The owner of Ecoyards, Andy, has become a certified landscape irrigation auditor through the Irrigation Association, the leading membership organization for irrigation professionals.

What does that mean for you as an Ecoyards customer? Irrigation Association-certified professionals like Andy are leading the way in the evolving field of irrigation technology and smart water management. Simply put, they are the best in the field. In hiring a certified professional, you can feel confident that Andy has state-of-the-art training and technical skills to audit varieties of irrigation systems. He’s trained to perform field tests on irrigation systems to determine whether they’re efficient, as well as examine plant water use, soils and local weather data to calculate accurate water schedules. As a certified landscape irrigation auditor, he’ll work with you to manage overall irrigation use on your property.

To be certified, Andy passed a written exam, demonstrated irrigation-related work experience, passed an audit of his work, agreed to follow a code of ethics and has committed to continuing education requirements.

You wouldn’t hire an electrician or a plumber who wasn’t licensed or endorsed, so why would you hire someone to install or maintain your irrigation system who is not certified? A certified irrigation professional not only provides keen technical know-how, but they also offer a higher level of specialization and service.

It’s Fix a Leak Week, and the EPA is encouraging residents to check and replace leaky plumbing and sprinkler systems to save water and reduce utility bills. The agency says that more than 1 trillion gallons of water could leak from U.S. homes each year.

Many of the most common household leaks can easily be fixed, including leaking toilet flappers, dripping faucets and leaking valves in sprinkler systems. For great step-by-step tutorials on how to find and fix leaks from outdoor faucets and toilets, check out the Saving Water Partnership website. That same group offers tips on how to conserve water outside as well.

We’ve blogged here in the past about many ways you can conserve water in your landscaping. You can start by having a well-thought out plan for your landscape that incorporates low-maintenance, drought-tolerant plants. Picking the right plants for your conditions (whether shady, sunny, etc.), and you’ll have do use less water and fertilizers to keep them thriving. The Bellevue Botanical Garden’s WaterWise Garden, for example, shows you can be water-conscious and still have a garden with a wide array of attractive, colorful plants. 

We also encourage homeowners to check for leaks in sprinkler systems and consider upgrading to newer, water-saving technology to prevent overwatering. As we’ve noted in the past, the city of Seattle and other utilities in the region give homeowners rebates when they upgrade their sprinkler systems. Contact Ecoyards for assistance if you think your in-ground sprinkler system is leaking. Our irrigation specialists can help determine whether and where your system is leaking, and come up with a plan to fix it. We also offer design, installation, and maintenance of efficient sprinkler and drip irrigation systems. Find out more about our irrigation services.

The EPA recommends easy tips both inside and outside the house to check for leak problems.

• Check toilets for silent leaks by putting a few drops of food coloring in the tank at the bank, and watching whether color shows up in the bowl in 10 minutes (before flushing).
• Check outdoor hoses for winter damage and tighten connections.
• Check your water meter before and after a two-hour period when no water is being used. If the meter changes at all, you probably have a leak.

Ecoyards is pleased to announce we recently achieved the highest five-star rating from the EnviroStars program, which certifies businesses with environmentally responsible practices.

Certified businesses have demonstrated a commitment to protecting the environment by properly managing and reducing hazardous materials and waste and other practices. The EnviroStars program was created by King County in 1995, and seeks to create healthier communities and protect natural resources by keeping hazardous and other unwanted waste out of the environment.

What does the EnviroStar rating mean for customers like you? It’s just one more reassurance that Ecoyards is committed to reducing our overall environmental impact and that we are being proactive in minimizing our footprint. To get a five-star rating, we have to show environment-related leadership in our industry or community, have a solid waste reduction program and implement measures to save energy, protect air and water quality and incorporate an multitude of “greener” business practices.

An EnviroStars staff completes a site inspection, reviews our practices and decides whether we qualify. As the program notes:

companies receive a rating from 2- to 5-Stars; the higher the rating, the more thoroughly environment-friendly practices are built into the company’s policies and operations. To improve the star rating, a company has to become more proactive in reducing wastes and the use of hazardous materials. Five-stars demonstrate leadership on environmental issues beyond their own facilities – within their industry, organization and/or community.

