Crime Prevention through Environmental Design

There are many ways to prevent crime, and crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) is the design or redesign of an environment.  Regardless of the type of landscaping and planting designs applied, the fencing installed, type of plants used, if the property is not maintained to the standard of care for that property type, the image of neglect and lack of care will speak directly to those who can use this weakness to trespass or commit crimes.  As a landscape designer, my objective in CPTED is to create physical space that considers the needs of the immediate users, the intended and expected functions for the space.  In this process, I also have the responsibility to predict behavior of illegitimate users and intruders.  There are three strategies I implement for security design:  natural access control, natural surveillance and territorial reinforcement.  Natural access control strategies are intended to deny access to crime targets and to create a perception of risk to offenders.    Natural surveillance is those methods directed at primarily keeping intruders under observation.  Both of the natural methods can be accomplished through layout and site planning, creating or eliminating circulation.

Territorial influence is created by designing a cohesive feeling amongst neighboring and adjacent properties, creating a sense of proprietorship so that offenders perceive that territorial influence.  Professional series low voltage lighting featuring LED lights is a cost effective way to maximize your crime prevention while adding value and diversity to your landscape.  Lighting should be designed for proper photometrics, proper illumination that reduces glare and increases view corridors. Your lighting can provide up-lighting, down-lighting, pathway lighting that is providing sufficient and cost effective lighting throughout your property, detouring offenders.  The kind of shrubs and trees included in your landscape and where they are planted can add to home security as well as beautify the property, which ultimately increases the resale value.  The advantage plants have over architectural elements such as low walls or fences is cost and versatility.  The disadvantage of plants is they require some frequent maintenance and care.  Plantings will contribute to a positive and attractive environment, softening the frigidity and raw elements of urban living, while enriching the spatial qualities of the site. When addressing a mature landscape, clear and maintain sightlines between street and residential property to allow better visibility from the street or sidewalk.  Trees and low shrubs are perfect for defining an area but you must allow visibility between the shrub and lower branches of the tree canopy.  When utilizing trees to define a project perimeter, small trees are most effective at separating potential conflicts between adjacent use areas and remember these trees must be positioned so as not to block site surveillance areas.

The Soil Food Web: Mulch, Compost Tea & Mycorrhizal Relationships

As we understand that the soil food web is the foundation that creates the soils needed to support healthy, sustainable plant life, we will explore the importance of fungal compost, compost tea and mycorrhizal fungi and their relationships with the soil food web and maintaining trees, shrubs and perennials.

Just a reminder, trees, shrubs perennials prefer their nitrogen in forms of ammonium, not nitrate.  If you have ever wondered why your picea pungens (blue spruce) did not survive in the middle of your turf grass, the major contributor probably was your turf grass lawn as it is nitrate-fertilized.  By early detection or knowledge, you might have been able to protect your spruce by creating negative lawn area, in this instance, a planting island.

Mulches, fungal compost and tea work best on maintaining the health of your shrubs, trees and perennials.  When applying amidst your trees, you’ll want to make sure there is negative space between the compost and the trunk so the microbes aren’t in contact with the trunk, so the microbes don’t attack the bark.  It also makes perfect sense, both now and for future maintenance, to create planting or greenspace under the trees in place of turfgrass.

If you look at nature, leaves fall and cover the roots, naturally recycling the nitrogen and carbon with some making it back to the plant.  By applying a form of mulched leaves within a layer of brown mulch, preferably a couple inches thick, it will provide slow release nutrients and protect the roots though the winter months.  By applying a compost tea in the fall and once again in the spring (about 2-3 weeks before your shrubs and trees leaf out) is a sustainable way to insure the health and integrity of your plants and trees.

Mycorrhizal fungi products have been around for nearly a century but have mainly become main-stream within the last 5 years.  It is a natural form of nitrogen, one that envelopes and takes hold on the roots of your plants and is created by plants.  Hardwood trees form mycorrhizae known as ectomycorrhizal where most shrubs, perennials and softwood trees form mycorrhizae with endomycorrhizal fungi.  The heath family, which includes rhododendrons, sub-specie azaleas and blueberries, thrive on mycorrhizal fungus. 

