Do landscape companies really need to use such harsh chemicals against pests like mosquitoes and ticks? Are the chemicals really that harsh anyways? What if the real solution was more about balance than battle? How would that impact our planet, landscape projects and customer satisfaction?
Join me on today's podcast as I talk with Lora and Jay Archer from Green Jay Landscape Design in New York, who believe that the secret to a successful landscape project lies in its ecosystem. I had a blast interviewing them and making some videos for their business, and they stayed after to do this podcast where they share how ecological landscaping and restoration can naturally curb pests and restore balance, and also how making small changes in your approach to landscaping can have a big impact on your overall environmental footprint. We'll discuss how improving soil biology can make landscapes more resilient and reduce maintenance challenges, which is a key advantage in competitive bids and client satisfaction.
Jay Archer [00:01:08]:
I studied design and horticulture in the New York Botanical Gardens. So I started eliminating pesticides because pesticides were simply not working. They were very inefficient and very expensive.
Jack Jostes [00:01:18]:
Jay and Lora share some perspectives that I haven't heard very much in the landscape industry, and frankly, I know that a lot of people are going to disagree with them, and that's fine. I want to hear from you. What do you think? Do you like what they have to say? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Post a comment on our YouTube channel, and I look forward to hearing your comments after you listen to today's episode of The Landscapers Guide.
All right, everyone, we are in the Ramblin Jackson studio in Lyons, Colorado. Just finished a shoot with Green Jay Landscape Design, and I'm excited to have Jay and Lora here. Really enjoyed working with you guys, and I wanted to share on the podcast, Jay, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and what is ecological landscaping.
02:03 - What is Ecological Landscaping? An Overview with Jay Archer
Jay Archer [00:02:03]:
Yeah. So, I'm Jay Archer, and basically, ecological landscaping is a logical extension of what we call ecological restoration. So, ecological restoration is to mimic natural environments. And if you look at the Society for Ecological Restoration, they're basically reclaiming mining areas or ski slopes or other damaged environments and returning it to a somewhat more natural landscape environment. The idea is to recreate what we disturbed. This is an imperfect science. What we do in ecological landscaping is we make assumptions that the landscape has been disturbed over and over again over the course of on the east coast 400 years and out here still over course of time. And we're looking to restore the ecological function of the land.
03:06 - Restoring Ecological Function: The Importance of Soil Biology
Jay Archer [00:03:06]:
So that means from the soil biology that feeds the plants, that creates the healthy microbes that inhabit our bodies through the biofilm that comes from the plants. All our food and medicine historically came from plants. Now it's so removed from the original situation where the plants grew organically or somewhat naturally. Now things are synthetically grown with synthetic fertilizers. All of this has really corrupted the biological and ecological function of the landscape. You would think in the landscape industry, we potentially do the most good in that we plant plants, and we're not just doing hardscaping, although there's nothing wrong with that. But most landscaping really doesn't benefit the immediate habitat for wildlife or human beings, for that matter, but doesn't produce the biology necessary for our immune systems. Did we learn nothing from COVID? We were all walking around as bacterial factories that we were afraid to touch and exchange biology with each other.
Jay Archer [00:04:26]:
From the beginning of time, everything, man, animals, plants, has been exchanging biology. So at some point, where did it get to be a toxic situation where now we're afraid to be near other human beings, let alone the environment. So by restoring the basic ecological function of a given environment, we can necessarily improve our human health and restore our immune system. So this is what our goal is, in fact.
Jack Jostes [00:05:03]:
What are some of the practical implications of that? And how are your landscape designs different from other landscape companies in the area?
05:13 - The Significance of Plant Selection in Ecological Landscaping
Jay Archer [00:05:13]:
Right. So we're looking at what the plants do. So it's interesting, if we look back in time a little bit at ethnobotany, right? So, which means what is the botanical uses for plants? Many of the plants that came from Europe and Asia that we now call exotic or ornamental plants in the landscape trade actually had medicinal values. Okay. If they weren't for food like grapes or apples or pears, most of our food is not native to this country. We didn't eat. We don't eat porpoise, though. That's a native fruit.
