Best landscape practices Archives - Eastern Land Management

An expanding senior population is creating renewed demand for high-quality senior housing. And to us, high-quality means access to nature and using landscaping as a metric to rise to new market challenges and simultaneously improve the quality of life for residents across a spectrum of needs.

This is good news for facility and portfolio managers with capital improvement monies to invest as landscaping and outdoor amenities are adaptable, innovative and sustainable ways to gain competitive advantage.

The economic argument is compelling. Data suggests that an estimated 70% of Americans aged 65 or older may require long-term care. Coupled with a set of statistics suggesting that access to nature improves health care outcomes, and it adds up to landscaping easily delivering a measurable return on investment.

As the assisted living communities of the future take shape, here are four key landscape trends to put on your radar.

Gateway Landscaping and Showcase Features:

The point of entry for new residents and potential residents, and visiting guests, is the front door. In an era where screening devices and advanced safety protocols are the norm, strategically-placed landscaping can help soften the technology, minimize touchpoints and make your building’s main entrance look like a welcoming amenity space without compromising the need for security.

Outdoor Living Rooms:

Outdoor gatherings will continue to meet new standards for public health and safety, and we’re building functional amenity spaces that can host family visits and social gatherings, and are pet-friendly. With a renewed emphasis on an accessible and flexible outdoors, we’re seeing an increase in requests for balconies, patios, courtyards and other spaces that are tech-enabled, airy and ventilated, and meet new restrictions for disease prevention.

Water Features:

Water is a soothing element so it’s only natural that its ability to improve mood is a given. When designed for safety and installed correctly, and integrated with smart-technology, interactive fountains, pondless waterfalls, architectural lighting, and water-recycling and conservation systems are among our most requested outdoor features.

Therapeutic Specialty Gardens & Biophilic Elements:

Simply put, gardens are the fastest and most cost-effective way to add quantifiable value. Value in contributing to health and well-being, value as a participatory activity center, value as a community gathering place and value in what gardens provide as a multi-sensory experience. At any stage of our lives, access to nature is always better than being cooped up. For senior communities, gardens offer ways for residents to interact with plants and engage in nature-based activities: harvestable vegetable gardens and orchards; butterfly gardens, planted with flowering perennials that attract hummingbirds and beneficial pollinators (avoiding plants that attract bees or stinging insects); and bird gardens, with plants that provide forage and nesting habitats for migrating birds or waterfowl.

For more information on how ELM’s senior housing specialists rehabilitate outdoor spaces for a spectrum of specialized needs, contact President, Bruce Moore Jr. at 203-316-5433.

From the moment we set foot on the landscape, we are stepping on the most biologically diverse material on earth—a living system of earth dwellers: worms, microbes, fungi, as well as insects and other organisms that are essential to both the environment and to landscape health.

When soils are neglected, weathered or overworked, soil health suffers. By boosting nutritional content and improving texture and drainage, we can restore soil’s biodiversity and improve the landscape’s ability to sustain plant health.

Central to this is the need to increase soil carbon, which, in turn, attracts more microbes and becomes a self-nourishing loop. Technically, the complex relationships that exist within this community of organisms is known as the soil food web and similar to other food chains, it’s essential to overall life.

To keep soils healthy, ELM takes a systems-thinking approach to landscape health, where the world beneath our feet is connected to everything above. In practical terms, this means if the soil is sick, the plant doesn’t have much of a chance to beat the odds.

There are 5 basic elements central to all soil systems: microorganisms, minerals, air, water and organic matter. When any one is out of proportion to the other, it compromises the ability of the soil to be an effective growing medium. The process for correcting these problems at their source has many names, but for ELM, our approach falls under the practice of Plant Health Care.

In general, the science behind this approach ensures that we treat the whole landscape system as more than just the sum of its parts. We do this by:

Encouraging biodiversity of plants and trees through better landscape planning
Building healthy topsoil using ground-cover to buffer temperatures and absorb and hold water
Establishing and maintaining healthy root systems
Planting trees with healthy canopies to protect the soil surface
Reducing soil traffic and compaction
Using mulch, compost and increased levels of organic matter
Improving nutrient availability
Regulating air and water, through aeration and advanced irrigation technology
Using Mycorrhizal fungi to increase a plant’s stress tolerance
Reducing pesticide use
Supporting beneficial insects and organisms
Planting essential habitats that increase, support and protect pollinators

To learn more about the benefits of sustainable soil practices or discover how climate-smart best practices are improving your plant and soil health, contact ELM President, Bruce Moore Jr., at 203-316-5433.