Productive Landscaping

Description

John Robb:

"The factors that make a home is valuable are undergoing a fundamental transformation. One of the factors in transition is landscaping.

Ornamental landscaping is OUT. It's becoming a sign of a wasteful person (the proverbial grasshopper) that's unprepared for what is coming. A sign of moral and intellectual weakness.

Productive landscaping is IN. Productive landscapes can be summed up as the ability of a home's land (and by extension, the land of the community it is a part of ) to produce valuable products and services efficiently.

Or, looked at another way, how good is your land at:

• capturing solar energy/nutrients/water (measured in volume),

• transforming those inputs (the production system measured in the number of different processes at work and efficiency), and

• producing beneficial products that sustain you or make you income ($$ or lifestyle equivalent)?

Those homes (and communities) with highly productive landscapes (little labor, zero energy, little irrigation, few wastes, etc.) over as many yards/acres as possible are the homes to own.

In a sign of how unprepared we are: the US ornamental landscaping industry is composed of 90,000 companies that generate $50 billion a year in revenue." (http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/11/journal-productive-landscaping.html) "