BayScapes are environmentally sound landscapes benefiting people, wildlife and the Chesapeake Bay. BayScaping advocates a holistic approach through principles inspired by the relationships found in the natural world.

Water elements attract wildlife to your gardens. Flowering vines such as clematis add drama to a fence or wall. MORE INFO For a more information on how to create container gardens and a list of hardy ground covers, call the Daily Press 1-Line, 757-928-1111, category 4761 or visit www.hrgardening.com. BENEFICIAL PLANT: Foam flower Foam flower — Tiarella cordifolia — grows 6 to 12 inches tall. The evergreen ground cover features heart-shaped leaves and small whitish to pink flowers on a raceme (a long inflorescence with individual flowers borne on short stalks off a larger stalk). Foam flower spreads by division, stolon runners and seeds; it needs well-drained soil. FREE FAX For a free fax of facts about the York Watershed Council and the challenges the watershed faces, call the Daily Press 1-Line, 757-928-1111, category 4766. For a free fax of beneficial plants and a "wildlife audit" listing conditions and opportunities for improvements to your landscape, call 757-928-1111, category 4767. INFORMATION Soil & Water Conservation Districts included in the York River Watershed include Colonial, Culpeper, Hanover-Caroline, Thomas Jefferson, Three Rivers, Tidewater and Tri-County/City. The watershed council’s work is supported by the Center for Coastal Management and Policy at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Chesapeake Bay Local Assistance Department, which administers the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act, and other corporate sponsors. For more information about BayScapes and the York River Watershed, visit www.yorkwatershed.org; call or fax (804) 769-0841; e-mail billy@mpra.org. GET CERTIFIED Use BayScapes principles in your lawn and gardens and have your property receive a special BayScapes certificate. The five principles of BayScapes are: practice conservation landscaping, conserve water, create diversity, use beneficial plants and plan for the long term. To register and learn more about the special BayScapes certificate, visit www.yorkwatershed.org; to register by telephone, call the Tidewater Soil & Water Conservation District office, (804) 693-3562, Ext. 115. Leave your name, address, daytime phone number and e-mail address. Virginia’s BayScapes certificate is sponsored by Dominion Virginia Power and the Virginia Environmental Endowment. Great to get: To get free full-color copies of the homeowner’s guide to designing your property with a helpful list of beneficial plants, call (804) 693-3562, Ext. 115. VISIT DEMO GARDENS BayScapes demonstration gardens can be visited at these locations: Great Bridge Lock Park in Chesapeake, Q-Area Lagoon at the Commander Naval Station in Norfolk, NAS Oceana and Virginia Tech’s Hampton Roads Agricultural Research & Extension Center in Virginia Beach, Heron Lake Community in Virginia Beach, Virginia Power Yorktown Plant, Lake Anna State Park and U.S. Post Office in Herndon.

What is the urban watershed?

The Chesapeake Bay watershed consists of a 64,000-square-mile drainage basin with surface waters that flow into the bay. Forests, fields, farms and wetlands generally describe this watershed. Rarely, however, do its boundaries include urban and metropolitan areas.

While metropolitan communities play an integral role in the health of the Chesapeake Bay, we don't always make that connection as we go about our daily lives. Hundreds, even thousands, of local creeks and streams that feed into the bay's rivers or tributaries are piped under ground, channeled above ground in concrete, directed into stormwater retention ponds, moved under cities through large culverts or fed into deep underground sewers. Others remain open and drain through community parks, large residential complexes and urban subdivisions. Local stream corridors provide essential wildlife habitat as well as much-needed recreational and open space for people.

Together, this network of natural and engineered waterways, along with the land drained by it, defines the urban watershed. Land practices and landscape cover within the urban watershed play an important role in the health of the bay. In the Chesapeake region, landscapes providing plant and wildlife diversity and pollution prevention are called BayScapes because of the beneficial impact they have on the bay.

You can landscape and garden without a yard

City residents of all kinds face a variety of landscape choices. Apartment gardens and landscapes are just as important as those surrounding single-family homes. The simple addition of a potted vine making its way up a wall, adding color and texture to the surface, can be dramatic along an apartment wall. It does not require a lot of effort or expense to greatly improve a small-scale garden area. In doing so, you make your city move livable by adding to the visual aesthetics shared by all.

Small-scale urban landscaping also can be portable. Almost any plant will grow in a container, meaning it can move when you move. If your garden is in containers, you can change its appearance with little effort or money. Container plants can be shuffled around, lowered, raised or repotted for a new look.

An unexpected benefit for urban gardeners is the heat-island phenomenon that extends the gardening season. In the spring, urban areas tend to warm up faster. In fall, they hold their summer heat a little longer. These local site conditions often are referred to as micro-climates. The clever gardener gets a jump on the growing season, enjoying the outside landscape a bit longer before winter arrives.

Gardening does not have to be expensive

No matter where you live, you can participate in many aspects of landscape gardening with a modest budget. Balconies support a host of gardening options — trees and shrubs in containers, vines and bulbs in pots, vegetable plants and herbs in tubs. Compact water gardens and wall gardens also thrive in spaces. As long as you provide adequate sunlight and regular water, you can create a wonderful little garden for yourself as well as a haven for wildlife friends. Think of your garden as a wildlife oasis that you create, providing another link in the restoration of lost or seriously fragmented wildlife habitat in the bay area.

Container gardening is limited only by your imagination. Fanciful potted creations can include an entire patch of containers providing you with beans, peas, root and vine crops, fruit trees and grapes. Container gardening allows you to garden year-round. Plants can come inside when cold weather arrives, and move outdoors when the danger of frost is past. The money you invest in plants and garden tools is repaid many times over with fresh food for your dinner table.

