of our home? The fabric that weaves together our neighborhoods, creating community and an influential part of our environment. Let's start off with the home. We organize and decorate and try to make our homes as relaxing as possible. Why should we not put the same effort into our exteriors? There's a ton of research that supports being in nature and seeing nature as beneficial for our health. Just three to five minutes looking at views dominated by trees, flower, and water can begin to reduce anger, anxiety, and pain and to induce relaxation. According to multiple studies of healthy people reviewed by Deborah Franklin, she also notes Roger Olrich's 1984 study that supports the connection between seeing nature and healing. In his study, Olrich, an environmental psychologist, notices a significant difference in healing time between patients who had bedside views of trees versus patients that had bedside views of a brick wall. Patients that had views of trees healed on average, one day sooner, needed less pain medication, and had less complications postsurgery. So, what does all this mean in terms of your landscape and quality of life at home? Imagine viewing a space that was created for relaxing, entertaining, or just viewing versus a space that haphazardly exists. The spaces we create affect the way that we feel, heal, and behave. What does your space look like? Does it encourage you to be outside? Does it serve your needs? According to Hous's 2018 landscape survey, out of the 750 people surveyed, 67% said they spent more time outside post landscape projects, 63% said they relaxed or rested more, 51% entertained more, and 26% spent more time with their families, which is my favorite. So, why aren't more people creating these outdoor retreats? Well, data shows that they actually are. However, I still find that people are easily frustrated by the everchanging aspect of their landscape and value lowmaintenance over everything else, which can lead to some pretty uninspiring gardens. You don't need to be a landscape expert to maintain a garden. But instead of viewing our landscapes as a one-way list of maintenance issues, what if we considered the value of our outdoor spaces and created a plan to maximize their benefits? We all know gardening is good for us. There's plenty of research out there that supports that. What if instead of being on our phone for an hour a week, we spent that time outside in our garden, creating a space that we're proud of? I personally know that working with family and friends can be extremely rewarding. And maybe someday Beckaboo here can appreciate that, too. All right, so let's talk about how our landscapes affect our neighborhood and our communities. All of our yards come together to create a neighborhood, and sometimes a community. Have you ever been to a neighborhood that just feels good? You feel relaxed and at ease? You may notice mature street trees and people walking around. While other neighborhoods feel less inviting and maybe even uncomfortable, you may notice tall walls or fences on or near the property line, creating a disconnect between the street and the home. When it comes to our front yards, outward- facing gardens and inward- facing gardens can make a big difference on how a neighborhood feels. Inward gardens have barriers and are created to be separate from the outside space, which might make sense if you live on a busy street or you have unidal social conditions outside the home. While outward- facing gardens are separate from the street, but connect visually, having a conversation between the home and the street. Jane Jacobs, a renowned urbanist and author, said, "Seeks and their sidewalk, the main public space of a city, are its most vital organs." And she's right. Our streets make up a huge portion of our city, and our front yards collectively contribute to how our neighborhoods are valued, perceived, and used. When people take care of their landscapes, it encourages people to walk those streets, which increases connectivity and builds up community. If you want to change the way your neighborhood feels, consider adding trees for scale, create outward- facing gardens, and if you really want to push it, consider adding benches or maybe mini corner libraries. And don't be surprised if this starts to reflect your home property value. So, now that we know that looking at pretty landscapes is good for us and that welcoming yards create community, let's talk about what we do to our landscapes and why. I think it's best to start off with the lawn as it's the dominant feature in most of our landscapes. Did you know almost 2% of the United States is covered in lawn? That's three times larger than any other irrigated crop in the US according to Dr. Christine Mesi, research scientist at Ames NASA Research Center. Now, is this good or bad? I don't like to say that materials are good or bad, per se. Rather, they have pros and cons. Living in Southern California, lawns have gotten a pretty bad rap as we live in a semi- desert and water is not abundant. However, we can't kick it. Americans love their lawns and we still associate lawns as a sign of success. If you look back at the history of lawns, only the wealthy could afford these extravagant spaces. And it wasn't until the 1830s when the first lawnmowers were invented that these lawns became mainstream with the middle class. According to houselogic.com, you can expect a 267% ROI or return on investment on installing a new lawn. Having a lawn pays off, but does having a lawn in our environment make sense? We have to do a lot of things here that don't naturally occur to maintain our lawns. Dr. Christine Mesi mentioned earlier said, "If you go to California, you'll find still lawns with cool season turf grasses. Every square foot of that turf grass requires 28 gallons of water, roughly speaking, per year, every square foot. But that's for the coastal environment. If you move inland to more aid parts of California, that number increases to 37 gallons of water. Yikes. That's a lot of water. And that's not including all the other stuff we put on our lawns to maintain them, but we'll talk about that later. Let's talk about the benefits of having a lawn. It's undeniable. Lawns are beautiful. They're comfortable, and they offer us a space to lay out and play. In fact, I wrote part of the speech laying out in Baloa Park. Lawns are great for erosion control, rainwater runoff, and well-maintained lawns act as carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. Lawns also have a cooling effect. According to San