Jay Archer [00:05:48]:
That's fine. Kiwi is kind of an exotic fruit. If you just think about where our food comes from and how many transmigrations it has to pass through to get to us, that's another once removed from the original circumstance of growing your own food. So a lot of plants came here by my great grandfather or something because they had medicinal value and they used in the garden, and then they were used in cooking herbs. Great example, right? But the native plants that grow in each one of our ecosystems, or what we call our echo regions, they have a very particular function, so they sequester carbon, which is critical, and they also help with conservation, water conservation, in particular. So you look historically in the west, you have a lot of plants that are adapted to a very arid environment because water is scarce. So they have root systems that are developed to do that. If we go out to California and to Scripps, you'll see the Torrey pines, and the Torrey pines put down roots 200ft in the ground to absorb the water.
07:08 - Adapting Landscapes to Climate Challenges and Enhancing Biodiversity
Jay Archer [00:07:08]:
Although now they're being challenged because of the amount of sea spray and the amount of storms that are coming and that are damaging their present environment, because they were never really meant to be inundated with salt spray. So things are also changing. So we're creating environments that are novel environments. We're not turning back the clock to pre Columbus and figure out what was there. We don't exactly know what was there, but what we need is we need plants that are going to withstand heat and drought and flooding, and they're going to produce biology for all God's creatures, not just human beings, because we rely on other life organisms, we rely on pollinators.
07:54 - The Critical Role of Pollinators in Our Ecosystems
Jack Jostes [00:07:54]:
Right?
Jay Archer [00:07:55]:
So they take now bees from Texas and they bring them to California to pollinate the pear trees, other fruit. So these are part of the examples of.
Lora Archer [00:08:06]:
So just to go back to a little bit, to Jack's question, so he was saying, how would our landscape designs be different than other traditional landscape designs that are taking place, let's just say in our environment, because I know it's hard to answer that question.
Jay Archer [00:08:21]:
How do they work?
Jack Jostes [00:08:22]:
Well, it sounds like it's largely around plant selection and how those plants exist in the space and what they contribute back to the environment.
Jay Archer [00:08:32]:
Well, that's certainly true, but also it's about the actual soil conditions. So if the soil conditions are compromised or degraded or basically contaminated, they're not going to provide the ecosystem services that we require in ecological landscaping. So first, we may need to remediate the soil. So we start with that. But from an appearance standpoint, we want a lot of flowering plants. They may not all be native, but they will all be toxic free. Was the minute we start to monkey with biologically selection and playing God is where we have problems in landscaping. And this is true in traditional landscaping, which I spent most of my life in.
09:20 - How Green Jay's Landscape Designs Stand Out
Jack Jostes [00:09:20]:
Yeah, tell us a little bit about some of your background and some of the early phases of your career that led you to what you're doing now.
Jay Archer [00:09:27]:
I wanted to be outside. I wanted to play outside in the fields of all art. So I took animal tracking with Tom Brown Jr. And when you take animal tracking, you take survival skills, indigenous Native American survival skills. While you do that, you also study ethnobotany and the uses of plants. But the thing that changed my life at Tom Brown's tracker school was the nature awareness lectures when Tom made us aware of what nature is and the beauty of the way nature works. From there, I didn't go to college at that point and I just took a job working in the lawn care business. I wound up being a turf agronomist for Lawn Doctor and a sales manager.
Jay Archer [00:10:17]:
I had 5,000 clients and if you had a problem you got to see me. So I would come and solve your problem. Mostly it was therapy. So people had problems, had nothing to do with the lawn. It was just that. But I realized and I started studying at New York Botanical Gardens and then I was looking at 5,000 beautiful landscapes in Connecticut and New York. So I got exposed to everybody's great work in the East Coast. It was designing and building landscapes at the same time I was working for the Nature Conservancy as a naturalist as a result of my work with Tom Brown Jr. So I had working two sides. I was a pesticide guy over here and I was working in the nature preserve over here. So I tried to reconcile those things. So I studied design and horticulture in New York Botanical Gardens. Started my own company. Started experimenting with true organics. Started eliminating pesticides from the environment starting to look at how things worked.
11:18 - Transitioning to Organic Landscaping for Economic and Environmental Benefits
Jay Archer [00:11:18]:
Part of this was an economic concern because pesticides were simply not working. They were very inefficient and very expensive. So we'd eliminate one pest, another pest would pop up and then we'd eliminate a fungus and a disease and something else would pop up. Or as we never got to the root of the problem we were treating the symptoms and spending a lot of money and resources doing that. So from a sheer economic motive we got into the organic side of the business. At the same time I realized that my education was lacking. So I went to the Center for Urban Ecology and Rutgers University and studied for several years with USDA and NRCs which is all the big scientists working in wetlands. I went back to New York Botanical Gardens and I taught eleven courses for seven years including ecological restoration, wetland restoration and everything else simply because there was no one else who was expert in the field.
