Backyard Bayscaping
Landscaping practices that incorporate sustainable ideals such as creating diversity, conserving water, and using beneficial plants.
The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay describes bayscaping as landscaping practices that incorporate sustainable ideals such as creating diversity, conserving water, and using beneficial plants.
These goals are achieved in most residential design through a careful balance of a variety of landscape elements. Native plants provide food and cover for wildlife while remaining cost and water efficient. Hydrology and water quality are managed through the use of vegetative erosion control, maintaining buffer zones along existing drainage routes, and rainwater collection. The installation of a 2700 gallon rainwater collection system that gathers water from the roof is shown at right. This system is integrated with the irrigation system and handles approximately ninety percent of plant water needs at this site.
Additionally, ecological schemes such as these are typically better long term investments and add interest to the garden with butterfly or bird gardens, bat houses, and colorful year round interest from plants indigenous to the region.
