Low-maintenance landscaping catching on at schools, businesses

Support for low-maintenance landscaping, it seems, is growing like weeds.

Homeowners who view yard work as a chore rather than a labor of love are naturally drawn to low-maintenance landscapes, which emphasize native plants and other easy-to-manage vegetation as alternatives to typical lawns that require regular mowing, fertilizing, weeding and watering.

But increasingly, commercial and institutional decision-makers are also jumping on the low-maintenance bandwagon as a way to save money while being kind to the environment.

And nowhere may the trend be more apparent than in the education sector, from public elementary and high schools to colleges and universities. The attraction for that group, industry experts say, is two-fold: Low-maintenance landscapes are cheaper to maintain and more economically sound them gardening with lawn-fertilizer.

There is a trend moving in that direction, said Griff Davenport, a senior principal with DLR Group. It's primarily operational driven, but there is a strong sustainable design argument that could be made related to low-maintenance landscaping as well.

As an example, Davenport points to a recent project undertaken by the South Milwaukee School District.

Native and endangered plants were featured in the school's comprehensive site plan, which preserves 8 acres of wetlands.

The site includes large areas of land that require no maintenance at all, other than a periodic mowing, and that's primarily to get it established, Davenport said. But during a summer or school year, there's no watering.

Steven Apfelbaum, a senior ecologist with a company called Applied Ecological Services, said more schools and businesses are considering low-maintenance landscapes because they're tired of mowing and maintaining lawns.

Keeping those lawns green isn't cheap. Apfelbaum estimates it costs $1,000 to $1,500 per acre per year to mow, irrigate, fertilize and otherwise maintain a lawn during a typical growing season.

By comparison, low-maintenance landscapes can be properly maintained for about $150 to $200 per acre - and it's sometimes far less than that, he said.

Moreover, hundreds of spectacular plants can be woven into a low- maintenance landscape, Apfelbaum said, including 500 to 600 species of prairie grass, 300 to 500 wetland species, and 150 to 200 forest species.

Compared to normal landscaping, there's significantly more plant diversity and variety available, he said. And people love that.

It's not always a case of love at first sight, however. Those who prefer green grass to Blue False Indigo, Joe Pye Weeds, Black-Eyed Susans and the like aren't going to be converted to the native plant look overnight.

Apfelbaum admits that many people are still drawn to high- maintenance landscapes.

But what we're finding is, eight of 10 people within a short period of time understand that low-maintenance landscaping doesn't mean that an area has to be unkempt and wild-looking, he said.

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