Landscaping Efficiently

What's up people? How is your day? It had been a rainy days for these few weeks. Such a cold weather to steamboat, or having a cup of warm chocolate, sitting by the river and enjoying the landscape view. Some of the areas have nice landscape view such as the Malacca River, KLCC Tower, etc but all these require maintenance and some few lightings to bring it to life. Of course, this only happens for public areas, but what if we want to set up the same landscape design in our own backyard? Surely there is something can be done at the minimum cost. So for today's topic, we'll be talking about energy efficient landscape.

What is Energy Efficient Landscape?

Landscaping  refers to any activity that modifies the visible features of an area of land, including living elements such as flora or fauna, natural elements such as landforms, terrain shape or elevation, or bodies of water and abstract elements such as the weather and lighting conditions. Energy-efficient landscaping is a type of landscaping designed for the purpose of conserving energy. There is a distinction between the embedded energy of materials and constructing the landscape, and the energy consumed by the maintenance and operations of a landscape.

How Does It Conserve Energy?

A well-designed landscape can reduce your hot and cold energy costs dramatically. It can also protect your home from cool wind  and warmer sun such as El Nino & La Nina. The landscape usually is designed to reduce consumption of water, pesticides, and fuel for landscaping and lawn maintenance. It's also used to help control noise and air pollution. 

Do you know that a well-positioned tree can save up to 25 percent of your home's energy for heating and cooling. A tree-shaded yard can be up to 6 degrees cooler than a sunny yard. A shaded lawn can be up to 25 degrees cooler than sunny pavement. Shading your home's roof can increase your air conditioner's energy efficiency by more than 10 percent. A single shade tree equals the cooling power of 15 air conditioners -- and it runs for free! Three house-shading trees can cut your cooling bill by as much as half.

Design

So how can we design our landscape for our home or office building to be energy efficient. There are a few ways to do it:

• Planting trees for the purpose of providing shade, which reduces cooling costs.
• Planting or building windbreaks to slow winds near buildings, which reduces heat loss.
• Wall sheltering, where shrubbery or vines are used to create a windbreak directly against a wall.
• Earth sheltering and positioning buildings to take advantage of natural landforms as windbreaks.
• Green roofs that cool buildings with extra thermal mass and evapotranspiration.
• Reducing the heat island effect with pervious paving, high albedo paving, shade, and minimizing paved areas.
• Site lighting with full cut-off fixtures, light level sensors, and high efficiency fixtures

Financial Cost

Landscape professionals can help you choose and locate new trees, shrubs, or groundcover. You may want to share your drawings and tentative ideas with your local nursery or landscape contractor. As long as you have defined intended uses and spaces in which planting is actually possible, a competent nursery or landscape specialist will be able to help you make decisions. When planting trees, shrubs, hedges, or bushes, find out how large the mature specimen will grow. 

In all cases, determine spacing by the mature sizes. For those plants close to your house, plan for at least 1 foot (30 centimeters) of extra clearance between the full-grown shrub and the wall of the home. This will prevent heavy pruning or damage to home siding in the future. 

After considering the placement of your trees and consulting landscaping and nursery professionals, go back to your drawings or plans and add the new information on species, shape, and mature-size spacing. This provides a final, pre-purchase review to make sure that all elements will work well together—in the short and long term. 

When you are ready to purchase your trees and shrubs, avoid buying damaged specimens. Thoroughly inspect the bark, limbs, and roots to make sure the plant was handled carefully during growing, digging, and shipping. Reject plant stock with signs of insects or disease (cocoons, egg masses, cankers, or lesions). After you purchase the plants, be sure to keep tiny root hairs damp and shaded at all times. The plants will not survive if these root hairs are allowed to dry before planting.

Some Small Tips

Take time to study the movement of sun and wind around your house and property through the seasons. You'll then be better able to control them with plantings and structures. 

Control the sun through just a window or two by planting annual vines. Create a trellis of galvanized wire or build one of wood to surround or even cover the window. Plant with a deciduous vine, such as a sweet autumn clematis, morning glories, or scarlet runner bean. The vine's leaves will create filtered shade during the hot days.

Concentrate more on depth than height when planting a windbreak. One row of trees is good but two is better, and three is best. Start with a row of low-growing flowering trees and shrubs closest to the house, a row of taller deciduous trees in the next row, and a row of tall evergreens farthest out.