Yard SustainLandscaping Field

Sustainable Landscaping

Whether you like to get your hands dirty or not, ensuring your property is managed with sustainable practices is smart for your family, your pets, and the planet. Sustainable yard care involves more than just ending the use of synthetic pesticides or herbicides.

Our lawns make up the single largest irrigated crop in America, but who’s eating it? That perfectly green lawn is actually a desert, void of nutrition, for many native insects. With sustainable landscaping, the soil, plants, and animals sustain each other. 

Take a holistic approach to lawn care by incorporating native plants and trees, leaving your leaves, switching to electric landscape equipment, and more! 

Introduce Native Plants
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Native plants thrive in our region. They have evolved to coexist with local wildlife and have adapted to the regional climate and soil. This makes them uniquely qualified to be low-maintenance and supportive of our native birds, insects, and animals.
Visit our Native Plants resources page to learn about the benefits of native plants, how to tell the difference between native and invasive plants, and find out where to buy native plants locally.

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Trees are vital. As the largest plants on the planet, trees are entwined with our lives in more ways than you can imagine. They create the air we breathe, soak up stormwater, and provide shade, to name a few.

Did you know The Municipality of Princeton owns and maintains over 18,000 municipal trees? When trees stay, they keep floods away. In total, these municipal trees have captured over 600,000 lbs of CO2 and have intercepted nearly 20 million gallons of water. The Princeton Climate Action Plan identifies multiple strategies to protect and enhance local natural resources and our tree canopy.

Here’s how to plant more trees on your property:

  • Check out Princeton’s native tree list and bring it with you to a nursery. Avoid anything on the New Jersey Invasive Species Do Not Plant list.
  • Get local planting and maintenance advice from the NJ Forest Service.
  • Say no to “mulch volcanoes.” Mulch is important, but it should be spread around a tree — like a donut, not a volcano. Never allow mulch to touch the tree’s bark, and don’t pile it higher than 3-4 inches; it can cause rot and disease.

Want more info? Check out Princeton’s Shade Tree Commission’s webpage for more resources.

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Every fall, leaves pile up in Princeton’s streets, creating safety hazards for bikers, blocking stormwater drains, and feeding unhealthy algae blooms in our waterways. In contrast, when leaves are mulched and scattered around the yard, your lawn has the opportunity to absorb and use these nutrients.

Leave your leaves where they can do some good for your soil. It’s easy to make the switch:

  • Rake leaves into a compost pile in a corner of your property. Turn it regularly and add some vegetable scraps, to get rich compost a few months later. Learn more about composting in your backyard (LINK).
  • Mulch leaves with a mower. They will disappear back into the lawn and provide needed nutrients. A mower with a mulching blade is optimal, but most power mowers (electric is best) should do an adequate job.
  • Rake leaves aside, into a woodlot, if available, or into an obscured portion of your yard such as behind shrubs.
  • Spread leaves on the garden. Leave them to hold in moisture and slowly release nutrients.
  • Use leaves to control weeds. Rake them toward flower beds, the fence line, or other weedy areas.
  • Create a leaf corral. Build a corral or circle of wire fencing to keep them from blowing around as they decompose.

Can’t keep leaves on your property? Instead, bag them and leave them out according to Princeton’s leaf schedule and rules. Place bags on the curb, not in the street, and only put loose leaves into bags (no sticks or brush).

Need mulch? Leaf mulch is an inexpensive mulch that you already have available. Skip the bags from the hardware store and use your leaves for moisture retention and weed prevention instead.