Carbon Smart Landscaping

Maintain Your Landscape Organically

Once you have inoculated your soil microbes, it is critical to maintain your landscape organically. As the saying goes, synthetic fertilizers feed the plant, organic fertilizers feed the soil. When synthetic fertilizers are applied, the symbiotic relationship between plant and microbe is disrupted. Instead of trading sugar for nutrients, the plant is supplied with easy, cheap nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous, and the microbes, in turn, look elsewhere for food; the sequestration of stable carbon into the soil is skipped entirely.

Research shows that traditionally managed landscapes have only a 1-2% carbon holding capacity, while on sustainably stewarded land that number can reach 3-5%. If applied at a global scale, we could reduce total carbon emissions by 30-40%.

Plant Deeply Rooted Plants

Deeply rooted plants, like native prairie grasses, are particularly adept at sequestering carbon. The microbes attached to their roots can access and breakdown deep soil nutrients that most plants cannot; the glomalin is then stored at these lower soil depths, where it is at less risk for being exposed to the air and released back into the atmosphere. Planting a diversity of plants with a range of root depths ensures that all strata of the soil are being utilized for carbon storage.

Plant Woody Trees & Shrubs

Woody plants like trees and shrubs have an additional ability to store carbon in their tissues. Since trees have much larger biomass than herbaceous plants like grasses, they can store more carbon in their tissues. Unfortunately, when forests burn, this carbon is released back into the atmosphere. However, by planting a diversity of plants – perennials, grasses, shrubs and trees, we can diversify our avenues for carbon sequestration and storage, becoming more resilient in our climate mitigation.

Reduce Landscape Maintenance Emissions

To truly create a carbon sink – one that sequesters more carbon than it emits – we need to dramatically reduce the emissions associated with landscape maintenance and construction. Fortunately, nowadays there are many options for electric leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and of course, good old-fashioned hand tools. Not only are these machines blissfully quiet, they are zero-emission and in many cases more ecologically beneficial. For example, electric leaf blowers do not blow nearly as strong, reducing the risk for soil disruption and erosion. Electric, autonomous lawn mowers mow a tiny bit every day, dropping lawn clippings and the nutrients they hold back into the soil (also reducing the need for added fertilizer). By making smart land stewardship and management decisions, we can make every landscape a carbon sink that actively sequesters greenhouse gases.