Invasive Plant Management
Identifying and effectively treating these non-desirable plants requires a broad knowledge of native and non-native plant species, as well as the various mechanical, organic, and chemical treatments. Left unchecked, the most well-planned landscapes can be overrun with these undesirable plants that lack any of the various benefits that our natives provide to other indeginious plants and wildlife. EcoSense specializes in invasive management and works with various local partners to track their spread across the Tucson basin.
Cannabis and Medicinal Gardens
Proposition 207 allows adults in Arizona to grow cannabis in their backyard. Ecosense can provide you with everything you need for a safe and successful garden, including legally compliant custom enclosures. But why stop with just one type of plant medicine? We can also recommend and/or provide companion plants for smoke blends, ceremonial use, or medicinal teas.
BioGravel
BioGravel is our custom solution for your site that integrates nutrients, decomposed granite, and seedbanks to imitate natural desert soil surfaces. The result is a custom ground cover that weathers in to provide a unified visual look while also creating the important subsurface conditions necessary for healthy plant growth and development.
Outdoor Showers
Don’t just bring the shower water out into your garden oasis, bring the whole shower! Our clients love their outdoor showers (what’s more natural than being naked outside?), and shower water runoff creates an oasis-like microclimate that you can enjoy throughout the year. We offer a range of aesthetic designs and prices, including solar hot water showers.
Functional Art
Outdoor Art can be a pleasure to look at, but it can also play an active role in the function of your landscape. Our friend and colleague Greg Corman creates native bee habitats, sculptural perches for birds, and other innovative and handsome art work to complement any landscape. We also enjoy working with local artists to develop unique container plantings and terra-cotta ollas that can be utilized in place of irrigation systems.
Greywater Use
One of the most accessible ways to reuse water from your home in the landscape is laundry greywater. A “Laundry-to-Landscape” system utilizes the drain pump from your laundry machine to distribute water to multiple adjustable emitters strategically placed throughout your landscape. For a typical household, it can be possible to grow water-intensive trees like citrus without resorting to irrigating with drinking water.
Did you know there is a rebate of half-costs up to $500 for greywater systems?
Habitat Water Features
We select boulders with small, natural depressions that are filled by connecting to a simple irrigation system, mimicking naturally occurring “water pockets” in the desert. The small pulse of water is sufficient to attract birds and lizards but small enough to evaporate quickly, preventing mosquito breeding. It's a perfect focal point to pair with a pollinator garden planted with native plants.
Food Production
Whether your food-production goals include edible native plants in the landscape, kitchen herb gardens, or large-scale gardening and fruit trees, we can help you identify water resources and estimate plant demands to create a “water budget” to develop food production that is entirely supplied by rainwater and greywater and that doesn’t require irrigating with municipal drinking water.
Composting Toilets
Toilets typically comprise about 40 percent of total household water usage, which can make transitioning to a composting toilet a huge water-saver. They are odor-free, require minimal maintenance, and also annually produce about 14 pounds of composted fertilizer that has been tested as safe to use in vegetable gardens—definitely a far cry from the forest service pit toilets of yore.
Rainwater for Domestic Supply
Along with rising water rates, we also face very uncertain supply issues. If you decide to install active rainwater storage for your landscape, we can help you plan the siting, phasing, and construction details of your storage system so that you have the option of providing for indoor water needs in the future.
Or—if you are ready to take your home to the next level in terms of sustainability by “going off the water grid”—ask us how!
Other Services
