(...and saving the planet, one yard at a time!)
BACKCOUNTRY BACKYARDS:
THE STORY
Changing the way we live to save the planet
Because your first step out the backdoor should amaze you every single day.
(Click the link above to read a column on how amazing a yard really can be!)
WHAT IF...?
That's what Backcountry Backyards asks, shooting its entire quiver of solutions at a constellation of modern complexities - all arising from human impact.
RENEWAL
You know how a famous rockstar will step away from the group to do a side project, explore their voice or new genres to grow? THAT is Backcountry Backyards.
EXPLORATION
Backcountry Backyards is a side project under Salt + Dirt | Outside Design, a more traditional landscape design practice of conservation values driving more expensive, expansive installations.
KEEPIN' IT REAL
Humble, with the blood of Bonedale coursing its waterways: repurposeful, resourceful + respectful. Crafty, conscious + hella creative.
BETTER WAYS
Defining landscape for ourselves, outside of current practices, accepted norms, and out-of-reach costs.
Here's to grownup forts, food, fun and freedom~
BACKCOUNTRY BACKYARD'S PROMISE?
no more fake shit
NO EDGING
It doesn't work.
It's an expensive waste of money and effort. Nature tends to have soft, transitional edges, not abrupt ones. Metal or plastic edging goes down 4 - 6 inches. Turfgrass roots can dive four feet deep, sailing right under the edging. Now you're weed-whacking both sides of the edging.
NO WEED BARRIER FABRIC
It kills your soil.
Soil is a living, breathing organism, part of an eons-old process: decomposition. Soil isn't a singular entity but a matrix of air, silt, clay, sand, pebbles, stones, minerals, and moisture. Home to microbes and mycorrhizae; eggs, larvae, pupae, bugs. A reservoir of the ever-present shower of detritus of Nature. But it can't be that with a petrochemical barrier stretched across its surface.
NO MONOCULTURES
It's time to right-size turfgrass.
We've been sold a bill of goods with the American lawn. Cheaper to install per square foot, it's the most expensive component to care for. The most heavily irrigated monocrop in the US, it disrupts the living systems of the planet, adding to human-caused mass extinctions and global warming. Let's replace some of that with genuine Rocky Mountains.
E.O. WILSON
ON NATURE:
"Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction."
REDEFINING THE AMERICAN YARD
Traditional design has contributed to a world in collapse. When we design towards HGTV or Dwell Magazine, we create dead space. Foreign species and exotic plants displace habitat and food sources for native insects which have co-evolved with unique species through millennia. Native plants and regenerative systems bring that potential back. Suddenly, the air is filled with birds, pollinating insects, squirrels, and even deer. Can we question the impact that has on the HUMAN spirit?
BACKCOUNTRY BACKYARDS: DESIGNING FOR ECOLOGY, BIODIVERSITY - AND US.