Sustainable Landscaping Forgoes Dangerous Chemicals and Cultivates Beautiful Backyards

ELIOT, Maine — Americans’ passion for growing verdant lawns and lush gardens is not always fulfilled by employing our best “green” options. When we apply chemical fertilizers and pesticides to create a backyard oasis, these chemicals can harm people, pets and waterways, sometimes seriously. 

But other options to treat our yards do exist. In fact, a local landscaping company, conceived to practice sustainability, offers chemical-free alternatives in lawn care and garden maintenance that achieve good, safe results. 

Harmful to Pets and Humans

Michele Lowry of Dover, N.H.-based Nikoe Natural Therapies, employs holistic healing for both people and pets, providing them with choices for healing and preventative health care. These include Reiki, Shamanism, improved nutrition, essential oils and gem stones. In August, a friend’s dog became sick with unusual symptoms, and Lowry worked to get the pet healthy again. 

The owner wondered if the Roundup she had used on her property could have caused the symptoms. Lowry conducted research that linked these symptoms to the use of Roundup — some of which this dog had, including diarrhea and vomiting. 

Lowry tested the animal. “It was a little 14-year-old Yorkshire terrier, not a 100-pound dog,” Lowry said recently, “so it was easy for her to be affected. For me that was it. It was a poisoning.”  

Lowry theorized that through eating the grass and her paws coming into contact with areas where the Roundup was used, the dog was continually reacting to the chemicals. 

The debilitating effects of this chemical’s exposure to humans are being studied. According to a peer-reviewed report published in April 2013 in the scientific journal Entropy, heavy use of the world's most popular herbicide, Roundup, could be linked to a range of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson's, infertility and cancers. 

"Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body," the study says.

“This is not the first animal I have encountered that has responded to these kinds of chemicals,” Lowry said. “There are many more that are not diagnosed.” 

After receiving veterinarian care and benefitting from Lowry’s use of supplements to help remove any toxins from her body, “the dog’s doing great,” Lowry said. 

Chemicals Are a Threat to the Great Bay

Whether in the form of fertilizers (nutrients such as nitrogen of phosphorus) or pesticides (weed and “pest” killers such as herbicides, fungicides and insecticides), chemicals very realistically affect Great Bay in two ways, according to Jean Eno, a trustee of the Great Bay Stewards, an organization dedicated to protecting Great Bay. It is a Business Partner of the Green Alliance. 

“First, fertilizers, when they leach into Great Bay, cause algal blooming, which in time smothers beneficial aquatic plants and wildlife at the lowest levels on the food chain, which then leads to loss of organisms higher up on the food chain, loss of wildlife habitat and water quality, ultimately leading to loss of quality of life, tourism, etc. for us humans,” Eno said. 

She explained that while chemicals produce green lawns in the short term, they disrupt the natural chemical and biological balances of soil. Unlike Vegas, what happens in these soils doesn’t stay in these soils. Chemical leaching is a very real thing, and it is invisible until it suddenly isn’t. 

“While some may believe their lawn can’t possibly impact a stream, river, or Great Bay, in the end we and our lawns (all the hundreds of thousands of us) are all situated within some form of a watershed — an area of land that drains to a common body of water — which means we and our lawns all eventually contribute to the health, or decline, of our waters,” Eno said. 

“The second way chemicals affect Great Bay is through pesticides, especially when used improperly. Pesticides directly and indirectly poison not only humans and pets, but upland and aquatic organisms. Unfortunately, wastewater treatment plants do not remove pesticides from water.” 

Healthier Lawn care Options

“There are many options available for healthier lawn care,” Eno said. 

Lowry found that out when she contacted the Green Alliance to find a landscaper who uses natural methods to tend to yards and gardens. The Green Alliance is a union of local sustainable businesses promoting environmentally sound business practices and a green co-op offering discounted green products and services to its members. 

“People should know that there are many options available for your garden, even for removing weeds, that are non-toxic to you, your family or your animals,” Lowry said. 

The Green Alliance directed Lowry to GA Business Partner Site Structures Landscape, Inc., which operates out of Eliot, Maine, and offers a chemical-free alternative in lawn care and garden maintenance. 

Since 1996, Site Structure's operation has grown to include a number of cutting-edge green techniques and practices, from sustainable landscape designs to chemical-free alternatives, storm water management to rain garden implementation, sourcing local products whenever possible to powering its fleet vehicles with biodiesel. It prides itself on balancing aesthetic beauty with the health of the environment. 

“With our normal residential customers we talk with them about what their choices are, and we’ll try to steer them away from chemicals because there are plenty of chemical-free options,” said Site Structures Owner Charlie Bourdages. “There is a niche of customers willing to try chemical-free landscaping, and they are happy with the outcome of such treatments.” 

Some of his customers, mostly businesses, do demand using chemical fertilizers and weed killers. “We ourselves don’t do it but will subcontract to have other companies perform those services,” he said. 

Chemical-free options include using natural fertilizers, choosing your plants carefully — “the right plants,” Bourdages said —to cover the entire property, and living with a few weeds, which can be burned with a plumber’s torch when they grow in walkway cracks. 

“Things don’t have to be 100 percent all of the time; that’s not how nature works,” Bourdages said, adding, “It is selfish and shortsighted to dump chemicals onto your lawn to create this illusion of paradise, while others around you suffer, including animals and people.” 

For more information about Site Structures, visit www.sitestructureslandscape.com. 

For the Great Bay Stewards, visit ww.greatbaystewards.org