Green Jay Landscape Design

Green Jay Landscape Design

(914) 560-6570

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Our mission as ecological landscape designers has always been to improve our natural environments from traditional, chemical-laden and exotically planted landscapes to native, ecologically-productive habitats. We interviewed several long-term clients on what wildlife visitors they see in their landscape. Watch the video below to hear directly from them!

Testimonial Highlights:

“No matter what time of year it is, you can always look out the window and see something really interesting.” –Kathleen, Mamaroneck

“There’s lots of turkeys that come in. Last week we had a flock of about 10.” –Clare, Beford Hills

” A flock of about twenty robins, foraging in the leaf litter” –Kathleen, Mamaroneck

“Sphinx Moths, I have never had any in my garden before. I had a whole bunch of Monarch butterflies. I haven’t had any in previous years” — Marty, Hastings-on-Hudson

“Just sitting there and seeing all the bees and butterflies, it’s like everyday is a show” — Anne, Irvington

“They come in shifts; first you have the catbirds, then you have the sparrows, and then the chipmunks” –Kathleen, Mamaroneck

Want to see more wildlife in your garden? Contact us to discuss your ecological landscape design project!
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Green Jay Landscaping

Where Design Meets Ecology

This recently completed landscape design & build project was a complex, steep slope in a delicate wetland environment that required a tremendous amount of permitting, engineering and site development.  We are so proud of the final product and thankful for our incredible team – from Green Jay’s staff to our engineering partners and wetland consultants. The unique site, located on Lake Peekskill in Putnam County, New York, necessitated an erosion control plan to prevent any disturbance to the lake. The site was both beautiful and challenging – our favorite type of work! Read on to see our process in transforming this unsightly slope into a beautiful, functional lakeside habitat.

Completed retaining wall and newly seeded low-mow lawn on Lake Peekskill, NY.

Design & Build in a Wetland: Permitting, Inspections & Engineering

Sitting directly on Lake Peekskill, this site required a wetland permit from the NY DEC. We applied for a waiver for the permit, with the help of wetland scientist Bruce Barber, which took a full six months to obtain. No work could start before the waiver was approved. Given the steep slope and proximity to the fresh water lake, the waiver required an engineered erosion control plan, which was completed by our partner Brian Hildenbrand. 

Looking upslope at completed terrace gardens with native shrub planing. Some trees were removed to let in more light to the garden.
Progress shot: grading the garden slope between the walkway and retaining wall.

We were required to limit and contain the area of disturbance throughout the project. Site protection around the area of development – silt fences to prevent sediment from running off into the lake – was installed under Jay’s supervision, as a Certified Storm Water Inspector. 

Woodchip walkway, designed with erosion control devices, contrasts nicely with the dark brown garden bed mulch.

Steep Slope Soil Engineering 

The erosion control plan, for the main slope to be landscaped, included a suite of soil stabilization techniques, starting with the very soil itself. We brought in 120 yards of a custom, engineered soil to create the garden terraces, grading one to three feet of soil across the slope.

Laying out the skeleton of the terraces: work in progress!

We chose a customized, engineered soil that is 80% mineral and 20% organic matter. Most commercial soil is about 50% organic matter, in the form of wood products and leaves recycled into topsoil. Soil with this high of organic matter decomposes much faster than the 80-20 mix. If we had used the conventional 50-50 mix, in just a few years, the slope we carefully constructed would have shrunk, undermining the integrity of the slope and threatening erosion.  

The density of the soil (1-3’, in this case) is important, for it prevents inundation from storm water, which can undermine the lift we achieved through grading. Soil quality is also extremely important. We choose premium-screened loam to ensure we are not planting into contaminated soil.

Completed woodland garden with native perennials and shrubs, stroll path, and boulder accents.

The leaner soil also benefits our plant palette – native shrubs, grasses and perennials that evolved in disturbed lean soils, and prefer this growing environment.  The soil amendments we do apply are organic compost that contains biochar and are 100% natural source, to help cultivate healthy soil microbes. Soil microbes are key to cultivating healthy plants and storing carbon in the soil (catch up on our previous blog on Designing Carbon Sinks). 

