Transforming your landscape bit by bit

How traditional landscape maintenance services could have an ecological twist.

I’ve been driving around the county visiting gardens and landscapes I’ve installed. I put pictures from time to time in my newsletter.

While natural gardens are much lower maintenance than most gardens and even lawns, they still need a bit of attention, especially as they are establishing.

All this got me thinking: what if there was a way to combine traditional landscape maintenance with a shift towards more ecological principles?

Many cottage owners invest in keeping their landscapes looking good, but what if it you could do more than that? Could your property support more local wildlife, help struggling pollinator populations, and contribute to ecosystem health while solving those persistent problem areas that require constant attention?

Using nature to fix problems

For many people, their current maintenance regime works well: patios are kept weed-free, lawns are cut, gardens are weeded. But some areas likely need constant attention despite professional care, like that slope that keeps eroding or that shady corner where nothing seems to take. Perhaps these problem areas are opportunities to use native plants that are well suited to the area? They could thrive and solve your problem at the same time.

Or perhaps you’ve been native-plant curious but didn’t know where to start. You don’t want to transform your whole landscape – you want to keep your lawn and your cultivated plants – but you’re thinking of naturalizing your shoreline. Could you keep your traditional maintenance regime and add a bit of nature at the same time?

Maintenance plus transformation

This is where a gradual transition strategy could work. Keep maintaining your property as you always have, but explore naturalizing some parts of it.

You could think of dividing your landscape into zones. Zone 1 could be your familiar areas – the plantings around your cottage or your lawn. These could be maintained as usual.

Zone 2 could be a problem area – perhaps too many geese on the lawn or an area that is wet in spring and dry in summer. These areas could be converted into self-sustaining native landscapes.

Zone 3 would be your ecological development area. You could transform that sunny spot into a pollinator paradise or create a bird-pleasing buffer of understory shrubs where the forest meets your property.

How Grounded could help

All this requires time as your landscape develops, and a degree of expertise in choosing the plants and helping them settle in. So I was thinking: maybe Grounded could help with this?

If you’re looking for someone to maintain your property and are interested in transitioning part of your property to a natural landscape, please contact me.

Grounded would take care of the maintenance – and work on transformation projects at the same time. We’d be able to keep everything under control and would be there frequently to make sure your new native plants establish. You wouldn’t have to worry about it.

I have room for about ten clients on this program and will only work with those who are committed to doing some naturalization work. (If you want pure maintenance, then there are some excellent companies, such as Greenscapes Haliburton, who can help you.)

My mission with Grounded is to transform our relationship with nature – and that transformation starts right outside your front door. If I can make it easy for you to take the first steps while continuing to keep your property maintained, then it seems like a win for me, a win for you, and a win for nature, too.

Grounded’s tagline is “Gardening for Life.” Maybe it should be “Maintaining for Life” also?