Boulderspace

Following up on a previous post, Landscape Consumption - Boulder, Colorado; I question why so many people feel the need to waste and pollute for large swaths of grass? Old ideals, when viewed from a current perspective seem to make little sense. These highly resource intensive methods of landscaping served a foreign people, colonizing a vast and unpredictable new land. The times have changed, yet many of us still hold on to these landscape ideals today. Some people still require the predictable landscape that fits their indoor space, which correlates with a statistic I’ve heard that people in the western world spend 90% of there time indoors. That being said, I see dramatic consequences in bringing expectations for the indoors outside.

The last drought of 2002 forced many to implement a new kinds of predictable landscapes throughout Colorado. In these cases, grass was removed and tons of rocks were thrown down. Sold as a low maintenance and water free solution - not much thought was given to potential environmental damage that this over simplified solution to dominate nature instilled. Today people are still using rocks as a ‘zeroscape’ (see photo on left), not to be confused with xeriscaping solutions. Maybe they don’t understand the ‘sheet run off’ or ‘heat island’ effect? Not to mention the complete lack of habitat that rocks cause after they are installed.

Over time nature heals our blighted areas with ‘weeds,’ and often our response is to combat these invasives is with toxic herbicides. What we might not realize is that these herbicides flow off the rocks untreated and into our water supply. The below landscape photos represent a colonizers response to nature’s unpredictability. These methods had their place and were sustainable with small numbers of people utilizing old-fashioned agricultural methods, but today we are in a completely different ball park.

Is there hope? Here in Boulder we showcase prime examples of a changing paradigm. Many residents of Boulder have fallen in love with nature and want to recreate it in their yards. This trend and these pictures of Boulder landscapes (see photos below) bring me hope which is the name of my next post, where I will be exploring a behavior called Biofilia and how this growing phenomenon is influencing landscapes.

Photos by Urban Oasis Landscapes

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