Today’s experts on the environment are in agreement that in the last fifty years of industrialized society we have created more destruction to the environment than in all the years of history preceding them. By all accounts our material growth and technological attempts to control our environment may be straining the limits of the earth to withstand them, “The evidence suggests that we may be fast approaching absolute limits to material economic growth. We no longer have the luxury of trading-off ecological damage for economic benefits if we hope to have a sustainable future” (Grant, Manuel and Joudrey 2). Of course, a great deal has begun on a global level where sustainable growth is concerned, but it is only recently that urban planners and environmentalists have understood how important these sustainable growth efforts occur on the local level. One such area of sustainable growth on the local level that has been a target of recent focus is sustainable landscaping. Sustainable landscaping changes the paradigm of controlling nature through man-made technology to one that focuses on humans as just one aspect of an ecosystem and sustainable landscaping manages our interaction with it, “Sustainable landscaping is based on common sense and good design. It’s about stability-creating something that works because it’s in harmony with the local environment and has an internal system of checks and balances. It’s not perfect-you’ll still need to use resources, but in a much more sensible way. Done right, landscaping can be part of the solution, not part of the problem” (Understanding 4).
The key elements of sustainable landscaping are designed to promote a minimal amount of inputs and outputs, such as building materials and pesticides where inputs are concerned and greenwaste and chemical-runoff water where outputs are concerned. Sustainable landscaping is designed to pro
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