THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 28, 1994 TAG: 9409280651
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: COVER STORY
SOURCE: BY DEBBIE MESSINA
LENGTH: Long : 202 lines
EXPANSIVE CARPETS of short, emerald green grass blanket the yard. Repetitive borders of showy shrubs and flowers rim the house. No weeds, beetle grubs or brown patch disease mar the view.
This is today's standard for a beautiful yard.
But this standard must change if we want to make our waterways clean, healthy and vibrant, conservationists say.
``We need to change people's perceptions of what is good and what is beautiful when it comes to landscaping,'' said Billy Mills, of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay.
``We're too caught up in what our managed landscape looks like to the passing motorist on his way to his managed landscape.''
Common practices such as frequent mowing, abundant fertilizing, daily watering and pesticide spraying are killing our creeks, rivers and bays, Mills warns. We're overloading our waters with toxins, nutrients and sediments, which are choking off sunlight, oxygen and, subsequently, life.
Even the simplest things like choosing a grass, deciding where to seed and selecting shrubs, trees and flowers impact the quality of our waters.
A new landscape concept was introduced to Hampton Roads last week by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay called Bay-Scapes. It's an environmentally sound method of landscaping that prevents pollution of the streams, rivers and waters of the Chesapeake Bay. It works with nature, not against it.
But a Bay-Scaped yard looks different from a traditionally landscaped yard.
Instead of an abundance of grass, it uses groundcovers like ivy and juniper and meadows of wildflowers. The grasses it uses are left to grow higher. Instead of exotic plants, it uses native plants. Mulching and composting are musts. A certain amount of weeds are acceptable and pesticides are used sparingly, if at all.
Based on our traditional image of a well maintained yard, a Bay-Scaped yard may look overgrown and unkempt.
``Our challenge is we need to think of that as not looking sloppy,'' Mills said.
Mills brought his Bay-Scape message to about 100 leaders in city planning, city beautification, the landscaping business, environmental groups, civic leagues and garden clubs Friday in a daylong workshop in Virginia Beach. The workshop was sponsored by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and the Virginia Beach Garden Club.
Mills urged the group to spread the Bay-Scaping concept to others in the community.
The City of Virginia Beach is working with the Alliance on securing grants to hire staff to promote Bay-Scapes and educate citizens on putting its principles to use in their own yards.
Even after being in the city's Master Gardener program, Valerie S. Jessen found a number of new ideas to bring back to her Red Mill Farms garden club and civic league. ``I live in a neighborhood where the builders scraped the top soil off and put in a few token shrubs,'' Jessen said, ``so I came to see what we could do and how we could help spread the word. Because everything we do trickles down to the Chesapeake Bay.''
The Chesapeake Bay, nearly 200 miles long, is among the most productive estuaries in the world, supporting 2,500 species of plants and animals. About 13 million people live in areas that drain into the Chesapeake Bay, from Pennsylvania to Virginia. That population is expected to increase by 3 million in the next 30 years.
But years of use and abuse are taking their toll on the Bay. We're literally loving the Chesapeake Bay to death.
Certain areas of the Bay have lost underwater grasses and acres of wetlands essential for screening pollution and maintaining life. Fish and shellfish populations are dwindling.
One of the biggest contributors to bay pollution is runoff from our yards, farmlands and roads during rainfalls, known as non-point source pollution.
In agreements signed in the mid-1980s by Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, we are to reduce the amount of pollution swept into the Bay by 40 percent by the year 2000.
BayScaping is one method of meeting that goal by reducing toxins, nutrients and sediment that reach the Bay.
Nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, are contained in fertilizer. Excess nutrients in water promotes algae growth, and an abundance of algae cuts off sunlight that underwater grasses thrive on and reduces oxygen in the water. With the loss of grasses, there is a loss of food and shelter for animals.
Toxins are the chemicals we put on our yards like herbicides, insecticides and pesticides, which threaten all marine life.
Sediment, like soil from construction sites, clouds the water and blocks out sunlight and creates unfavorable conditions for fish like coating their gills and suffocating their eggs.
Workshop participants got a firsthand look at good and bad examples of landscaping during a boat tour of the Lynnhaven River. Good examples had plenty of natural vegetation to trap runoff before it reached the water. Bad examples were grassy sloping lawns that stopped at the edge of bulkheads, carrying runoff directly into the river.
``I'm very concerned about the Lynnhaven system,'' Mills said. ``There's so little undeveloped land left. What is left should be done right.''
