Townhouse Landscape Design Eight professional tips for designing in small spaces

When designing a townhouse landscape, thoughtful use of space is key. Townhouses often have a terraced patio to enjoy, but limited room for in-the-ground landscaping.

Yet award-winning landscape designer Robert Welsch makes the point that with good design, even a small area can provide a welcoming respite from the outside world. Here, he shares eight strategies for making the most of a small townhouse garden.

Dos:

• Do design with the inside in mind. In a townhouse, most of the garden is easily seen from the windows. Set the scene by considering the view from often-used spots like the kitchen window, your favorite chair or the bedroom, and design focal areas with these views in mind.
• Do repeat a simple plant palette. "Green is your friend," says Welsch. By focusing on repeated plantings of lush foliage-interest plants, he elongates the garden and creates a feeling of spaciousness and flow.
• Do use a garden fountain as a focal point. Not only are they soothing to look at, but the trickling sound of the water distracts from the noises of the city. Welsch suggests making it low-maintenance by adding an irrigation line to automatically refill it every time your garden is watered.
• Do plan built-in storage places for garden tools and accessories like hoses. "A small space can get junked up easily," explains Welsch. With careful design, benches, tables and garden walls have potential to do double-duty as attractive storage areas.

Don'ts:

• Don't be afraid to refresh your pots as often as quarterly to keep plantings looking exquisite. Making the most of a small space means there's no room for plants to have an "off" season.
• Don't select different styles of pots. Instead, "use different sizes of the same style of container," suggests Welsch. A simple décor scheme creates an elegant feeling of continuity in the landscape.
• Don't choose heavy concrete or terra cotta planters for your terrace. Resin pots are a great choice for a townhouse garden because they're lightweight and suitable for leaving outdoors year-round.
• Don't use too many colors. A townhouse landscape can quickly feel cluttered with too many flower colors or décor elements. Let your personality shine with fabric and plant selections, but be creative within a limited color palette.

New Native Grass Mix Developed by Austin's Wildflower Center

Austin's Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has developed a mixture of native grass species that works well in dry regions of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona.

The grass mix, named HABITURF™, contains these grasses native to the Southwest: Buffalograss Bouteloua dactyloides, blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) and curly-mesquite (Hilaria belangeri and depending on the source: Texas grama (Bouteloua rigidiseta,) hairy Grama (Bouteloua hirsuta), poverty dropseed (Sporobolus vaginiflorus). Here are instructions for establishing a native lawn for these climates.

“We created a lawn that needs less mowing and keeps weeds out better than a common American lawn option,” said Dr. Mark Simmons, director of the center’s Ecosystem Design Group. Simmons led the study comparing common Bermudagrass to the seven native grasses that will be published online this week in the journal Ecological Engineering.

The traditional turfgrass and the native grasses responded the same to mowing once or twice a month, to two watering regimens and to the equivalent of foot traffic. However, the turf of seven native grasses produced a carpet that was 30 percent thicker in early spring than the Bermuda turf. As temperatures climbed into mid-summer and all the lawns thinned, the mixed native turfgrass still stayed 20 percent thicker than Bermuda.

Although Buffalograss also retained its lushness into summer, the mixed native turfgrass beat both single species (monoculture) turfgrasses in weed resistance. When dandelion seeds were added by hand, those plots grew half as many dandelions as the Buffalograss or Bermudagrass plots.

To see if the mixed native turfgrass would also outperform the others under conditions such as very light watering, Simmons and his colleagues will conduct the next research phase later this year. The answer under some conditions will likely be a yes because the multiple species in natural grasslands are thought to allow them to respond better to different conditions over time.

Simmons and colleagues used funding from Walmart to establish multiple plots of grasses in an open field at the center. They intend to develop other mixes for other ecological and regional situations.