Jay Archer [00:12:16]:
So if I'm the expert in the field, we're all in trouble. I often say, right. But by experience, by learning, by trial and by paying very close attention to all our other colleagues who are working in the field and we sharing information like we share information here, we've built some tools that enable us to look at any given landscape. I've never seen a landscape we can't improve aesthetically, from the visual beauty aspect to the biological health. Over 35% of our clients are in the medical profession now and work for big pharma, and another five or 10% are their patients. So that ought to tell you something about the state of the environment.
13:02 - The Growing Awareness and Demand for Ecological Landscaping
Jack Jostes [00:13:02]:
I'm curious, do people know that they want what you do? Are they even aware that ecological landscaping is available, or do you need to educate them about it? Because your photos are gorgeous, right? Your website looks good. You're well reviewed, so people probably find you, and they're like, I like the look of this. How often do they know what you're doing?
Jay Archer [00:13:27]:
Right? So now it's very specific because we talk about this in our blogs and everything. Not that everybody reads all 400 blogs, but you're absolutely right. People are attracted to the images of nature. We create naturalistic looking, beautiful landscapes. They necessarily get the ecological function, whether they want that or not. They may be looking simply for the rewilding effect of more natural, unmanicured effect. It's just simply emotional response to a visual landscape. When I started ecological landscaping and when I started teaching, it didn't even come up in conversation too often. People were attracted again to the appearance of what we were doing, and they didn’t necessarily got the ecological part.
Jay Archer [00:14:16]:
Now we market it and educate it directly. I spend part of my time as an environmental educator in children, adults mostly, to other landscape professionals. We have a program called Landscapes for Better Living where I've been up and down the East Coast continually presenting to nature. Well, nature preserves as well, but also nursery associations and other design groups and talking about the values of ecological landscaping. So yet it's both of those things. We need to market it. We need to educate people. We need to demonstrate that this isn't just native plants who may look like weeds.
Jay Archer [00:14:57]:
We're creating beautiful, novel landscapes that are, in fact, private nature preserves. They're biospheres. They're sanctuaries. Philosophically, we believe that this. And you're a great example here, where you live. You live here, boys. This is your garden of Eden. We no longer believe culturally that we should work our whole lives for the great hereafter.
Jay Archer [00:15:28]:
I fundamentally believe, and we believe that this is our garden.This is our paradise on earth, so we should treat it like that. We should respect it, we should put our resources into it. I'm always amazed that people are reluctant to spend money on making the living room, the one room in their home which is alive, more productive, because all the building material in the world may be biodegradable, whatever. This is not fostering human life in terms of biologically, it serves a function, and that's all fine, but only now we're finding out how dangerous silica and cement is, how plastic is inundated and permeated every aspect of our world. These are things that are incorporated into our bodies, so we have to compensate for that. So to compensate for that, it's like years ago, you didn't drink water out of a bottle, right? And Whole Foods. There was no Whole Foods when I was growing up.
16:28 - Jay’s Philosophy Behind Treating Your Landscape as a Paradise
Jay Archer [00:16:28]:
Didn't think of organic food. We thought all food was organic. Well, we were wrong, right? Fundamentally, that's where we are now in the landscape. People think their landscape is either benign or serving some healthy function. They're wrong. Most of the time. It's not. It can be improved.
Jay Archer [00:16:48]:
It can be improved by not feeding your trees, letting them be hungry, because they need to fix nitrogen from the air and put carbon into the ground. The more we feed our landscapes, the more we starve the planet of the carbon that's saturating our atmosphere. So we need to think about how to make things work. We can make things beautiful. We can make things work, but we have to be thoughtful about it, and we have to put some money into it. We have to put some resources. If we take a walk in an average nature preserve in the east, it's mostly a nursery for dying trees. It's like an old age home.
Jay Archer [00:17:28]:
It's a nursing home for trees. Because humans used to live there, we lost 95% of the indigenous population in this country from disease, not warfare, not just killing a buffalo and not exterminating the indians directly, although we did that, too. But it was really disease that wiped out Central America and North America. Of all the people that used to be the gardeners and the stewards of the land, they lived here, and they thinned the trees. They used fire. They used fire. They lived through extremes of weather and temperature and climate change.
Jay Archer [00:18:06]:
All of this happened, but these people lived with the primitive technology, with an ultimate respect and care and commitment to the land. They talked about the land like it was their family, the turtle clan and the coyotes and the ravens. These all revered spiritual elements of their life because they felt in touch with the land. So one of the things, the advantages of ecological landscaping is we don't just talk about forest bathing and grounding and earthing and all these abstract things, which are perfectly okay, that's all fine, but we get in touch with it. The way you benefit from our landscapes is not by looking at them, but touching them and getting that biology on your body and inhaling it and breathing it in and all of that unpolluted, untoxic, rich microbes and biology, it's incorporated into your physical being, and this also helps your mental and your spiritual life. So that's it in a nutshell.
19:21 - Discussing Green Jay's Recruiting Video and Its Message
Jack Jostes [00:19:21]:
Well, thank you, Jay. I hope to come and see one of your landscapes. I've got to come and experience it. Lora, so you shot the recruiting video. I wanted to pull up the script. So I love this script. I think you guys collaborated on it. So you guys collaborate on it.
Jack Jostes [00:19:36]:
You went through our recruiting course, right? And you actually completed it.
Lora Archer [00:19:40]:
Yes.
Jack Jostes [00:19:41]:
So thank you for doing that.
Lora Archer [00:19:42]:
Yeah. I'm so glad also that you did the way that you speak through it and that I could also accelerate it where I needed to to get through it. And it was really great. It was great watching you. What was funny was, of course, meeting you for the first time the other day in person. And it is so great to meet you in person. But I had seen so many videos of you that I felt very much like I knew you when I saw you.
Jack Jostes [00:20:06]:
Well, that's the cool thing about video, is once you make it and people watch it and listen to you, it really differentiates you from people who don't use video.
Jay Archer [00:20:14]:
Right.
Jack Jostes [00:20:15]:
So I'm excited to talk to you in a year after you've used it. One of the things, we did some videos for customer journey, so people understand what happens, because sometimes there's months go by from the time that they sign the proposal, design is done, but installation could be two months. So we've got a video. Right. Now we're keeping the client aware of the timeline. You said something in the. And you just touched on this. I was curious, what does it mean to you? So, in the recruiting video, you said, "this highly rewarding work enables us to contribute to the greater good of nurturing nature while we feed and satisfy our body and soul with physical, mental, and even spiritual enrichment."
Jack Jostes [00:21:03]:
I was curious, what does spiritual enrichment mean to you? And if you want to add something, too, you kind of touched on it.
21:03 - Discussing Green Jay's Recruiting Video and Its Message
Lora Archer [00:21:12]:
The best thing I can say is we were here yesterday, and I'm trying to just think right now. It was just yesterday, but yesterday we were kind of just reviewing everything that we were going to speak. We were looking at the drafts, we were making edits, and Jay wasn't feeling that great. And we had the travel and everything, and we went out this morning in nature and to us, what's the perfect example of going to a waterfall in the Rockies with all greens, boulder falls with all the evergreens and snow all around? And Jay and I were just so happy. We were so happy. And we just were like, oh, my God, it's just so beautiful.
Jay Archer [00:22:00]:
It's like going to church. It's literally like going to church. We used to feel about music like that. We're going to a concert.
Lora Archer [00:22:07]:
It's like going to church.
Jay Archer [00:22:09]:
Not that we're worshiping.
Lora Archer [00:22:10]:
Right. So I just think it distressed automatically you're in touch with the basics of nature, and that is really a little bit of a spiritual thing.
Jack Jostes [00:22:21]:
I believe it. I love going hiking, and I go hunting and I go deep into the woods, and you're surrounded by it, and it is a spiritual experience. But for you to say that that's a part of the benefit of working here, that's a very serious statement. I think it is. Do your people talk to you about this? So where did that come from? How did that end up in the script?
Lora Archer [00:22:47]:
Well, one of the things, and we haven't done this yet, but we've thought we really should showcase what our people do when they're not working, because all of them. Catherine is always in nature. Rock climbing, going down the Colorado River, you know. Unbelievable. She's in Wyoming. Alessandro just came out west. He was in Utah, and he was visiting all the national parks, going hiking. Uzial is always going.
Lora Archer [00:23:22]:
Just came back from Puerto Rico, was also in nature. Right. And our crew, we actually, after doing the recruiting course and you had videoed people who were not you. I'm sorry, but, like, you had companies.