If you haven’t had a chance to read it, the New York Times’ Mark Bittman has a good piece on the benefits of converting lawns into gardens. Bittman calls attention to a situation in Orlando, where a couple was threatened with a $500 a day fine for planting vegetables in their front yard. A neighbor had complained about the yard being an eyesore, or rather for looking “like a farm.”

According to the NYT, when faced with a violation from the city, the homeowner “stood outside his polling site during the last election circulating a petition to change the current code, and then appeared on a local TV news station, telling the reporter and any city officials who happened to be watching, ‘You’ll take my house before you take my vegetable garden’.”

“The battle has been raging for months, and the city’s latest proposal is to allow no more than 25 percent of a homeowner’s front yard to be planted in fruits and vegetables,” Bittman writes.

Fortunately, the city of Seattle has been encouraging residents to plant urban gardens for a number of years as the urban farm movement has taken hold. The mayor and others even recently expanded the number of P-patches in the community where residents can garden if they don’t have their own plots. Still, it wasn’t long ago when homeowners were chastised for not obtaining a $225 street use permit to plant vegetables or flowers in the city-owned property known as parking trips (located between the sidewalk in front of your home and the street). We wrote about the city revising the rules in 2009 after much citizen uproar. The new guidelines are here, and homeowners are free to plant fruits and vegetables in that city-owned parking strip, with some exceptions; for example, the city says don’t plant fruiting cherry, apple or pear trees that may drop fruit and can pose a safety risk to oblivious pedestrians.

Not every homeowner will want to tear up their front lawns or even devote the time to keep an urban vegetable plot. Let’s face it, vegetable plots can be very time consuming, and not too pleasing to look at during the winter months (the city suggests planting a winter cover crop to keep soil from running off the property and into the storm drains). We think there are certainly benefits to having lawns (think young kids and pets), as long as they’re maintained and grown responsibly. Read more about how we maintain lawns in a ecologically responsible way, including leaving grass clippings on the lawn, using organic fertilizers sparingly, avoiding pesticides (weed and feed products), planting grass seeds that thrive in the Northwest, and going easy on the watering hose.

We’d like to hear from those who are tending vegetable gardens in parking strips. What are you growing in winter months? What are you planning to grow this season? Are there vegetables or fruits that work better than others?

Contact Ecoyards to setup a consultation if you’d like to convert your lawn area into a new garden.

Dry, brown lawn in August. Photo by Ecoyards.

It’s almost a given around Seattle that lawns turn brown during the dry summer months. It’s too expensive to keep watering grass during the summer, so many of us in the Northwest choose to let the lawn go dormant knowing it’ll bounce back in the fall. There’s good incentive to lay off watering lawns during the summer months. Seattle, for example, charges three tiers of water rates from May 16 to September 15 when water is in greatest demand and shortest supply; customers are charged progressively more as their water use increases.

Brown lawns aren’t necessarily dead lawns. Turfgrass goes dormant as a survival mechanism. Lawns can tolerate about 4-6 weeks without water without experiencing too much stress or damage, if the temperatures are fairly even. If the mercury skyrockets, you’ll likely to see some damage in about 3 weeks or less. Turfgrass goes dormant to protect themselves from drying out. In this protective mode, it sends what available moisture it has to its crown, roots and rhizomes. The grass stops growing and turns brown.

Here are some tips for how to care for your lawn during dry conditions:

• Keep off the grass if possible. Walking on the grass can stress it out.
• Dormant lawns don’t need fertilizers. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the grass won’t be able to take all that food in.
• Improve the soil during the spring and fall by aerating, topdressing and overseeding as appropriate. Healthier soil means your grass has more moisture available to it root system during the hottest months.
• Keep grass high, leave clippings on the grass to add more moisture to your lawn.
• Weed as much as you can during the spring, before the dry months arrive. Weeds hog up precious moisture and nutrients that grass needs.
• If the drought persists beyond a few weeks, it’s a good idea to give your lawn a deep weekly drink (about 1 inches). That may not be enough to turn it emerald again, but it will help it stay alive. Water in the morning so you won’t lose water to evaporation.  A smart irrigation system can provide just the right amount of irrigation to the lawn with little-to-no wasted water. 