If your garden is mature and you have compacted soils without noticing mycorrhizal activity (mushrooms growing under the drip line of your trees) you may wish to use a deep root feeder to inject your mycorrhizal drench to inoculate the roots.  With shrubs and perennials, it is simply excavating around their drip lines into their root zones with a spade or trowel and applying endomycorrhizal spores.  If you have mushroom growth in and around your trees drip lines, then your soil has not been degraded to the point where natural mycorrhizal has been effected and you don’t necessarily have to add to create one.  Mycorrhizal fungi spores must be in contact with roots within 24 hours after exposure to moisture to grow and this is why mycorrhizal fungi is applied as a drench to assist in their delivery.

By applying mulches, teas, composts and mycorrhizal, your trees, shrubs and perennials will be less stressed and keep them from becoming attacked by insects.  They create extra pitch; their leaves are coated with beneficial bacteria and fungi to out-compete disease.  By having a soil food web – based system in place, you will continue to build a sustainable foundation for a healthy garden and greenspaces. If your plants do become stressed or diseased, at the first sign, don’t hesitate to put your soil food web knowledge to use and re-apply, especially compost teas. 

Ponds to Water features- Design through Implementation (Part 2 of 2)

Once location and size of your water feature has been determined, movement and flow rates are to be determined.  As mentioned in the first part of this series, creating “live” water is essential for the proper maintenance of your feature and to create oxygen in the water to support aquatic and plant life.  The simplest design is to create a ledge or rill through which water flows (supported by a pump) back into a lower basin.  The higher the vertical lift (bottom of pond to top of rill or ledge), the larger the flow rated pump should be.  A good reference is a that a 4,800 gph flow rated submersible pump utilizing a 1.5” diameter return line creates great flow rates and sound for a vertical lift of 48” – 54”.  Always remember submersible pumps are all about water flow, not pressure, so it is important to maximize return line size in accordance with your pump’s flow rate.

Under natural conditions, ponds are part of an eco-system that contains a marsh area filled with reeds and sedges.  This is a good strategy to incorporate in your pond construction and should be part of your overflow system.  Designing an overflow that infiltrates this marsh area will be perfect in the wetter months, supporting these types of plants, and then allowing the marsh area to dry out in the less precipitation months.  This natural condition is vital for the proper growing cycle for plants that like “wet feet”.  Some of the plants that are capable of growing in wetland conditions include astilbe, gunnera, iris sibirica, and trollus to name a few.  Many plants flourish in these conditions with the elimination of competition from vigorous plants such as equisetum and algae.  Amphibians such as frogs and toads will enjoy these seasonally dry marshes as their fish predators will not be able to prey on their tadpoles.

Properly managing your plants in and around your water feature is easily accomplished by understanding and matching the conditions in which they grow naturally.  These matrices are supported by the proper soils and wet meadows occur in heavy loams consisting of clay and silt, and occasionally peat.   It is important to study these natural environments and recreate them forming a dense and permanent plant cover to reduce weed growth that can be tenacious in these environments.

If you are considering or dealing with a bank, the point where static water meets land, rapid stabilization of the bank to resist erosion is important.  Some very good soil-binding plants include acorus, athyrium, dryopteris, rodgersia and spartina.

Shallow waters are home to numerous plants which can help stabilize the waters edge as they spread slightly into the moist soils where water meets land.  These plants have exploratory root systems and this readiness to produce new roots enables them to spread easily throughout a water system, creating a fast growing upperstory essential for the aquatic life below while creating a balanced and healthy pond.  Many of these marginal plants are intolerant of frost and will need to be protected during the winter months and can be accomplished by covering them or simply removing them and storing until the following season.  Calla, juncus, peltandra, and hydrocharis are some good choices for smaller sized ponds. 

