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A natural yard is an ecologically inspired landscaping approach that creates a more natural-looking landscape than a conventional turf-dominated yard. These yards emphasize native plant species, support local wildlife and avoid chemical use when possible.
Natural yards are becoming more popular in Edmonton. A good indicator is the integration of a Natural Yards category in Front Yards in Bloom.
There are many different motivating factors for converting even a small portion of your landscape into a natural yard!
Natural yards have lower long-term maintenance costs in terms of time commitments and costs, such as water, gasoline, fertilizer and pesticides.
There will be regular maintenance with weeding and watering for the first two seasons of planting before your new plants are established. After established, these tasks will be significantly reduced.
Natural yards decrease the pressure on our drainage system by slowing and reducing the rush of water, absorbing it into the soil, from our yards to the sewers during large rainfall and snowmelt events.
This is accomplished by:
Incorporating native plants is a great way to add ‘new’ and unique plants to your landscape and creates a regional identity.
There have been a multitude of studies on the health, physical and mental, benefits of immersing oneself in nature.
Native plants provide food and shelter for pollinators. This helps in the efforts to protect certain species from population decline.
Without pollinators, food production from the majority of our crops would not be possible.
Natural yards also provide habitat connections through the city, allowing wildlife to cross our urban environment to more wild spaces.
Interesting Facts: Non-native ornamental plants support 29 times less wildlife biodiversity than native plants. (Doug Tallamy)
Only 1% of insect species (over 4 million in the world) interact with humans in negative ways. The other 99% pollinate plants, return nutrients to the soil, aerate and enrich the soil & provide food either directly or indirectly for most other animals.
The southern portion of Alberta, including Edmonton, is classified as Prairie Ecozone. Human impact has resulted in a loss of prairie land.
When possible, ensuring the seed source of your native plants is local to the Edmonton area (general consensus is that local genetics apply to a radius of 325 km) will help preserve the local prairie ecosystem.
This action is incredibly important for the health of our river!
Native plants do not need additional fertilizers to encourage growth. In fact, too rich of environments will often cause poor performance in native plants.
You do not create a natural yard by not mowing your existing lawn nor by allowing ‘nature’ to do what it will with bare soil areas.
This is important to avoid because:
This is an unfortunate and common perception and perhaps a major inhibitor to wider use of native plants. Natural yards need to be carefully planned, designed and maintained.
Often people wishing to ‘naturalize’ their yards have the view that they can throw down a bunch of seed and leave the yard to do its own thing.
This is just as applicable to non-native plants sold commercially. In fact, many exotic (non-native) plant species have invaded our natural areas. (See Myth #5 for why this is a problem).
Seeds of many of our local native plants actually have very low germination rates and some have heavy seeds that do not fall far from the parent plant. The probability of the seed finding the site conditions it needs in a neighbour’s yard further reduces the chances of spreading.
Another way that plants spread is by rhizomes. (underground stems that grow horizontally and put out new shoots).
To help prevent this:
There is no such thing as “no maintenance”, only different levels of maintenance.
An established natural yard is low maintenance though!
For the first few seasons (usually 2), you will need to be more diligent about weeding to prevent the choking out of desired plants. Ensure adequate watering during establishment to allow your new plants to grow well.
After that, the main time-consuming maintenance of planting beds is your spring and fall clean-up.
Naturalization on Public Land has different goals and is accomplished by a different process. Naturalization allows an area to revert back to a pre-existing condition. Afterwards, it is managed for weeds and then enhanced with further native plantings.
A natural yard is a space created by intention and to meet a homeowner’s needs and wants. It does not have a pre-existing landscape to fall back to being in a developed area. If the same process was taken, you would mostly have weeds taking over your property.
Some plants have been identified as invasive to Alberta.
“Exotic” plants are those that are not naturally from Alberta. Some are suitable for garden use and some are very invasive.
Invasive plants spread aggressively and have a significant negative impact on the environment.
It is the responsibility of citizens to ensure that their properties are free from these species, according to the Alberta Weed Control Act.
There are native plants that are drought-tolerant but certainly not all. Native plants are incredibly resilient (even if they go dormant or have a bad year, they can come back with vigor the next!) and require little extra care (once established) when they are happy with their location.
There is a range of conditions within the natural environment and similarly these are replicated within our yards such as: sunny and shady areas, dry to wet areas, exposed, windy areas and sheltered areas, nutrient-poor soils to rich soils and all of the combinations in between.
Plants, native or non-native, need to be situated within the conditions that they are best adapted to.
Native plants, goldenrods in particular, are often accused of causing people’s allergies to act up. This is simply not true. Many native plants are insect pollinated and allergy mode of transportation is by wind. Among the top culprits is actually Kentucky Bluegrass, which is what our traditional lawns are.
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If you are calling from outside of Edmonton: 780-442-5311
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