Video | Meadows, Thickets, and Pocket Forests: Going Beyond the Traditional Landscaping Model

I'm so excited to be sitting here in the middle of this new landscape paradigm that we at Leaf & Limb have created. You can have all this for less time and less money than a traditional yard. And that's just the beginning.

So why do we even need this new landscaping paradigm? We have spent a lot of time, energy, and resources fighting against nature to create what are essentially barren wastelands. These spaces are fully disconnected from the life that needs them. Birds can't live here; insects can't feed here. Grass is actually the number one crop grown here in the US, ahead of even corn! And it doesn't even produce food.

These spaces also emit far more carbon than they sequester, which is crazy because these are plants that we are talking about. We are killing ourselves, fighting against nature. In our new system, we work with natural processes, we support life, and we hold more carbon than we release. We do all this for less time and less money. Welcome to my backyard! I want to show you around so you can get a sense for how all of this works.

The first element of this new model is what we call a High Density Forest. We start with one-year-old, pencil-sized saplings, so it's very easy to plant many of them. It takes approximately one hour to put 25 plants into the ground. So this was quite simple. All of this was planted 14 months ago. NO JOKE! You can see there are trees here that are approaching 20 feet in what was essentially one growing season. The best part is now that everything is growing, we don't have to add mulch, we don't have to weed, we don't have to spray for things. These plants are growing robustly together as a community.

The second element to this model is what we call a high density thicket. It's the same as the high density forest: all native plants; put very close together. And it has all the same benefits; the only difference is we chose species that stay under 20 feet. The idea here is to rethink privacy and add new habitat to the property.

The next part of this model is a meadow, or what we like to call a Piedmont Prairie. The idea is that we plant lots of native flowers and grasses from seed. And we don't have to use any irrigation, no fertilization, no sprays, nothing. The best part, though, is that once established, this only has to be cut one time per year.

The next element is a place to hang out. After all, we've got to be able to take off our shoes and relax. For this, I would recommend a native or a near-native grass like this Buffalo grass. All of the benefits of using a species like this align exactly with what we discussed during Piedmont Prairies.

Everything in this model is easier and requires fewer resources than the status quo. And that's not even the best part. The best part is that this provides food and homes for the life that needs it, it holds a tremendous amount of carbon, and it generally creates a healthier planet.