In the tri-state area, it is safe to say that there are no pristine soils. Everything we come across in residential or commercial areas has already been degraded through years of construction debris, pollution, compaction, and erosion. No soils are ready to plant.  All require amendments to supply the building blocks of a successful and thriving organic landscape. 

Placing plants: perennial and grasses on the lower terraces, flowering & evergreen shrubs on the upper levels.

Site Development in a Wetland Zone

Green Jay Landscape Design brought in thirty yards of boulders to construct the terraces and garden path through the hillside. The walls are dry-laid by hand; they were constructed with real boulders and rammed earth. No machines, or concrete were used to construct the walls. See more of our custom masonry work. 

We love the aesthetic of river rock and its ability to slow down and absorb stormwater instead of letting soil erode.

We originally thought only two dry-stacked boulder retaining walls would be necessary, but during site development we discovered a giant pile of buried gravel where our planting terrace was supposed to be. The gravel was part of an existing over-engineered retaining wall, where three feet of gravel (an excessive amount) was installed behind it.  Jay decided to split the new retaining wall into two to avoid the buried gravel, covering the elevation in a total of three retaining walls instead of the anticipated two.

Other site development measures included extreme pruning of the mature trees on-site to let in more light for the new plantings. In some cases, we removed overgrown trees and shrubs that no longer served an ornamental or ecological purpose. 

Filtrex socks are an important erosion control device for terrace and slope landscape design.

Designing Terraces for Erosion Control 

To ensure erosion control, the terraces were constructed with filtrex socks, a type of erosion barrier. For the woodchip pathway that runs along the slope, we embedded logs at angles into the soil and installed filtrex fabric; together they act as a “water bar” preventing erosion of the path and woodchips during storm events.

Planting into the jutte netting so slope is stabilized as the new pants’ roots become established.

We also installed jutte netting across the planting beds, planting directly into the netting. This allows the roots of the new plants to become established while the plant itself is stabilized in place.  The jutte netting eventually decomposes in the soil, and the plant roots themselves act as soil stabilizers.

These photos were taken after an extreme storm event – Lake Peekskill received two inches of rain in twenty-four hours! These photos are a testament of our erosion control measures and terrace design – they hold up!

Native ferns, perennials and spreading ground cover were chosen for their ecological value suitability for dry shade.

Choosing Plants for a Slope

As with all of our projects, the majority of plants used for this design are native. This particular site called for plants suited to heat, inundation (from storm events) and dry shade. The lower terraces are composed of native perennials and grasses.  On the shadier portion of the slope, we planted colonies of native ferns – a mix of fast growers, scented ferns, and evergreen ferns to provide a naturalistic feeling and stabilize the slope year-round. Native shrubs, flowering and evergreen, will attract birds and continue to prevent erosion in the fall and winter months. 

We connected an existing walkway behind the house to the woodland path, for fully integrated circulation throughout the landscape.

Custom Masonry & Hardscaping

Aside from the boulder retaining walls constructed for the garden terraces, we also created a rustic flagstone patio and walkway to connect some existing stonework that lacked a functional circulation flow. 

Rustic flagstone walkway to a new wedge of patio maximizes usable space by the deck.

River rock accents around areas prone to inundation (around the deck) prevent soil migration and look charming as a garden bed border. 

Our rustic, been-there-forever masonry style blends with the existing.

The garden path that runs through the terraced beds is finished with a light brown mulch to contrast with the chocolate brown mulch of the garden beds. Lining the path with small boulders creates a strong visual and helps prevent the mulch from migrating in runoff. 

Woodland garden paradise! Nic

Landscape Design & Build Takeaways 

This project took immense coordination amongst multiple vendors and the client. It required coordinating and stockpiling large quantities of materials that we took care to source locally – nearly everything was acquired within a thirty-mile radius.  The delicate site and waiver stipulations dictated that all of the work be done by hand – we could not bring in machines! Using high quality materials and hand labor translates into a higher price tag and more time spent, but the final product will endure for years and create a luscious habitat for our client to enjoy. Following regulations can sometimes feel tedious and endless, but our client was patient and understanding, and is beyond happy with the end result! 