Jack Jostes [00:23:40]:
That video interviewed some of the employees.
Lora Archer [00:23:43]:
Right. So what we did is we did a couple of interviews with our men just to kind of test that out. And it was great because they will always say how much they love being on beautiful properties, being in nature every day. They really love that.
Jay Archer [00:23:59]:
And it's quiet and we're surrounded by birds. We could hear the birds. We don't hear mowers. We don't hear blowers. We don't create. You asked me about the gas and oil thing. We create landscapes mostly without gas, oil and electric.
Jack Jostes [00:24:13]:
I like that. You qualify mostly.
Jay Archer [00:24:15]:
Right.
Jack Jostes [00:24:15]:
Because it's impossible. It's impossible.
Jay Archer [00:24:19]:
Doesn't mean you should not attempt to do that as much as possible.
Jack Jostes [00:24:22]:
I just think some people are like, we're going to do it all without electricity at all. And it's like, are you really? And we're not. But you can reduce some of what that meant to you. I asked over dinner, and that meant these aren't big lawns that are going to need to be mowed.
Jay Archer [00:24:41]:
Right, which is the number one critical thing. That's the biggest resource sucking thing. If you don't have children playing on the lawn, you have to ask yourself, what purpose is it? And can you have a field or can you mow it monthly? No mow May was like an experiment that kind of fired people's imagination. Totally impractical. Doesn't really work to start mowing it after you let it grow for a month now you got twice as much cleanup. Okay. But it got people thinking about, maybe I don't need the lawn since nobody's walking on it, nobody's playing on it. It's sucking a lot of resources.
25:16 - The Challenge of Excessive Lawn Watering and the Concept of No-Mow May
Jay Archer [00:25:16]:
Number one is water. Can we live in a world that continues to use this much water in the United States to grow the biggest crop you can't eat? But to get back to your more interesting question, you're talking about nature and the spiritual aspect. My limited time I worked with children, and Lora even helped me a little bit. We'd take children out on nature walks and nature center that we were working with. And what I did fundamentally take away from that experience was that to get in touch with our own nature, we need to get in touch with nature. So we need to get in touch with outside, hug the trees, smell the flowers, roll in the ground, not be afraid of bugs. We had a landscape of fear. What happened to us that we are afraid of our own landscape, that we want to obliterate mosquitoes and ticks at our own peril because we don't manage to kill the mosquitoes and ticks.
26:19 - Addressing the Landscape of Fear: Embracing Nature Rather Than Eradicating Pests
Jay Archer [00:26:19]:
It's the most ineffective but money making thing that landscapers do. So instead of the vector of killing the vector, we're killing the beneficial insects that we don't intend to kill. We bypass any research. There's no money in that.
Lora Archer [00:26:34]:
Yeah, but Jay, the thing is, when you say if you have a habitat that's out of balance, you are going to have a lot of mosquitoes or a lot of ticks. So the thing is, you understand why the businesses do what they do because they are out of balance. The thing is holistically fix the issue. Don't fix the thing that you have so many mosquitoes or so many ticks.
Jack Jostes [00:26:59]:
Well, I'm sure there are a lot of people who will have comments, comment on this video. If you disagree or you have a question, I want to hear it. I've got to go coach a soccer practice. And you guys got to take a drive up to Estes Park so we could continue talking. I hope we get to do it again. Thanks for coming on to Lyons and for working with me, and I really admire your perspective. It was great to learn from you. And where can people watching or listening if they want to learn more or network with you, what's a good way to do that?
27:35 - How to Learn More and Connect with Green Jay Landscape Design
Lora Archer [00:27:35]:
Greenjaylandscapedesign.com that's right.
Jay Archer [00:27:39]:
Our blogs, our Instagram, they're all on the website.
Lora Archer [00:27:46]:
Have a contact page on the website.
Jay Archer [00:27:48]:
But we're very interested in working with other people. And it's a brand new world. We're explorers and brand new walls as well..
Jack Jostes [00:27:57]:
You are.. And you also do a lot of speaking, so keep an eye out for Jay Archer from Green Jay Landscape Design. I'm Jack Jostes. You've been listening to The Landscaper's Guide Podcast. Thank you. Make sure you subscribe at landscapersguide.com/podcast and we'll look forward to talking to you next week.
Show Notes:
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Check out Green Jay Landscape Design: https://greenjaylandscapedesign.com