Rain barrel. Photo by Ecoyards.

We’ve been enjoying unusually warm, dry and sunny weather in Seattle lately. The lack of rain means it’s a great time to tap your rain barrels to water your plants. Most of you know that rain barrels are used to catch rain water and store it for later use. We get a lot of questions about rain barrels from customers, so we’ve tackled a couple of them here.

Can I use my rain barrel water for vegetables? Unless you get your water tested, there’s really no way to know for certain whether the water that runs off your rooftop and into gutters and then your rain barrel is completely safe for edible plants. The water could contain heavy metals (depending on what’s in those roof shingles), or fecal coliform and other bacteria from bird or other wildlife droppings. The safest bet is to use the water for non-edible plants only. If you must use the water on vegetables (depending on your personal comfort level), here are some tips: water close to the ground through a drip system; keep the water in the soil and away from fruits, veggies or foliage; avoid watering lettuce or other plants that are grow close to the ground; and always thoroughly wash your produce with drinkable water before eating. The city of Seattle’s Rain Barrel Guide recommends not using rainwater for plants if your roof is made of copper, or if it has wooden shingles treated with any chemical such as chromated copper arsenate to make them resistant to algae, moss or lichen.

How do I prevent overflows during storms? Install an overflow hose adapter, which allows water to flow through a small hose and drain to a nearby lawn or landscape bed. Make sure you direct it away from a basement or your foundation.

How much water can I actually collect from my roof? A general rule of thumb says that you can catch about 600 gallons of water for every 1 inch of rainfall on a 1,000 square foot roof. If you want to do your own math, the city of Seattle has a good formula in its rain barrel guide to help you out.

For gardeners in the Seattle area, the release of the Great Plant Picks each year is right up there with the Academy Award nominations. OK, not really, but it’s a still pretty cool list of showstoppers. Check it out.

If you aren’t already familiar with Great Plant Picks, it’s like having the chef of a restaurant come out and tell you the best things to order from the menu. The experts of the Northwest horticulture community have done all the work for home gardeners. They’ve weeded through and came up with a list of reliable, hardy and easy-to-care-for plants for this region. All the plants must be hardy for USDA climate zone 7 and 8, which covers most of the Seattle area. (Find your plant hardiness zone here). All the plants must be vigorous, easy to grow by the average gardener, reasonably disease- and pest-resistant, have a long season, be available from at least two retail outlets in the state and generally not be too needy or picky. Time and time again, Ecoyards has turned to this list to find the most suitable plants for our Seattle landscaping clients.

Shade tolerant plants, Seattle

The 2012 Great Plant Picks includes some of our favorite plants, including several varieties of Hosta and Trillium, as well the Virginia creeper vine. New for 2012 is a list of plants that are made for the shade. You can look up bulbs, shrubs or trees for shade. The newly-designed website now has categories that are broken down even further, into plants for light shade, dappled shade, deep shade, open shade and dry shade. Find your great plant pick using this search tool.

Winter storm Jan. 2012 – photo courtesy of Hector Castro

Rain, snow, ice, wind. The Seattle area got walloped with all of that in January 2012, when a storm toppled trees, broke branches and downed power lines. The storm caused a lot of damage when trees landed on cars, homes and in yards. For big trees and big jobs, homeowners dealing with tree damage should call a certified arborist. Need a referral? PlantAmnesty can help.

For smaller trees, make sure you prune the branches properly. Use a sharp pruning tool and make clean cuts. Contact Ecoyards for help.

Whatever you do, don’t top the trees. The practice of topping, or removing large branches or the tops of trees, can actually create more problems in the future. As PlantAmnesty explains, topping can lead to thick regrowth of suckers or sprouts that make the tree more top-heavy and more likely to catch wind. That makes it more vulnerable to getting blown down in a storm. Selectively thinning trees is a better way to go. This allows wind to pass through the branches.