This project is an example of a NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat, a Pollinator Pathway, a Monarch Waystation, a Bedford 2030 Healthy Yard, and more. It is truly a Landscape for Better Living.

Contact us to discuss your landscape design project or schedule an on-site consultation!

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Green Jay Landscape Design

914-560-6570

This is part two of our discussion of climate-smart landscapes, where we’ll dive into designing carbon sinks on your home landscape.  Catch up on Part One, where we detail how carbon is sequestered and stored in the soil via a critical plant-microbe relationship. Below are our best practices for landscape designers when designing and maintaining a carbon net positive landscape. 

Image courtesy of Lisa Fotios

Organic Soil Management

Organic soil management is an essential element of designing a carbon sink. As detailed in Part One of this blog series, CO2 sequestration and storage in the soil is governed by a diverse soil microbial community and their interactions with plants. To summarize: plants draw CO2 from the air and convert it into glucose via photosynthesis. The plant trades some of this sugar water for soil nutrients, broken down by microbes into a plant-available form. The exchange takes place on the roots, and microbes later exude a stable form of carbon called glomalin into the soil.  Glomalin also aides in the formation of topsoil by aggregating soil particles.

This delicate and magical relationship is dependent upon both sides having something to give and something to take. Without the microbes, plants would never be able to access and breakdown all of the essential nutrients in the soil. Microbes depend on the plants for sugars and water to stay alive. 

But, when this natural cycle is interrupted with inputs like synthetic fertilizers, the plant no longer needs nutrients from the microbes. Instead, the plant receives a flood of quick and easy NPK from the fertilizer. There is no need to exchange with the microbes, and there is no channel to store carbon in the soil. Soil microbes experience a brief surge in population from the nitrogen in the fertilizer; once the cheap food is consumed they target soil organic matter (carbon). Synthetic fertilizers not only disrupt the plant-microbe relationships, but they threaten to deplete organic matter significantly, rather than help store it.

This is why organic land care is of paramount importance for so many ecological reasons. By dousing our landscapes in chemicals, we are destroying one of our most valuable carbon sinks, one of the only natural systems for sequestering and stably storing a potent greenhouse gas. When designing carbon sinks, the landscape must be maintained organically.

Applying pesticides also indiscriminately kills insects, destroying habitat for essential pollinators, birds and beneficial insects. Learn more on our previous blog.

Minimize Disruption of Soil

Carbon stored in soil is relatively stable, especially around deeply-rooted plants, where it is stored in deeper layers of the soil strata. When soil is heavily disturbed and overturned however, the stored carbon is exposed to the air and released. This is why many regenerative farmers and landstewards now advocate for no-till farming and gardening. We avoid using roto-tillers whenever possible and suggest using hand tools to mix compost into top soil, for example. It is futile to design a carbon sink and not maintain it appropriately to keep the carbon stably stored.

Layered Plantings for Microbial Diversity, Plant Biomass

Layered plantings have long been a tenant of good garden design, but now we know the massive ecological value they bring as well. Simply put, the more plant diversity, the more soil microbe diversity, the bigger the underground network of carbon storage. There are billions of soil microbes in just a teaspoon of soil.  Many microbes are specialists, adapted to only specific plants’ roots. Others are generalists, forming relationships with many types of plants. By designing diverse, varied and layered plantings, we are able to maximize the carbon exchange and storage. Diverse plantings have different root depths and occupy different spaces in the soil strata, maximizing where and how stably soil carbon can be stored. For example, prairie grasses are known to have some of the deepest roots, and greatest carbon storage capacity. Including woody plants – shrubs and trees—increases carbon storage in both the mychorrizal network and the woody biomass. Perennials are also valuable; each winter some of their root system dies off and contributes carbon to the soil. Clearly, a garden featuring trees, shrubs, grasses, and perennials has far more potential to sequester carbon than any one monoculture (ahem, lawn).

