Essential Elements of Conservation Landscapes

Enduring landscapes serve their intended function well and harmonize with the surrounding environment. They must be affordably designed and established, and they must be adaptable in operation. This occurs in nature, often over geologic time frames, and humans succeeding in building sites in relatively instantaneous short times do well to imitate natural processes. The Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council reflects such a philosophy in preparing Eight Essential Elements of Conservation Landscapes. The first element is designing to benefit the environment while serving human needs. The remaining seven elements can be incorporated while achieving the designer’s goals.

Landowners must choose their vision and goals for the landscape, considering any related needs. Landscape plans strive to achieve those goals. Designers and technicians may enter the process of using conservation elements from different perspectives, but the system eventually proves repetitive. Stakeholders staying long in the process depend on each other in completing the virtuous cycle of generation, maturation, senescence, and decay in an environmental context.

Designers and technicians each perform site analysis, considering the unique character, historic uses, soil types, geology, aspect toward the sun, water availability and timing, and adjacent property issues defining site constraints. Both designers and operators must pay attention to phases. Designs should be (sometimes are not) implemented in sequence, but they may not need to be installed at once. Some installations may take years to complete, depending on budget and prior steps coming to completion.  

Owners and designers do well to preserve existing features in serving the objective function. This effort will allow the site to revert to prior stages in case of design revisions. The resources then will not be destroyed, and expense will be spared. As far as practicable, the vision should be to repair or restore degraded features where opportunities exist. Designers and managers may be able to increase species diversity, control invasive plants, or build links between isolated wildlife habitat nodes. This investment will help build environmental and social value now, and promote eventual economic value.

Decision makers should take advantage of opportunities to create new environmental features as they sustainably serve functional objectives. One could link existing adjacent natural areas or transition into them with a softer edge than presently exist. All should consider landscape design as an ongoing process. All landscapes are dynamic, whether lake, desert, prairie, savannah, or forest. Succession may proceed quickly in moist tropical conditions. Or site changes may seem imperceptible in frozen dry conditions. For human needs, most objectives will be rather short-termed, hoping for a complete installation within a year, and perhaps maturing over the next seven to ten years before another set of objectives takes precedence. Economist Nadia Evangelou with the National Association of Realtors found in a 2018 survey that homeowners across the nation tended to stay in place for 13 years. Pennsylvania respondents reported staying 16 years in Pittsburgh and 18 years in Scranton relative to reporting staying 8 years in Boise City, Idaho; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Austin, Texas; and Cape Coral, Florida.

Conservation landscapes may involve higher initial investment than some conventional measures, but, on the other hand, it may not. Management often involves fewer inputs and effort than the intensive pest control, fertilization, mowing, and pruning that formal or very contrived landscapes do. Hidden costs borne by others should be considered in weighing up service life investment returns. A less intensely managed landscape does not need to appear scruffy if plants are selected for their suitability to site challenges and placed wisely. Reliance on species associations naturally occurring or thriving on-site will have fewer pest control, fertilization, and watering needs. This wise use saves effort, pollution instances, and expense over time. Recycling resources onsite saves hauling and disposal into other landscapes, reduces the waste stream, and returns elements to replenish site biotic health.

Monitoring the site for early stages of invasive, disease, pest, and natural control occurrence can avoid much larger impacts of having the system fail. Natural controls often begin to follow a pest population increase, so watch pest biological cycles and work to avoid harming natural predators. Further, using the least toxic control eases the system along and helps avoid later resistance build-up to chemical applications.

Avoid soil compaction and disturbance as far as possible to maintain soil biotic and structural health. Use hand tools when practical, right-sized machinery, and the least invasive cultivation, tilling, excavation, and backfill methods. Utilizing adequate root protection zones and diligent logistical routing will let site landscapes recover more quickly to return the site to healthy operation.

Ecosystems are natural interactive biotic units consisting of all plants, animals, and microorganisms in an area functioning with all non-living physical environmental factors. These non-living, or abiotic, aspects include long-term climatic, and instantaneous weather occurrences. Not only should one regard the general conditions, but also those which enhance or stress micro-spaces of any site. Low areas might experience air inversions and frost. Alcoves may be safe areas from storms, or they may roar with wind eddies and temperature extremes. Wildlife, humans, and plants are interdependent among conditions these systems present. Both natural and created ecosystems provide important opportunities to regenerate natural connections as well as enhance human experiences.

Foot bridge over Mill Run. Conservation Landscapes still require maintenance. The dead trees adding risk to persons and wildlife crossing the bridge should be reduced in height or cut down completely very soon.

Depending on functional objectives, resilient landscapes rely on well-placed and selected non-cultivar trees native to the area and site constraints to anchor the system. Thriving trees provide the greatest benefit of shade cooling, as well as stormwater and erosion control. As trees grow in size and canopies become stratified, the landscape appearance and function advance over time. Benefits become noticeable after 15 years and increase through perhaps a 50-year service if objectives remain stable and plants remain safely functioning.

This article has shortly introduced some elements of conservation landscapes as compiled for an online document by the Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council. The three elements of benefitting the environment, relying on native plants, and wise management mentioned encapsulate five more elements of

• Enhancing wildlife habitat
• Preserving healthy air quality through minimizing volatile fuels, pesticides, and fertilizers
• Clean water protected by healthy plant cover and reduced pollutant incidence
• Healthy soils nurtured by reduced compaction and through recycled natural materials
• Controlling invasive plants

Protective riparian vegetation. Trees and other vegetation over the stream help keep soils in place and waters cool for good stream health.

Each element is dedicated in a chapter, with basic information given under a “How" section, and further resources provided in a “Learn More About It" section. Utilizing these elements in planning to meet site goals helps designers provide the most enjoyable user experiences for the duration of that site function. The site itself may be a shopping plaza, a traffic throughway, a neighborhood street, a residence, a park, or (and most straightforwardly) a natural area. If these areas are designed well and disturbed as little as practically to meet human needs, maintaining them will cause the least waste, toxicity, and expense in delivering optimal private and public benefit levels. The degree to which the site relies on built infrastructure determines the appropriate types and extent of conservation measures. If the designers and operators use those intentions, such sites are most likely to retain their appeal and remain serving stakeholders well.

Resources

Arlington County. 2019. Stormwater Wise Landscapes: Conservation Landscaping Specifications (PDF file). Arlington County, Virginia.

Donaldson, L., R.J. Wilson, and I.M.D. Maclean. 2017. Old concepts, new challenges: adapting landscape-scale conservation to the twenty-first century. Biodiversity and Conservation 26: 527–552. 

Evangelou, N. 2020. How long do homeowners stay in their homes? Economist Outlook Blog. National Association of Realtors.

Slattery, B., R. Wertime, C.A. Barth, et al. 2013. Conservation Landscaping Guidelines: The Eight Essential Elements of Conservation Landscaping. Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council. 40 pp. 2013.