Other inexpensive ideas to consider include: hanging baskets mixed with hanging bird feeders, window boxes containing herbs for kitchen use right outside your window, plant stands that create a privacy wall, and shade gardens nestled beneath an overhang of wooden lattice or a trellis.

Wall gardens are easy to create with hanging plants, some wall accessories, a trellis of vines, ground covers, climbing vegetable plants and maybe a small water spout. All you need is a bare wall.

Wall gardens need little space, they provide privacy and they buffer the area from unwanted views and sounds.   These vertical gardens are easy to organize and inexpensive to create. Done properly, they appear to bring the outdoors into your apartment, giving a cozy feel. Plants in a wall garden, however small, help intercept and trap airborne pollutants, and cool your air during the plants' process of transpiration.

You can choose alternatives for lawn areas

For some people, any size lawn is too much to maintain. Fortunately, there are many alternatives to consider.

Ground covers are an alternative that offer color and texture options in evergreen and deciduous varieties and work well in hard-to-reach areas in your landscape. Once established, they require very little maintenance and have great appeal to the gardener tired of mowing grass.

These champions of the garden world keep soil friable — or loose — and ready to receive and percolate falling rain into the soil. Seasonal blooms and interesting, vibrant fall colors give you an exciting, ever-changing landscape.

Many native ground covers thrive in shady areas, receiving less than ideal light. In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, they adapt to variable weather conditions, including extremes. Under deciduous trees in a woodland shade garden and even on the north or east side of the house, these hardy ground covers feature distinctive leaf shapes and good resistance to pests.

Vegetable gardens do more than replace lawn areas. They provide home-grown produce for your dinner table. Consider intensive vegetable-gardening — rowing vegetables and flowers together in a small space.

In areas close to the house, consider replacing some lawn areas with a water garden. A water element consists of anything that brings water into your landscape: ponds, fountains, barrels of water, a birdbath or even a water lily tub. Splashing water produces a much-needed respite on a hot day for songbirds that find the sounds and cool surface irresistible. A small wooden barrel or even a plastic tub brings life to a colony of water lilies, complete with small fish or maybe a frog or two. Once you see how water attracts wildlife, you find yourself experimenting with several containers to create a wildlife sanctuary right at home.   Even a simple, shallow birdbath entertains apartment residents with reflections and sounds previously unknown on a terrace or balcony.

Hedges are living fences that give you privacy without an artificial structure. Large shrubbery plantings also screen out objectionable views and sounds. Songbirds find living fences and shrub beds enticing homes. Their early-morning chorus from these shrub-based homes rewards your efforts time and time again.

Patios and decks provide another alternative for land previously done in turf grass. These outdoor living rooms are fun and not too difficult to construct or install. Wooden construction and brick-on-sand building techniques slow down surface runoff and increase on-site percolation. Look for do-it-yourself instruction guides and materials at garden and home-improvement stores.

Some gardeners convert their lawn area to trees, replacing an open lawn with the vertical strength of a forest in the making. This option requires careful selection of appropriate trees.

Other gardening opportunities exist beyond your home

Many options exist that can expand gardening activities beyond your residence. City residents can find the base of a street tree a suitable small garden for shade-loving plants, ground covers and even bulbs.  Street trees provide wonderful shade, cool resting spots and also generous amounts of oxygen to help keep our air clean and clear. These tall sentinels help to visually break up the mundane urban skyline, introducing a textural softening to streets and buildings. Trees unite people in a neighborhood by providing a sense of identity, especially when a specific species is planted together to define an area, such as a boulevard.  Get permission in writing from your local government before planting around street trees. Most municipalities also will advise you about the proper care and maintenance of the tree and your plantings.

In some urban communities, innovative forestry programs offer training for local residents, teaching them how to care for street trees. Open and abandoned lots have been completely reforested in some instances.  These patches of forest — however small — provide good sources of oxygen and habitats within an otherwise artificial environment.

Grass strips between the sidewalk and street provide a unique gardening opportunity, assuming that local government regulations do not restrict such activity. Many a flower garden has found its way into these places, adding a splash of color to an otherwise dull street scene. Such municipalities have taken back portions of paved roads and reworked them for pedestrian use. A median strip in the middle of a broad avenue provides another source of color and texture when planted with trees, shrubs and flowers. These BayScapes add a lot to a city's personality.

Many urban areas in the bay region organize programs for local participation, such as community gardens. Generally, tracts of land currently not in use are made available for neighborhood projects such as vegetable gardens. Community gardens reward residents with free produce, healthy exercise, a sense of personal accomplishment and the beauty of a garden where a vacant or abandoned lot once stood. Whether you participate as an individual gardener in an assigned plot or as part of a group project, community gardens bring people together while working toward a common goal.

Neighborhood pocket parks managed by community associations provide sanctuaries from the noise and chaos of the busy street. These wonderful corners offer shade trees, shrubbery beds, flowers and bulbs, as well as a place so sit and enjoy cool, green scenery right in the heart of the city. 

Pocket parks can be connected to larger parks by a common creek or stream, forming greenways enjoyed by cyclists, joggers and birds and other wildlife. 

School and church yards provide still another opportunity for community gardening to add even more green space to the urban setting. Since most of the population growth in the bay region is projected for metropolitan areas — particularly those within a two-hour drive of the bay -— keeping these communities livable and pleasant becomes an increasingly difficult challenge.  Adding to landscape diversity through BayScapes responds to this challenge by: