Return on Investment landscape practices
Design for efficiency
The landscape depicted above has been designed to have no lawn grass. My client told me he was tired of mowing, edging, spraying chemicals, and watering turf just for looks.
Benefit the ecology
We collaborated on a selection of tough Florida friendly and native plants that would attract butterflies and hummingbirds. With proper establishment this plan will mature into a low-maintenance yard.
Ultimately this client will be able to eliminate expenses related to having a big lawn. He now enjoys a low maintenance landscape that requires minimal irrigation. His yard is now dominated by colorful flowers and is an oasis for friendly pollinators.
The picture below shows roadside irrigation running during heavy rainfall. Witnessing this over and over eventually led me to pursue my advanced degree and research concerning landscape irrigation conservation.
Irrigation
Even your irrigation system can be optimized for savings. The conclusion of my thesis was that a 50 to 67% reduction in watering expenses if irrigation is simply scheduled based on weather data.
Let's add this up: lf the irrigation bill is 250, saving about half of this is 125 per month or 1500 per year of savings. That adds up.
You could even take it a step further and integrate some low maintenance plant material such as hardy fruit trees and a small easy to manage garden that would put food on the table, a further return on your investment.
Check out this link: Water Use Calculator | WaterMatters.org (state.fl.us)
Lawn dominant vs. Florida native or Florida friendly landscapes:
Here are some facts to keep in mind when comparing costs (seen/unseen) between turf dominated landscape and native/Florida friendly:
During my thesis research completed in 2012, I found that irrigation of landscapes can be responsible for more than half of the water consumption of residential homeowners. This is a fact confirmed by research at University of Florida. Public water use in Florida in 2005 totaled 2.54 billion, gallons/day (USGS 2005). Sixty-one percent of this went to residential water use, with sixty-four percent of that applied as landscape irrigation (Fernald and Purdum 1998).
When you do the math that is 1 Billion gallons of water in a year applied to landscape irrigation. This is a staggering number and a significant expense for any household.