There is an unlimited way to create ponds or water features in regards to shape and style, but the dynamics are consistently the same.  Creating live water supported by proper flow rates, water movement and depth along with proper vegetation selections will support a successful, easily maintained and sustainable water feature.

Ponds to Waterfeatures- Design through Implementation (First in a Series)

Small ponds to trickling, low-flow water features add amazing dynamics to any landscape.   They can be created in small spaces with the “what’s around the corner” atmosphere to wide expanses where space is not a factor and you can encourage fauna to make this area their home.  The most important and consistent fact in creating your piece of paradise to fully understand and accept the many facets of a healthy water feature and how you are going to maintain your creation.  The following blog will discuss many of the ebbs and flows of creating a “live water” water feature, one that fits your criteria and hopefully will help you minimize, if not eliminate costly errors.  I have created water features and ponds of varying size and dynamics, from grottos to small lakes and I have gained immense knowledge from my failures, and a few from my successes.

There are many areas of design that must be considered when you start the design process of your water feature, starting with size and location, open water versus pond-less.  Oxygen and water movement are two main key areas in developing live water.  Live water is best described as non-stagnant, oxygen filled healthy water that can sustain life in your pond / water feature.  To successfully create a water feature that will sustain live water, especially small ones, there must be a supply of dissolved oxygen in the water.

Since sunlight is the driving factor in photosynthesis which sustains plant life which releases oxygen into the water, a pond should be sunlit.  If your water feature will be small in scale and shallow, it will be important to study and understand your proposed site, considering seasonal sun angles, shading and passive solar techniques along with vegetation layering around the edges to utilizing submersible aquatic plants such as large leaved water lilies.  In your design process, consider what type of tree will be utilized for shading, since leaves deplete oxygen levels with bacteria that is created when they enter a pond, plants such as weeping spruce and phormium make good sense depending where you live (planting zone).  Structures can create shade; from a simple walkway bridge to decking can be effective and eliminate leaf litter dilemmas.

Once location has been determined, the next step (in many) is to consider what do you wish to create, an open body of water that has falls and creeks or do you wish more of an architectural element, with softly bubbling water cascading over the lip of a ceramic vessel and returning into sump that is pondless.  The importance of design sense (your boulder-based water feature does not appear to be coming out of the side of your stucco garage for instance) should take a back seat during this process, as it is very important to fully understand what you want to create, to successfully maintain, and sustain years of enjoyment from.  Ideally, you want to create your feature to be in scale with what is around it, for water features that are too small in scale to its surrounds will be ineffective and you want your dynamics of your creation to be manageable yet impacting.  If you are creating an open water feature, regardless of size, depth is critical.  A pond with 2’ of depth will be sufficient and easy to maintain proper water temperatures (if you have inhabitants) in summer and winter and it is the proper depth to create live water; through a small fountain acting as an aerator or a driven by a larger pump recirculating water though rills over ledges of stone and boulders back into the pool below.

In the upcoming blogs as part of this series, we will continue to discuss the dynamics of designing your water feature including creating movement and sound, pump sizing and configuration, filtration techniques, water levels and overflows and choosing the proper plants for your creation.

Beautiful, Animated and Bio-diverse- Ornamental Landscape Grasses

As far back as the early 1900’2, gardeners from a wide range of climates have been enjoying various species of perennial ornamental grasses in their landscape.

Ornamental landscape grasses allow is to rapidly change the dynamics of our landscape, creating works of art by maximizing various colors, textures and physical characteristics of the specie or species selected.  They allow us to be conserving (as most are drought tolerant once established), high spirited, inspiring and maximize out time management by offering low maintenance.

In the broad sense, ornamental grasses (including sedges and rushes) are ever expanding, as the grass palette which started with maybe a dozen perennial grasses to choose from in the early 1900’s has increased to over 100 exhilarating choices.  The increase in diversity and ease of day-today care, the popularity of ornamental landscape grasses has never been greater, reflecting the rhythms of our shared places, of the sun, and the seasonal change.

