Been Stoned: A Diatribe

When recently thinking about what stones to use for our dry drainage creek—for which I wanted a natural look—I sought out rocks that I thought looked of the place. I could’ve picked New Mexico River Rock, Mexican Beach Pebbles, Ozark “Medium,” or Colorado Flat Cobble.

All beautiful in their own right, but from places so far away.

Instead, I chose Llano River Cobbles, purchased from Austin Landscape Supplies (which strangely, is in Georgetown). I discovered that the cobbles were quarried by Hill Country Aggregates, located about 70 miles west-northwest of Austin near Lake Buchanan. It's not super close and the ecosystem is definitely not blackland prairie, but I think the rocks will make a nice local-ish looking stream after everything is landscaped.

This all got me thinking about where the stones that we use for our gardens come from? How far away did they travel? How much gas did it take? How many PPM of carbon monoxide were thrown into the air during harvesting and transport? How much of an ecosystem was destroyed so that I could have my little drainage creek?

These questions, of course, are all related to the concept of "sustainable gardening." I suppose I define that loosely as using minimal resources and giving equal--if not more--back to the ecosystem. To me, sustainable implies some sort of equality (no "greater thans" or "less thans"). But sustainable, by definition, involves a human element. Without human intervention in any way, the garden wouldn't be a garden at all; it would be a natural area. Arguably, it is impossible to find ANY place that humans have not intervened. Stephen Hopper comments in in this fascinating article that the entire Earth is our garden (put that in your pipe and smoke it).

Anyway, it might be hard to swallow, but the minute we decide to put in hardscape, we’ve damaged an environment elsewhere to make our own more pleasant to the eye. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. Stone quarries (unless they are turned into resplendent gardens a la Butchart Gardens in British Columbia) are gaping wounds in the earth. Forests and prairies and wetlands are leveled and dug out. Creeks and rivers are harvested. Ecosystems are disrupted or destroyed.

There are pollution and petroleum costs of sculpting it, carting it and transporting it to its final destination. This is the case whether its true stone or bricks, cement or plastic.

Man, it can be overwhelming.

Some help may come by way of the future-looking, positive folks at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center with the Sustainable Sites Initiative. This will result in some guidelines for landscape architects to stay "green," from water use to stone versus brick, but I'm sure many of the those rules can trickle down to us smaller gardeners. In the end, they are hoping for a system that will be like LEED certification or integrated into LEED certification. It’s a step in the right direction, but I'm afraid it still isn't a recipe for guilt-free gardening.

In then meantime, I try not to wring my hands too much over the decisions I make, and I justify the environmental expense of those decisions by believing that I am doing something better for this patch of earth where I’ve given my self the status of manager (and sometimes "Employee of the Month"). I may be adding stone that wasn’t here and taking it away from its home, but perhaps by planting more natives, providing food and shelter for wild critters passing through the city, and getting rid of lawn, I’m doing something right, something sustainable.