The same principles apply to people who live inland, Mills said. Inland residents' runoff is directed into ditches and creeks that eventually reach creeks and rivers that flow into the Chesapeake Bay.
``They don't even see their contribution, but it all begins inland,'' Mills said. ``The way people behave constitutes what goes into the water. It's this collective behavior that's doing us in.'' MEMO: For more information on Bay-Scapes, contact the Alliance for the
Chesapeake Bay, P.O. Box 1981, Richmond, Va. 23216, (804) 775-0951. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by CHARLIE MEADS
Based on our traditional image of a well maintained yard, a
BayScaped yard may look overgrown and unkempt. But this home in Bay
Colony demonstrates a change in the standards for a beautiful yard.
About 100 leaders in the city planning, city beautification, the
landscaping business, environmental groups, civic leagues and garden
clubs participated in the daylong workshop in Virginia Beach.
Betsy Agelasto, one of the organizers of the BayScaping workshop,
enjoys a view of the water from a backyard pier in Alanton.
This bulkheaded scene of Linkhorn Bay is the opposite idea from
BayScape landscaping. A grassy sloping lawn that stops at the edge
of bulkheads carries runoff directly into the water.
Don Vick of Norfolk Parks and Recreation and Betsy Nugent of
Virginia Beach view Broad Bay's back yards from the deck of
Discovery.
Graphics
THE PRINCIPLES OF BAYSCAPING
Determine how much lawn is needed. Unused lawn areas can be
planted with shrubs, gardens, trees, meadows and groundcovers.
Use commercial fertilizers and pesticides sparingly. If using
commercial fertilizer, choose one that's time released that feeds
the lawn slowly.
Use organic compost as a substitute for commercial fertilizers.
Avoid the use of highly toxic pesticides. Spot treat, limiting
the pesticide to infested area only.
Determine whether the disease or infestation is something you can
live with or whether it is a threat to other plants or to you.
Physically remove the pest to see if that takes care of the
problem.
Control the disease or pest by introducing a living parasite or
predator, such as a milky spore for lawn grubs.
Pesticides kill earthworms and other beneficial organisms.
Healthy lawns can tolerate larger populations of turf pests with
less risk of major damage.
Recognize that we can live with a certain number of pests and a
certain amount of pest damage.
Use mulches to protect against moisture loss.
Use native plants, which are better adapted to local climate and
moisture conditions and more resistant to local pests. Preserve
natural vegetation when possible.
Use drought-tolerant plants.
Use beneficial plants that require little fertilizer or
pesticides, require little watering and provide wildlife value of
food or habitat.
Use a diversity of plants to reduce vulnerability.
Water in the coolest part of the day (early morning or evening)
to avoid evaporation loss.
Water infrequently, but deeply. This will promote deeper, more
drought-tolerant root systems.
Plants and grass should only be watered when they show signs of
stress.
Allow grass to grow higher, for example, 3 inches for fescue.
Mowing higher encourages roots to grow deeper and shades out weeds.
Recycle grass clippings to the lawn or compost pile. A mulching
blade returns clippings to the lawn as a natural fertilizer.
Mow grass with sharp blades, to reduce bruising of grass.
Never cut more than one-third of the grass blade height in one
mowing to minimize plant stress.
Re-establish vegetation quickly when bare spots appear in your
lawn.
Welcome clover in your yard, which returns valuable nitrogen to
the soil from the atmosphere. This, in effect, makes your yard
self-fertilizing.
ON THE COVER
Staff color photo by CHARLIE MEADS
This scene on Linkhorn Bay showing a sandy beach and grasses with
a small amount of riprap instead of bulkheading is a good example of
BayScape landscaping. It is at the home of Robert and Dorothy
Stiffler in Alanton.
PLANTING SUGGESTIONS
Trees - American Holly, Loblolly Pine, Red Maple, Red or Green
Ash, Sycamore, Willow Oak, American Ash, American Beech, Flowering
Dogwood.
Shrubs - Juniper, Wax Myrtle, Rhododendron, Wahoo, Winterberry,
Azaleas, Elderberry, Snowberry, Black Haw.
Ground covers - Lady Fern, Grass-leaved Blazing Star, Bird-Foot
Violet, Switch Grass, Ribbon Grass, Cord Grass.
Flowering perennials - Butterfly Weed, Coreopsis, Queen Anne's
Lace, Coneflower, Virginia Blue Bells, Sweet William, Black-eyed
Susan, Seaside Goldenrod, Virginia Spiderwort.
by CNB