The two main growth habits of grasses are referred to as runners or clump forming.  When applied appropriately, running grasses can minimize maintenance as they knit together stabilizing soils and making excellent groundcovers.  When used in the wrong situation, you can imagine the problems that might be created, as these runners take over less vigorous neighbors creating monocultures instead of the diverse garden you were hoping to create.

Tufted grasses, as some clump grasses are referred to, grow slower and their space within the garden is easier to determine and many clump forming grasses make excellent architectural pieces, such as Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ and Pennisetum orientale ‘Lil Bunny’.

When discussing ornamental grasses growing seasons, grasses are typically referred to as cool-season growers and warm-season growers.  Their periods of growth are determined by temperature, days of sunlight and soil temperature.  Cool season grasses grow well from sub-freezing temperatures into the low 70’s as warm-season grasses respond well to hot weather, superbly adapted to temperatures reaching the mid 90’s.  The hotter the day, the more they revel, growing steadily larger and producing magnificent flowers (awns) at summer’s end.

Creating a Natural Urban Sanctuary

When we visualize the appeal of a countryside, the agedness that can not be replaced are created mostly by the mainstay elements, the trees and that is where your natural urban sanctuary should start its journey.  Retain old trees as much as possible while installing new tress to provide screening, vegetation layering and depth.  Maximizing space is crucial in urban gardening and part of the countryside or rural appeal is the leaves frolicking on the ground with fallen fruit in the fall.  This type of appeal can be recreated maximizing space using espalier fruit trees or Pole apple trees which grow in small space (vertically) and still provide great yields year in and year out.

Creating the natural look is achieved by using plants that provide an unruly appearance, yet are manageable by most gardeners.  Using native Achillea with Gaura species, Iris, Penstemons and a foundation mass of Idaho Blue Fescue is a diverse plant palette that can provide that unruly, soft, natural landscape.

Try to utilize materials that are natural for your hardscape elements including decomposed granite for your walkways that provides a somewhat refined, gentle appearance opposite to the feel of unkept and neglected.

This same thought process should be applied to vessels and containers.  Keep the rural flare and tradition of simple and unaffected.  It is keeping in good design sense by infusing color but avoid massing galvanized designer containers with the more traditional, rural craftsman vessels.  Make generous use of few items opposed to one of every design style there is.  

Simplicity will create the impression of solitude rather than society.

Creating Your Personal Retreat- Landscaping For Privacy

There are many factors we wish to create privacy within our landscape, from buffering sound, preventing trespassing, creating windbreaks and reducing pollution, reducing wildlife to screening unwanted views.  These innovative ways can help you create your sense of space and a peaceful retreat even in small space areas.

Our greenspace areas have always been that one place we long to keep life’s everyday disturbances to a minimum; a place to feel protected and our retreat from the aspects of the modern world.  Creative ideas will turn your landscape into an extension of your home, whether it is an urban courtyard or a 10,000 square feet corner of your property, through thoughtful design, not quick fixes, there are sustainable and obtainable solutions that fit in seamlessly.

When buffering is accomplished correctly, it will create the impression of distance, an illusion of separation and reflect your personal style.  Vegetation layering, maximizing conifers and deciduous trees will create seasonal color, textures and privacy.  Simply changing elevations in your narrow greenspace with rolling berms and boulders instantly creates depth and the sense of buffering and privacy and these are perfect for planting seasonal bulbs, like deer resistant Alliums such as ‘Purple Sensation’, ‘Mars’ and ‘Gladiator’. 

Using planting vessels is another solution to establish screening and privacy while expressing your creativity and adding color to small space areas where in-ground planting is not possible.  Groupings of vessels with billowing Hydrangea spp. will mask noise and offer you the luxury of seasonal cut flowers.

In areas where larger space is available to create privacy, small space, mounding evergreen plants such as Pittosporum tenuifolium, Ilex crenata ‘Northern Beauty’ and Chamaecyparis obtuse offer many flexible and interesting colors and textures.  These are perfect plants for maintaining sightline corridors or as understory of trees, as they typically will not grow above 4’ in height.