Diego Sod Farms, lawns can be 30% cooler than surrounding asphalt and 15% cooler than exposed dirt. So the question is to saw or not to saw. I think that lawns still belong on the landscape material menu. However, I think they should be done wisely and with intention instead of mindlessly filling spaces with it. We should consider low growing plant alternatives in areas that don't need to function as traditional lawns and maybe even consider California native or no mo versions of grass for their drought tolerant aspects and they're better adapted to our soils. You might be thinking, well, what about artificial turf? And let's chat about that for a minute as it's quickly becoming a lawn replacement in aid climates like our own. Artificial turf first jumped on the main scene in the 1960s when it was installed in the Houston Astrodome. It went back and forth in popularity on sports fields until about the 1990s when it became popular in residential and commercial use for its green appearance and lowmaintenance. Artificial turf is made much like a carpet with either nylon or polyropylene fibers as the blades and it's usually placed on a few inches of compacted based material and secured with long nails. For this reason, I consider artificial turf as more of a hardcape than a lawn alternative. I like to think of it as a green carpet or a patio extension. And while I think it's a versatile material for some yards, I don't think that we should mindlessly use it to replace all of our softscape or garden areas. Like concrete, artificial turf gets hot and can contribute to the heat island effect. Unlike plants that transpire, releasing water through evaporation, causing a cooling effect. Imagine yourself on a hot day in a yard full of concrete and hot artificial turf and building walls reflecting heat all around. We need our garden spaces to cool things down and to keep life in our yards. Speaking of life, did you know plants can talk? In healthy soils, plants can communicate through an underground fungal network, also known as the woodwide web. In this system, the fungi attaches to the root and absorbs carbohydrates in exchange for minerals obtained by the fungi's vast reach. In this symbiotic relationship, plants can communicate. They can send signals and they can also share resources. For example, if a plant is being attacked by a certain type of insect, it can send a signal to surrounding plants to up their defenses against that insect. Or if a shaded sapling is struggling to reach enough light as larger family of trees can supplement that sapling until it grows tall enough to photosynthesize enough food on its own. Healthy soils create resilient plants. But you have but you have to understand you can't just mix together a bunch of ingredients and call it good. Healthy soil structure happens over time by a combination of things. Air, water, insects, worms and nematodes and um bacteria as well as fungi creating these natural systems that support these plants. And we need to protect those and we need to protect those systems. We're just barely understanding the value of these natural systems. Okay, so let's talk about plant selection. Close your eyes for a minute. Imagine a landscape in Southern California. What did you imagine? Was it palms? Well, this is quite funny actually because California only has one native palm and that's Washingtonia felifera and it grows way way way out east in California, nowhere near the coast. So, is it bad to have our landscapes dominated by non-native plants? Every plant has developed symbiotically with other things in the environment. So, it's beneficial big picture-wise to have natives in our landscapes to support these natural systems. However, I think we can have the best of both worlds. If we choose non-invasive plants that can survive our Mediterranean climate and combine those with California natives, we can reach a balance between our personal aesthetics and our environment. Now, I want to talk about how we take care of our plants. A lot of us use chemical fertilizers to help our plants grow, herbicides to kill the plants we don't want, and pesticides to get rid of insects. And while this seems like an easy solution, it's not without consequence. Fosters Hospital for Small Animals at Tus University Cummings School of Veterary Medicine said exposure to lawn pesticides, specifically those applied by professional lawn care companies, raise the risk of canine malignant lymphoma by as much as 70%. This is stagnant. And if you remember the woodwide web, all those natural systems suffer when we use chemicalbased products on our plants, which creates a never-ending cycle of fertilizer and chemical dependency as we have weaker plants that are not connected to the larger system. We can do better. We can opt for more organic approaches to our gardening and reserve chemicals for really limited use or maybe not at all. The last thing I want to talk about is our use of small gas powered tools for our landscape maintenance. A lot of us are annoyed by the noise of these machines, but it's really the pollution we should be concerned about. According to a study that came out from California Air Resource Board, using a top selling leaf blower for 1 hour emits the same amount of smog emitting pollution as driving, 1100 miles. That's the same as driving from Los Angeles to Denver. That's crazy. In California, 77% of all small engine use is by California homeowners. Imagine the impact we could have on air quality if we chose recyclable battery operated landscape tools or corded tools to maintain our landscapes. Manufacturers have caught on. The products are out there and they can rival the runtime and power for our residential use. We should consider switching our tools to these systems and reserving our gas powered tools only really when needed. There are so many choices when it comes to our landscapes. We can choose to make them integrative parts of our home, creating relaxing areas for us to entertain and spend quality time with those that we love. Or we can keep our landscapes as separate and disconnected spaces from our home. We can choose to improve our neighborhoods by creating welcoming gardens that increase property value and encourage connectivity. Or we can turn inwards and ignore curb appeal. We can choose to consider our landscapes when designing and maintaining our yards, creating safer and more balanced yards for all of us. Or we can continue landscape standards that can be damaging to our natural systems. Landscapes matter. What do you choose to do? [Applause]