Sustainable Landscaping: Principles and Practices

Sustainable landscaping involves a set of practices implemented by landscape practitioners to help solve environmental concerns. Continuing in the tradition of its predecessor, the second edition of Sustainable Landscaping: Principles and Practices examines underlying landscaping issues that adversely affect the environment and illustrates alternative methods that result in positive outcomes. This textbook examines all phases of landscaping in both residential and commercial environments, from design to construction and implementation to maintenance.

Firmly anchoring landscaping practices in the context of sustainability, this book explores topics including choosing appropriate plants and using plants for specific effects, such as shading, water quality and quantity, soil health and optimal preservation techniques, pesticide usage and its inherent dangers, energy consumption, and resource management and waste reduction. Sustainable Landscaping also provides a thorough grounding in pertinent issues and terminology for each topic, followed by practical solutions applied by landscape professionals.

• Each chapter includes learning objectives and case studies of actual sustainable landscape activities.
• Contains updated government statistics and data, graphs, tables, and color photographs throughout.
• Provides background information and sustainable solutions for students, homeowners, and landscaping professionals to effectively design and manage landscapes.

Dr. Marietta Loehrlein is a Professor Emeritus of Horticulture and Landscaping at Western Illinois University in Macomb, IL, USA. While there, she developed a new course, "Sustainable Landscaping," and wrote the first edition of this textbook, which was also the first of its kind to address the subject.

Dr. Marietta Loehrlein is Professor Emeritus of Horticulture and Landscaping at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois.

While there, she developed a new course, Sustainable Landscaping, for which there were no textbooks at the time. So, she undertook the project to write a textbook that would be immediately pertinent to the topic. She didn't want to simply address the "how-to" of sustainable landscaping, but also to examine the related issues, such as: energy sources, landscape tools, equipment, and materials, and soil- and water-related environmental issues.

Her half-acre backyard is a showcase of sustainable landscaping practices: she has reduced what had been an all-turf lawn area by planting a small prairie, a small woodland, and many species of native trees and shrubs. The stream that runs through the property supports a riparian community that facilitates spring bird migration. The native garden areas support a large number of wildlife species, some of which are never seen, as they are nocturnal and/or live subterranean habitats. However, ground-dwelling bees and at least a dozen species of songbirds are regularly seen. It is both a pollinator-friendly area, and also a certified wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation.

Dr. Loehrlein previously published Home Horticulture: Principles and Practices (Cengage). She is an Evansville, Indiana native, earned her college degrees at the University of Arizona (B.S., M.S.) and The Pennsylvania State University (Ph. D.), and was a Research Associate in a fruit tree breeding program in central California for SunWorld, International. She holds a patent on the regal pelargonium 'Camelot'.