Natural Connection
Your yard is more than the sum of weeding, mowing and watering. It’s your little slice of our larger ecosystem.
Instead of dousing your valued piece of nature with chemicals, nurture it with a natural approach to landscaping based on permaculture. Certified landscape designer Sabrena Schweyer uses this method of mimicking nature’s processes so that they work together to holistically nourish the land and people.
“In typical landscapes, we only look at what’s beautiful,” says Schweyer, who co-owns Salsbury-Schweyer, an award-winning landscaping design group in Akron, with her partner Samuel Salsbury. “In permaculture, you’re looking at how it functions. How can we stack those functions?”
With careful, intentional planning, your plants can naturally care for one another — and you as well. Planting a fruit-bearing shade tree could help cool your home and provide fruit to eat, then adding shrubs could attract pollinators or add nitrogen to the soil to help the tree thrive.
“It’s all about creating a really nurturing space. The landscape is designed to be mindful and purposeful so that it heals people, places and planet,” Schweyer says. She guides us through how to more deeply align your yard with nature.
Big Picture
The first step to maximizing the natural systems in your yard is defining them. Schweyer recommends observing your property closely, whether it’s an apartment balcony with morning sun or a farm with deeply wooded areas.
Once you understand the conditions in your yard, choose a mindful landscape method that maximizes, conserves and reuses resources while addressing issues. One issue many have in The 330 is soil with a high level of clay that is difficult for many plants to penetrate.
Schweyer suggests a few ways of improving the natural dynamics of your yard, including raising beds up or sinking beds down.
Those with wooded properties may choose hügelkultur, a German term that means “hill culture.” In this style of raised gardening, branches and trunks are laid out in a tight formation and covered with piles of soil or compost to create a mounded bed with a spongelike core of slowly decaying wood that supports growth and can help retain water.
“It can be water management or soil management,” Schweyer says. “If it’s at the bottom or halfway down a slope, it’s going to slow water that’s rushing down and utilize it.”
Others with a large sunny yard may prefer rain gardens: indented areas that soak up extra rain. “This sunken landscape bed will allow water to infiltrate and recharge the water table,” she says. “By choosing the right plants, you are encouraging roots that will grow down deep into the soil and allow water to get through that hard pan layer of clay.”
Using and reusing water that falls on your property to its highest capacity is often a goal of Schweyer’s designs. “The more we create that system of water moving through plants, the more we can help reduce climate change,” she says. When plants soak up water, they release it slowly into the atmosphere during photosynthesis, thereby cooling the air and helping regulate the planet’s temperature.
Green Pieces
More natural approaches you can use include “no-mow” yards that are filled with low-maintenance plants like her favorite, a blend of non-native fine fescues. These tough plants look like lawn grass but require very little water, fertilizer or mowing — and they won’t creep into flower beds like grass will. Their one drawback, Schweyer says, is they can take a few years to become established.
A native alternative for low-maintenance lawns is Pennsylvania sedge, which does well in shaded areas. “It’s easy seeding and thick,” she says.
Permeable patios or driveways — as opposed to cement or asphalt — are an option, especially natural permeable clay brick. “Not only is it more environmentally minded in its processing, but it keeps its color better,” she says.
She works with Ohio suppliers, like Whitacre Greer Co. of Alliance, who make special permeable bricks with tabs that set them wider apart than other bricks. Those spaces are filled with a wider grain of limestone than usual to allow water to filter through into the soil and water table, rather than forcing it to collect and cause runoff problems in your yard or sewer system.
More Than a Garden
A design based on permaculture may seem complex, but there’s still room to add personal touches.
“We want to include that peony they got from their grandmother’s cluster they enjoyed as a child,” Schweyer says. “It has meaning.”
Being personally connected to your landscape makes its care less of a task and more of a meaningful act.
“Drawing out those stories and making a spiritual connection to the land — that’s going to nurture them into being stewards of the earth,” she says.