Don’t you hate the waste regarding packaging? While cardboard and some wrapping paper is reusable and recyclable in many ways, foam is often not so easy. Most foam and plastic packing materials end up in the landfill or worse yet in our oceans.

Part of a sustainable property is finding ways to reuse things that you end up with. Expanded Polystyrene Foam (EPS) is one of those things that show up in abundance, especially around the holidays. It is used for packing many things, is light and cheap to produce. You can recognize EPS by the small balls of compressed foam that make up this material. EPS takes up space in landfills, lasts forever and is not easy to re-use on your own property.

If you live in central Wisconsin and want to recycle it you are in luck. A local company accepts clean, used EPS and it turns it into new products almost immediately. Styrene Products Inc. is located in Schofield, Wisconsin and you can get more information on drop-off times at styreneproducts.com

Our friend Eric reused our EPS wine shipping carton to fly these jack fruit trees to Cameroon.

EPS foam can be recognized by its white color and composition of compressed, small beads of foam

An aster blooming on December 2, 2016 in central Wisconsin.

AccuWeather’s Advertising Sales team is based out of Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan. This is not a low-rent district and a testament to how much money changes hands in the weather forecasting business. Not only are there private and government weather forecasters, but there are also companies such as, ForecastWatch, that sell services related to tracking accuracies of the forecasters.

Weather forecasting is big business because even small changes in temperature, for instance, can have dramatic financial effects on businesses, government operations and individuals. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal, Cloudy with a Chance of Swimsuit Sales, illustrates how fashion designers and clothing retailers were blindsided by the warm fall and early winter weather this year. The result; cold weather apparel didn’t sell well.

People ask me all the time for long-term weather predictions. Usually they will ask; “Is it going to be a dry summer?” or “Will it be a cold winter?”. Part of my job is identifying weather trends to help me  position my services and schedule customers for optimal results. The office phone starts ringing or the emails pour in with the first warm day in late winter from potential customers. However, long before that, my work schedule was created to take advantage of the weather averages and to benefit by anticipating day-to-day, atypical weather during the current weather trend.

In sustainable property design, instead of trying to design around weather reports, we design for the extreme. It has become obvious that weather seems to be more erratic. By incorporating features in the landscape that takes advantage of and actually produces benefits from what ever the weather brings, you can be more in control of the outcome. Here is one of my past articles about using excess precipitation.

So if you want 100% accuracy in weather; look out the window, put your coat and mittens on (or swimsuit) and let’s go out and play!

Planting the right plants in the right place eliminates having to have your home look like this for months.

Have you ever noticed around Halloween that some properties look just plain scary? Over night big, white styrofoam barrels appear, shrubs are wrapped in tattered burlap and straw is strewn about. Sometimes you even see elaborately constructed “gallows” built around plants with lots of small pieces of wood, baling wire, metal stakes and all manner of materials.

Well, this isn’t holiday decorating! It is instead what gardeners and hobbyists have bought into when they read one book or another on gardening that had a section on putting plants “to bed” for their winter “sleep”.

Installing plants that are not hardy in our climate zone, installing plants in the wrong location or placing plants where physical damage can occur are some of the reasons gardeners and gardening authors spend so much time on the subject of preparing plants for the winter. Sometimes these measures actually cause more damage, like when straw or other coverings provides a great location for mice to hang out in a cozy spot and eat the “protected” plants.

The elaborate ritual of covering, wrapping and mulching plants in late fall is not necessary when property owners adopt sustainable landscape methods. Starting out with sustainable property design means that plants and other features will be chosen based on the climate and site conditions. Good design and good plant choices significantly reduce all maintenance needs including at the end of the growing season.

It is time to put to bed the notion of “putting plants to bed”.

By this time of year, most gardeners are ready to fall in their tracks, exhausted from months of weeding.

I see many people pull weeds up by the roots, stuff them into plastic bags and put them out in the garbage-permanently banning these invaders from their property. So, if this is a successful method, why do you have to do it again next week? Is this the most environmentally friendly way of getting rid of weeds by using a plastic bag and taking up landfill space? The simple answer is “no”!

A scuffle hoe can cut off weeds at the soil surface minimizing soil disturbance

There is a method that makes weeding easier, takes less time and makes the gardener a better steward of the environment. This weeding method is called chop and drop. The basics of this method is that you cut the weed off at the base of the plant and cut the upper portion of the weed into small sections leaving it in the garden. What!!!!? Isn’t this garden hearsay!!! Well, let’s look at the science and biology of weeds.

This type of scuffle hoe was made with sickle mower blades

Most weeds that we battle in the garden and landscape are annuals. This means that they only live for one year, sprouting next year from seeds that can lay dormant for decades. Many annuals grow best in disturbed soil. Deep cultivating, pulling weeds up by their roots, digging dogs, and rototilling all create perfect conditions for weeds to germinate. It is true that annual weeds that are cut off at the soil surface can regrow from the roots during the growing

You can purchase many types of long-handled or short-handled scuffle hoes

season. However, pulling them out just opens a fresh wound in the soil that is soon taken over by new weeds. The existing weed root system that is left in place by the chop and drop method actually discourages new weeds from sprouting.

Weeds can create benefits in their initial growth and in their demise.  Since weeds concentrate micro-nutrients that might be missing in your soil, finding a way to incorporate them into the surface of the garden or landscape is essential.

Leaving weed roots in the ground allows them to die at the end of the growing season releasing the nutrients they process. The cut-off top of the plant will also decompose returning it’s nutrients to the soil. Weed stems and roots also contribute a significant amount of organic material to the soil.

Chop and drop is not magic. Just like other weeding methods, chop and drop needs to be periodically repeated during the growing season. However with chop and drop you are going to do a lot less work which leaves time for everything else you want to do!

The March 2016 issue of Consumer Reports carried information that new, low-maintenance landscapes increased home values by 3%- 5%. That was about the same as kitchen remodels and low-maintenance interiors. Landscape improvements created substantially more value than technology and energy up-grades in the same article. It is important to note that the trend and what people regularly ask me for are low-maintenance landscapes. The average person wants to enjoy their yard, but they do not want to be tied down to specific times and dates for maintenance responsibilities. This is one of the reasons that people are reducing lawn areas because of the specific weekly mowing and other duties that can not be deferred.

As a landscaper, I would recommend that you do not install a new landscape just to increase the value of your home and property. The economy of the last 10 years has made many people realize that trying to flip houses for a profit is financially risky. Your sustainable landscape should be built to fit your lifestyle and personality, not someone else.

“Let’s eat out on the deck honey!” Yuk! Conditions like this damage property value and in this case also damaged valuable trees.

One caveat to the above is that you do not want to have a landscape that significantly detracts from your property or a landscape that makes your property look distressed. If your home looks like the bank reposed it or that the home and yard were never finished; this may reduce the value of your property for resale.

What you can do now if you don’t have a landscape.