Minimize Maintenance Emissions

To reach carbon net positive landscapes, our sequestration must outpace our emissions. Ultimately, we need to eliminate landscape emissions whenever possible during installation and maintenance. Many of our clients utilize robotic electric mowing services for zero emission and zero effort maintenance. Our crews use electric leaf blowers and perform as many tasks by hand as possible. Synthetic fertilizers also indirectly increase emissions when they leach into water bodies, cause eutrophication and create anerobic environments where microbes feed on the organic matter and respire CO2, acidifying the water and threatening marine life. 

Protect Coastal Wetlands

Connecticut, New York and New Jersey are blessed with ecological powerhouses: coastal wetlands.  From marshes to mangroves, coastal wetlands can sequester and store ten times more carbon than a forest! As Hillary Stevens described as ELA keynote speaker, this is because of a few factors. 1) plants grow and photosynthesize very quickly in coastal wetlands 2) lack of oxygen inhibits decomposition of organic material that falls to the sea floor 3) salinity inhibits certain microbe populations that live in freshwater wetlands and decompose OM rapidly, emiting the potent greenhouse gas methane as a byproduct. This unique set of conditions makes coastal wetlands an incredible natural carbon sink that we must work to protect. Restoring natural tidal flows to areas of development / impoundment can have a measurable impact on CO2 sequestration.

We hope you enjoyed this post on how to designing carbon sinks and maintaining your landscape as a stable carbon sink. Our window for reversing a devastating path of climate change is closing and it is imperative to employ every method available for reducing CO2 in our atmosphere. Soil carbon storage has the potential to reduce atmospheric CO2 by thirty percent. We have the tools, will we act?

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Green Jay Landscape Design

Where Design Meets Ecology

Contact us to schedule a consultation

You probably saw the headlines a few weeks ago on the latest UN IPCC Climate Report. It was dire. It stated that we are unequivocally on pace to reach and exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming in the next twenty years. This new reality will affect every single resident of planet Earth as sea levels rise, lands flood and droughts persist.  We are already seeing the devastating effects of climate change, just this summer. But together, landowners, landscape designers and land stewards can harness the power of plants and soil to reverse our path of reckless emissions, before our planet is altered forever. Every landscape has the potential to sequester and store the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. By maximizing these potentials AND reducing emissions, we might just stand a chance at reversing global climate change. This blog post is a call to action: design landscapes as carbon sinks!

This is Part One of a two-part series. Read Part Two – Landscape Design to Halt Climate Change: Designing Carbon Sinks!

Image courtesy of UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Climate Report.
Image courtesy of UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Climate Report.

About the IPCC Report 

First, a little background. The IPCC report is groundbreaking because for the first time, it undoubtedly linked human-generated emissions to a quantifiable amount of warming – we are on-pace to reach 1.5 degrees C or more in the next two decades. This proverbial line in the sand was drawn by climate scientists, a line that when crossed would initiate “several regional changes in climate.” We are already seeing these regional impacts. The report directly connects the extreme weather we’ve seen this year to human-initiated climate change, from the historic drought / heat wave / wildfires in the western US, to destructive flooding in Europe, hurricanes on the gulf coast, and massive earthquakes in Haiti.When we reach 1.5 degrees of warming, many natural climate regulating systems may tip out of balance, threatening exponential warming. 

Image courtesy of UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Climate Report.

2 degrees Celsius is another line, one with catastrophic implications, which we are on-pace to hit in our current gas economy. At 2 degrees of warming, scientists warn we could see icebergs collapse, and 1.5 to 4 meters of sea level rise by 2,300. Our habitable land would be altered beyond recognition. Not to mention the predicted water wars, loss of arable land, and abundance of extreme weather events that come with a rapidly warming planet. This is the path we are currently on.

Image courtesy of UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Climate Report.
Image courtesy of UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Climate Report.

