How landscape rock makes the planet more green

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How do gray boulders and brown stones make your beautiful landscapes more green?

Because they are more eco-friendly, and therefore more ‘green’.

How so?

Take a moment and imagine how much water is required to water a lawn for a single-family home. What do you think? A few gallons a week?

Well, certainly more than that. For a home with one acre of land It takes 27,154 gallons of water to irrigate with an inch of water.

Now, we know that most homes don’t have a whole acre to water, but the average American lawn is about 1/4 of an acre so… we’re looking at around 5000 gallons to water that lawn!

But here is the situation, multiply that by the amount of homes and properties watering their lawns in the US and you see that number sky rocket into numbers that are just hard to fully conceptualize.

In a study done by the EPA:

“Nationwide, landscape irrigation is estimated to account for nearly one-third of all residential water use, totaling nearly 9 billion gallons per day.”

Just let those numbers soak in for a moment. 9 billion gallons is 1,203,208,556 square feet.

Or to put it in terms we can understand, that would be enough to cover 156,250 football fields with one inch of water.

And this is JUST the US alone! We haven’t even factored in other countries.

We don’t need to belabor; I think you get the point! We are using a LOT of water for our lawns.  Water which could be used for agriculture, or other more productive means.

But ‘wait’ you say! ‘We can’t just let our flowing fields of green turn to death and dust! Surely there is another option’.

Luckily there is, and it is called xeriscaping.

According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, xeriscaping means: “a landscaping method developed especially for arid and semiarid climates that utilizes water-conserving techniques (such as the use of drought-tolerant plants, mulch, and efficient irrigation)”

Don’t let this definition mis-lead you. Xeriscaping can be applied in ANY region, it does not have to be drought-prone arid wastelands.

Even in lush, wet environments like Florida commercial property owners and home-owners are making the switch to xeriscaping.

Here is a nice, bite-sized, easily digestible explanation from David Rice on what xeriscaping is:

The principles of xeriscaping can be applied for single family homes, or large commercial properties.

How do I xeriscape my property?

The answer to that question really depends on how low you want to go. Do you want your property to require absolutely zero water, or do you just want to reduce your current usage a bit?

Whichever route you end up taking the one thing you’re going to need is crushed rock. Think of crushed rock as your replacement for mulch and turf.

Rocks are boring, how can I make it look good?

Actually, with the right design sense, and right colors and sizes of rocks, a xeriscaped piece of land can look JUST as nice as a normal landscape. But you have to know what you’re doing.

Can I keep my lawn?

It should be noted that turf DOES require water so the only way to ‘xeriscape’ a turf if by removing all of it, or part of it, which is entirely up to you. 

What should I do next?

The next step is to get inspired at how beautiful your property (residential OR commercial) can look by switching over to xeriscaping. Search on Pinterest or Instagram for ‘xeriscaping’ and there you’ll see the best the web has to offer.

If you want to see what some large-scale commercial properties look like, visit our website to see projects for which we provided landscape rocks:

https://www.kalamazoomaterials.com/gallery/ You can make your property not only more beautiful, but more eco-friendly, and thus set an example for your visitors, and the rest of the world: you don’t have to lose out to go green!