There are other ways to help buffer road noise pollution such as an energy efficient low flow water element mixed amongst evergreen screening, such as Pinus flexalis ‘Vanderwolf’.  A properly placed water feature, located near the main ‘listeners’ area, such as outside the master bedroom window or somewhere positioned you and the unwanted noise, creates peace and tranquility in small urban settings while removing unwanted noise.

Solutions for reducing fauna and other trespassers without constructing overwhelming and cumbersome wood fences would include trellises and arbors, maximizing wonderful vines such as Clematis, Lonicera, and Wisteria species.  Espalier ‘living walls’ using Pyracantha ‘Government Red’ provides a narrow, yet dense wall producing a food source for birds in the fall and winter.    In milder climates, planting a thicket of Optunia will deter intruders while adding architectural interest and wonderful color when they are in bloom.

For a complete list of versatile plants for small space screening, please contact me at designbyejs@gmail.com

Irrigation ET Controllers

We all have a shared responsibility to use our potable water intelligently when it comes to irrigation.  The need to conserve water has never been greater and more of us are looking at ways to maximize our irrigation systems and conserve water.  The only way to combat ET is with accurate, up to date weather information that is communicated to your irrigation controller.  ET, evapotranspiration, is water lost to the atmosphere as a combined result of plant transpiration and evaporation from the soil.  ET is affected by solar radiation, wind speed, air temperature and relative humidity.

Imbalance of moisture occurs when there is a disparity between water lost (ET) and water gained (rainfall / irrigation) and since the majority of irrigation controllers are time based, this leads to over-watering and wasteful use of our precious resource, water.  “Smart” controllers rely on the data you provide for each watering zone, including geographical positioning (North, East, South, and West), the type of vegetation (trees, shrubs, groundcovers, annuals) along with maturation of vegetation, and soil types.  Once this data has been downloaded, the ET controller manages when and how much / often water needs to be applied.  This formula promotes healthy plants and eliminating over-watering; no more watering when it is raining, below freezing, and forgetting to seasonally adjust your timed controller.

There are a wide variety of smart controllers including ET Manager Series, a powerful management solution that works with virtually any existing controller, converting a conventional irrigation system into a weather-smart, accurate, real-time weather, water conserving system.

ET Manager Systems operate differently than the ET Smart Controller as it receives weather updates hourly from a weather signal provider. As the weather changes, your ET Manager driven controller will apply water only when needed, maintaining the optimum moisture balance in your soil, deeper root systems and a healthier landscape.

There are many regions that contain by-laws and tax credits that all new landscape irrigation must by ET controller based, making this the new standard in weather-smart irrigation.  ET controllers and ET Managers are smart and responsible in water conservation and provide peace of mind in knowing you can irrigate correctly as the water scarcity continues to deepen. 

Now is the time to water intelligently.

Sanctuary for Your Soul- Creating a Contemplative Garden

The garden provides us with food, flowers, fragrance, colors and textures.   We tend to them with patience and care in knowing it will return with abundant yields.  The garden can equally serve as a sanctuary for our soul, as a place to retreat from the world and its worries, creating our own sacred place.

Contemplative gardens such as the rich tradition of the Zen Buddhist gardens in Japan, nurture the soul with simplicity for quiet reflection and reprieve.  This “place”, this outdoor space of simplicity, austerity and balance, will allow us to be present to the given moment as it unfolds and embark on a personal journey; a journey that will mature and expand as your garden grows.  The act of garden maintenance, such as removing fallen leaves, maintaining gravel pathways and light pruning becomes a form of meditation, allowing you and the contemplative garden to become one with the natural surroundings. 

As you begin to map out different “rooms” of your sanctuary, take time to reflect on your natural elements, ones that soothe your inner being.  Maybe it is a stand of trees that remind you of your childhood days climbing dogwoods or maples trees.  Maybe you recall the love of the ocean or creeks you visited and you wish to incorporate the sound of tricking water.  Remember, a contemplative garden should be simple, such as a grouping of aromatic lavender next to a bench should assist in centering your thoughts on a hectic day.  Simple elements that speak to you and your soul are the foundation of this place, reconnecting you with your inner being.

