Why Sustainability?
Below is an excerpt from a 2014 interview by Yale Environment 360
with author Wendell Berry.
​
e360: You write a lot about local agriculture and the local economy, about local traditions and the importance of connections to the land. Why do you think this is so important?
Berry: That starts with the obvious perception that land that is in human use requires human care. And this calls for keeping in mind the history of such land, of what has worked well on it and the mistakes that have been made on it. To lose this living memory of what has happened to the place is really to lose an economic asset.
​
I’m more and more concerned with the economic values of such intangibles as affection, knowledge, and memory. A deep familiarity between a local community and the local landscape is a dear thing, just in human terms. It’s also, down the line, money in the bank because it helps you to preserve the working capital of the place.
Reconsider
Get more out of your Hardscapes just by reconsidering what goes into them. Enjoy superior long-term quality, support your local economy, protect the local ecosystem, and save some money.
Heavy Equipment
We opt for minimal equipment or machinery use, limiting ourselves to the smallest or least disruptive machine to get the job done right. Areas pummeled and compacted by frequent or excessive equipment use will often contribute to erosion, runoff, and drainage issues. A lot goes into pricing equipment and machinery for a customer, but make sure that the front-end efficiency savings don't end up costing you more on the back end of the deal when considering the externalities.
Non-Biodegradables
Okay, so we don't always follow industry standards... is that alright? More than ever, Hardscape products like patios and walls include quite a bit of "non-biodegradables" for enhanced strength and longevity. But we see right through the con of the traveling plastic salesmen and offer a better way forward. Not every project calls for geotextiles, geogrid, polymer modified concretes, plastic this, and plastic that. Not every job requires "cheap insurance" by way of synthetic materials. But some do.
Product Origin
Buying local materials is good, I think we can all agree. Let's look at the presumed journey by some of our locally quarried natural stone...
After being removed from a quarry it gets shipped off for fabrication. When it is ready to be sold, the stone travels to a dealer or distributor. Likely it travels again to a smaller retailer. Then again to a contractor, and then finally to you. And all of that is the journey for our local natural stone. Compared to some major brands of mass-produced, widely distributed concrete pavers, that long journey is a relative sprint.
​
​
Soil Health
We respect the soils on your site. We are always happy to conduct a soil analysis before breaking ground on a project, or after it has been completed. Ideally, we avoid disturbing native soils as much as possible. During excavation we will sort the top soils from subsoils and stage them both onsite for reuse. Problematic soils such as clay may be removed for hardscaping, if amending the clay is deemed unfeasible. When replenishing an area with new soils, we take careful consideration in selecting the correct soil composition, appropriately compacting, and meticulously regrading or hand-finishing. Oh and let's bring on that compost too, the good stuff.
Water Runoff
Every Hardscape feature added to a landscape affects water runoff, erosion, and drainage. We do our best to only install semi-permeable or fully permeable Hardscape products, but the reality is that Hardscaping inherently reduces the filtration capacity and subsequently impacts the water table.
Reduced water filtration starts a negative loop of problems; increasing runoff volume and velocity, weakening root growth, accelerating nutrient loss or proliferation, altering ecosystem balances or harming biodiversity, carrying of pollutants, accelerated erosion, localized micro-climate warming... and so on. The good news is that water-conscious Hardscapers can recapture much of the runoff.
Native Plants
By combining good soil health and water conscious practices with a thoughtful plan for installing more native plants, your landscape will not only tolerate your new beautiful Hardscape but will thrive with it. It all works together. Native plants have already adapted to many localized challenges, and thus often require less water, increase biodiversity, offer better soil protection and nutrient replenishment and so on.
Pairing your Hardscapes Installation with a Softscapes Design is a fantastic approach to rebalancing your landscape after an intrusive construction. We work closely with knowledgeable, and sustainably focused Garden Design & Horticulture experts to really tap into the potential of a Holistic Land Management approach.
Sustainability is about Quality.
When people hear the term Sustainability they think of environmentalism, protecting ecosystems, preserving natural habitats and biodiversity, etc. The association is warranted considering the urgency and fervor for significant action to reverse worrisome Climate Change trends. However, the term Sustainability has broader and deeper roots than that of its modern green presentation, though it has been obscured somewhat by the popularization and mainstreaming of the ongoing global environmental crisis.
​
The more classic approach to Sustainability centers around values such as thrift, frugality, and quality. Despite the ubiquity of modern "planned obsolescence", there was a period around the 1950's where developed and developing countries focused their production and consumption on the durability and longevity of goods and services, though not necessarily on environmental sustainability. Much of a nation's identity and pride, resonating from the people and the laborers, was linked to the quality of the goods and products being manufactured. The classic approach to Sustainability served as a road map for the individual laborer's path toward economic freedom, entry to the middle class, and sustainable wealth. It was a sometimes-exaggerated opposition to, and antithesis of, a lifestyle of Frivolity. Later, modern Sustainability would revolutionize the classic approach by challenging the claim of quality, if quality also meant the degradation of environmental resources, destruction of biodiversity, and the exploitation of peoples and cultures.
​
For those familiar with the writing of Wendell Berry, it becomes clear how industrial specialization, and subsequent exploitation, has displaced human connection with land, local culture, and community. More and more young folks of ambition would abandon their small family agricultural operations, seeking greater profit elsewhere in the world of specialization, but still retain an inherent capacity for quality that is derived primarily by care and nurture. But as expressed in the interview excerpt above, the intrinsic nature of that core value appears to be waning the further removed we become from land and place. As we divorce our connection to land, local culture, and community, we derive quality not organically to serve a purpose, but instead by quantity and to serve ourselves.
​
Does a landscape or hardscape company need to be equipped with Robert M. Pirsig's book "On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence" to create a wonderful landscape for your backyard? No, not really. But to successfully practice a Holistic Land Management approach that can transform a landscape into a beautiful, functional, sustainable ecological paradise - the practitioner ought to at least have the prerequisite insight on dynamic Quality and a clear vision of how the land base ought to be far into the future, in order to sustain the production. Which is to say, how can a landscaper create sustainability without clear parameters of what is to be sustained and for how long? How can someone produce truly dynamic Quality if their only track is to reproduce the many tired iterations of static quality?
​​
That is where Ajna Stonescapes comes in. We are not accredited designers and are not landscape architects, though we do have those resources available in our network. We are, however, Landscape Service providers and Hardscapers that are obsessed with Quality in its fullest form. And that means that our drive for Quality in Landscaping must hold us accountable to our broader impact, must hold us environmentally responsible, and must encourage us to use holistic land management and/or sustainable methods whenever possible.
