For the previous eight years, Jeff Lorenz and his workforce at Refugia, a panorama design-build agency, have been a part of a quiet revolution within the Philadelphia suburbs. Little by little, they’re remodeling yards, changing conventional—and ecologically sterile—lawns with vibrant native gardens that teem with pollinators, deal with climate extremes with ease, and flaunt their attractiveness 4 seasons of the yr.
“We need to restore nature to neighborhoods by recreating the habitat that has been stripped out of most of our city and suburban yards,” Lorenz says. Working with a local plant palette from the mid-Atlantic area, in addition to some prairie species and varieties from southern locales, they design dynamic landscapes which might be planted densely to create a lush net of vegetation, which cuts down on weeds. Since native vegetation are tailored to the area, they don’t require a lot intervention to thrive. They’re additionally resilient, weathering drought (“They could go dormant for a bit, however they pop proper again up”) and deluges brought on by tremendous storms (“It was unbelievable how they soaked up water like a sponge and mitigated flooding, in contrast to at neighboring properties”). “We wish to say we put our vegetation to work,” Lorenz says.
Because of this, pollinators flock to their gardens. “Inside minutes of taking vegetation out for planting, you’ll see bugs buzzing across the goldenrod,” says Lorenz. And that’s the purpose. “We known as our firm Refugia as a result of that’s what we would like our landscapes to be—refuges for our shoppers and for the wildlife throughout us.”
Beneath, we tour two of their hardworking landscapes.
Newton Sq., PA