As a meandering pathway creates anticipation, so should your contemplative garden.  Your layout should be mindful and deliberate, a new perspective for each visitor, encouraging visitors to slow down and observe the features of your space.  Process the planning stages slowly, observing the area in which this sanctuary for your soul will be located.  Revisit the area repetitively over a period of time as you may discover a pre-existing element in a different light that could be incorporated into your garden, such as a native boulder outcropping or a fallen limb from a nearby tree.

Embark on creating your emotional, meditative and transcendent retreat focusing on the mainstay of your garden, the central core.  It could be a grove of trees providing the central core of energy and provides shade on a hot day for your spot of reflection and consider what shape of tree or types of trees have that hold the most significance for you in the process.

In a traditional Japanese garden, there was a structure such as a hut or a pergola at the end of a meandering path where tea was served, but a hut can simply be a wooden bench nestled under or amongst your grove of trees providing a place to rest.  Incorporating a screen of shrubs and trees that defines the perimeter of your retreat will create your sacred realm, a sense of place that is safe and secure.

As in all garden design, creating the sense of entry is one of the most important pieces as it identifies a place in which you move from one world to another.  This threshold can be formal with an archway or stone pillars covered in vegetation or as subtle as a well manicured meadow between two places, allowing a time to decompress and for eager anticipation of what awaits in your sanctuary.  Creating simple topography changes within the garden, such as a subtle, rolling berm planted with waterwise fescue grass creates higher ground, a feeling of clear vision and a fresh perspective.  If there is not sufficient space within your garden to dedicate to this rolling berm, the fallen tree limb or stack of vertical flat stones will help in creating this sacred mount and as Aristotle wrote The Soul never thinks without a mental picture.

Designing The Perfect Child’s Garden

Without saying, kids love to play in the dirt.  When we were young and few possessions, staying outside all day long was the norm.

Children need the opportunities to be architects and builders, learn about responsibilities and dangers, and the child’s garden is the perfect place for them to carry out these essential and imaginative works.

Elements within the child’s garden can be simple or diverse and should contain areas such as simple sandboxes, earth form play areas such as grass swales and fallen timbers for balance beams.  The child’s garden might contain a backyard habitat equipped with a low flow stream for frog ponds and other interesting creatures.  The urge to seek water and its soothing sounds, such as a meandering stream flowing over a series of small falls, is one of our deepest needs.  Some parents might think that children and water in the garden are a recipe for danger and wish to avoid this element.  With safety clearly addressed, fountains, ponds, streams and pools should be part of this children’s paradise.  Water in the garden can be used as a basic lesson of life, learning to distinguish foolish risk and prudent behavior.

The perfectly designed child’s garden should create a refuge and a place for make believe.  Childhood is the time to create caves and fortresses from found materials.  Willow nests and miniature small space forests create with materials such as bamboo or sumac all serve as safe and mysterious havens for children to develop and explore.

Children are marvelous explorers with their unscathed imagination; they can embark daily into their garden and be greeted by whimsical landscape elements such as a contorted filbert or weeping larch and willows

Planning for an interactive garden to accompany adults with different bodies and mindsets with children’s outdoor needs is essential.  Children are more flexible, more physical where adults tend to be more cerebral.    Keep in mind a perfect child’s garden will welcome and create satisfying outdoor time for adults and children, close in proximity, not necessarily engaged in the same outdoor room.  Create an adult area that is peaceful and serene yet allows sightlines to the child’s garden and activity areas.  Children too need a place for freedom and a place for privacy.

Backyard habitats will allow creatures and children to coexist, equipped with natural bird feeders such as grasses, bushes, vines and trees that produce berries, seeds and nuts.  Children will spend hours in these diverse habitats spying on beautiful winged visitors fluttering about their garden paradise and don’t forget that the perfect child’s garden is equipped with a fitting pet palace or two.