Designing a Landscape Solution to Climate Change: Carbon Sinks

So, as stewards of the land, designers and caretakers, what can we do to address climate change head on, with measurable, immediate impact? We make each landscape a carbon sink, harnessing the power of photosynthesis, and soil microbe ecology to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into a stable sink: soil and biomass – the very earth beneath us.

Image courtesy of IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.

In this blog we’ll address the revolutionary idea of carbon farming, designing carbon sinks, and generating a carbon net-positive landscape. But first, a lesson in the magic of photosynthesis and plant-microbe partnerships. 

What is a Carbon Sink?

Simply put, a carbon sink is stably stored carbon. We often think of forests as carbon sinks – the Amazon rainforest is described as the lungs of the planet because of its massive ability to sequester carbon and release oxygen through photosynthesis. Photosynthesis converts sunlight, CO2, and water into glucose (a form of carbon) for the plant, while emitting oxygen as a byproduct. Trees can store carbon in their woody biomass, which is a very stable application…until a forest fire burns the area and releases all the carbon back into the atmosphere. Between forests and prairies just in the U.S., we have the potential to sequester and store 1000 pounds of C02 per acre per year!!   

Image courtesy of Research Gate.

Other plants like grasses and perennials also sequester carbon dioxide and release oxygen, but the carbon is stored in the soil, through the process of (the creation of topsoil!). This magnificent process occurs from a partnership between the plant and soil microbes, called mycorrhizae. A diverse community of microbes attach themselves to plant roots; the plant relinquishes a small amount of sugars and water in exchange for the mycorrhizaes’ breakdown of nutrients (N,P,K and micronutrients) from the soil into a plant-accessible form. Ah, the barter system! 

The microbes then excrete the sugars into a gluey substance called glomalin, which is a stable form of carbon (glomalin is 40% carbon!). Glomalin helps aggregate soil particles into clumps, a via humusification. Humus is up to sixty percent carbon!

Image courtesy of Parkways Seattle

Deeply rooted plants, like prairie grasses, are able to store carbon at deeper soil strata, increasing the stability of the sink. In general, the more diverse a planting, the more variety of root depth and soil microbe partnerships, the more potential for carbon sequestration and storage.

Image courtesy of flattenthecarboncurve.org

Scientists estimate that baseline soil carbon content is 1-2% per acre, but with proper management and plantings, soil can store 5-8% carbon per acre, meaning 25-60 tons of stored carbon per acre. By some estimates, if we implemented carbon-smart land management across all landscapes and agricultural land, we could reduce atmospheric carbon by 30%! Carbon sinks are a real and tangible climate solution.

Action Items for Climate-Smart Landscape Designers

In part 2 of this blog post, we’ll dive into best practices for landscape designers and land stewards interested in converting their landscape to a carbon sink, with net zero emissions.

Read Part Two – Landscape Design to Halt Climate Change: Designing Carbon Sinks!

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Green Jay Landscape Design

914-560-6570

What is contemporary landscape design? Of course, let us preface by saying, art is subjective. When we think about modern architecture, we might conjure images of minimalist, clean lines, and a borderline austere aesthetic. When we think about contemporary landscape design, our design perspective transcends aesthetics. Modern landscape design solves a problem – many problems – associated with decades of poor land development, pollution, and destruction of critical habitats. Modern landscape design is a holistic examination of land use, function and ecosystem services.  

Front entrance landscaping featuring pollinator-attracting plants (Coreopsis, St John’s Wort), ornamental grasses and natural stone.

Contemporary Ecological Landscaping for Modern Architecture

Designing landscapes in 2021 requires not only an eye for beauty but a brain for ecological restoration. This property in Darien, CT is proof that a naturalistic and ecological landscape design style looks fabulous against a modern, custom-built home of today’s styling. Natural landscapes are not just for the cottage in country. Every building looks at home nestled amongst a natural landscape, where birds nest, butterflies drink nectar and carbon is sequestered by the layers of plant material. Designing native landscapes makes the home look like it’s been grounded in the landscape for years; it just belongs, right at home in its native ecosystem. 