Sometimes you can’t anticipate what Mother Nature does, but you can take measures to protect your trees from damage during wind, snow and rain storms. Proper tree care can minimize hazards during storms. Trees that are pruned regularly tend to be more resistant to storm and wind damage. Neglected trees are much more likely to fall or shed limbs during storms.

When I was growing up, one of the chores my dad assigned us four kids was to keep the front and back lawn evenly watered and emerald green. My dad never installed an automatic sprinkler system, let alone put a timer on it. Why would he need to? He had four perfectly capable children whom he could assign to hand-water the lawn. I remember countless mornings when my siblings and I would take turns going out to water the lawn before the hottest hours of the day descended. We would methodically move the spray nozzle from section to section, making sure to moisten but not over-saturate the grass.

Thank goodness for advances in technology. My dad was trying to be efficient with his water use — i.e., watering in the morning so as not to lose too much to evaporation; avoiding excessive run-off by not watering too much — but smart irrigation technology has made the whole process so much easier. Much like smart technology that has allowed us to set and control the thermostats in our homes, smart irrigation technology allows us to set how often and how much we water our lawns or landscape beds.

Traditional timers allow you to set a sprinkler system to turn on and off when you want. Smart irrigation technology senses weather changes and adjusts the irrigation accordingly. If it rains, it stops watering. (How many times have you seen sprinkler systems running when it’s raining out? This would certainly put an end to that.) If it’s hotter or the soil is drier than usual, the controller will increase watering. The controllers do all the work, and they are a much more efficient and sophisticated way to reduce outdoor water use. Studies show that weather-based irrigation technology help reduce outdoor water use anywhere from 15 to 30 percent, depending on the type of controller and where it was used. One study involving Denver, Colo. and two locations in California found that average individual homes save between 7 and 25 percent in water. If you’re interested in reading more, the U.S. Bureau of Interior did a literature review of studies involving smart controllers.

Many cities such as Seattle offer rebates for households that install smart irrigation controllers. In Seattle, the rebates range from $50 to $500, depending on what you install and whether it is on a new or existing sprinkler system. A smart controller on a new sprinkler system can net you rebates of between $225 and $375. You have to submit your rebate application within 90 days of installation. Click here to read about an irrigation project we completed in North Seattle using the latest in smart irrigation technology, which qualified the homeowner for a $480 rebate from Seattle Public Utilities.

Rotating spray-head sprinkler nozzles are also a new innovation in irrigation technology (shown above in top photo). They apply water more slowly and evenly than conventional sprinkler nozzles. The nozzles shoot multi-trajectory, rotating streams that apply water more uniformly. The water that shoots out of these rotating nozzles is less likely to mists and more resistant to wind. Applying water slowly allows soil to absorb it without running off into the sidewalks and streets.

Check out this city of Seattle brochure for more information about how to water wisely while keeping your landscape healthy and beautiful.

Contact Ecoyards if you’d like to have a smart irrigation system installed on your property.

At Ecoyards, we try where possible to salvage plants, along with concrete, soil, bricks, pavers and nursery pots for reuse. When we redo landscapes for clients, our clients will sometimes ask us to remove or replace certain trees and shrubs. We always try to find new homes for these plants. We either give them away to friends or plant them in our own yard.

King County has a terrific program that rescues native plants from construction sites to replant later at salmon habitat and wildlife restoration projects around the county. The county salvages the plants from sites slated for development and provides them at a low-cost for revegetation projects throughout the state. Native plants such as the evergreen huckleberry (pictured right) attract native wildlife, require little maintenance and water, helps control erosion and runoff, survive better than ornamental plants and are truly Northwest. At Ecoyards, we use native plants in virtually every project we do. Some of our favorites are evergreen huckleberry, flowering currants, and mountain hemlocks.

PlantAmnesty also has a great “green share” program with an active on-line adopt a plant list. You need to be a PlantAmnesty member to view the list, but anyone may list a plant for adoption.