Command the entrance with color & texture! Newly planted driveway bed with native perennials, ornamental grasses & boulders.

Assessing & Amending Site Conditions

As this was a new construction, we found much of the property’s soil was contaminated with extremely poor, construction debris – making it alkaline – and very compacted. We created an engineered soil that improved the organic matter, pH and overall growing environment for the planting design.

Natural stone staircase with boulder accents, designed and constructed by Green Jay Landscape Design.
Clean foundation plantings focusing on structure, color & ecological value.

We always assess the existing plant material on a property. At this site, we found that many of the existing shrubs – hydrangeas, azaleas, and rhododendrons – were suffering because they were planted in a spot with too much sun exposure. The stressed plants then suffered from a lace bug infestation which nearly defoliated the leaves completely. Mature shrubs, even those that aren’t native, serve an ecological purpose – sequestering carbon in their woody tissue. We opted to transplant these shrubs from highly exposed front yard to a shadier corner in the backyard, where this season they bloomed for the first time in years.

We LOVE contrasting textures, like this natural stone, ornamental grass & evergreen combo!

We also decided to transplant existing birch trees from the front circular bed in the driveway to the rear landscape.  In the previous spot, they blocked and detracted from the impressive architecture of the home.  We proposed replacing the birches with a colorful grass and perennial garden to accentuate the entrance. Birches are one of the most ecologically valuable native trees – attracting 413 species of lepidoptera, according to Doug Tallamy. 

Newly planted pool landscaping. Structured shrubs mixed with spreading ground covers and native perennials to attract birds, bees and butterflies.

Seeding for the Future

Part of ecological landscape design is always looking for areas to add/expand garden beds and increase the density of ecologically productive plants. One example on this property is the new bed beneath the mature trees we designed. The existing weeds and brush were removed by hand before seeding the area with several seed mixes. We included oats and rye grass as a cover crop, plus some annuals for color in the first year.  Some of the species in the New England Wildflower mix we used will take 2-4 years to flower, so having some faster growing crops is important for soil stabilization. These native perennials will provide critical habitat for pollinators and birds for years to come. 

Stroll Time! Loving this garden path through colorful perennials and delicate ornamental grasses.

Designing to Combat Climate Change

Even the foundation plantings were designed as their own microhabitats, featuring flowering shrubs that are pollinator magnets, native perennials, grasses and ferns. The increase in overall biomass from the plant material means an increase in greenhouse gas sequestration capacity. The dense planting will also help uptake storm water during storm events – plants have a much higher absorption rate than lawn does. This is important because water is a precious resource and stormwater runoff quickly becomes polluted and drains into oceans.

Absolutely stunning! This meadow *soon to have MORE color* looks fabulous from the porch, and vice versa!

We also worked to reinvigorate an existing meadow that had been mismanaged, causing it to lose much of the plant diversity. Catch up on our previous blog – Native Wildflower Meadow Management in Darien, CT.

As you can see, this design, while beautiful, is also serving multiple ecological functions. Designing landscapes in 2021 means not only creating beautiful spaces for our clients, but also addressing some of our most pressing environmental issues head on.  We do not have much more time to spare. 

Contact us to start your ecological landscape design consultation. 

Green Jay Landscape Design is proud to announce our latest expansion: we are now offering our ecological landscape design & construction services to residents of Essex, Bergen and Morris County, New Jersey! 

New Jersey is home to many valuable and diverse ecosystems, from the sand dune coasts, to the tidal marshes and Pine Barren forests, New Jersey’s environment is worth protecting. We are proud to join the community of ecological land care, including New Jersey’s Pollinator Pathways program!

New Jersey Landscape Design

Now offering premiere landscape design, custom construction, ecological consulting, wetland & ecological restoration, and estate management services to New Jersey residents of Essex, Bergen & Morris Counties.

View our Landscape Design Portfolio

For more information on our work in each county, visit our location pages:

Essex County

Morris County

Bergen County

Contact us to schedule an on-site consultation or a free 15-minute discovery call. 

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Green Jay Landscape Design

Where Design Meets Ecology