Sustainable Garden Maintenance & Projects

This capstone unit teaches students to implement sustainable garden care, organic lawn practices, and environmentally responsible pest and disease management. Learners will evaluate high-impact retrofit projects, identify common nonsustainable mistakes and corrective strategies, and develop site-specific plans for special situations in preparation for real-world application or advanced coursework.

Learning Objectives

• analyze common garden pests, diseases, and maintenance issues and select appropriate sustainable or organic management strategies consistent with integrated pest management principles
• apply organic lawn care and sustainable maintenance techniques by developing a seasonal maintenance plan that reduces water, synthetic fertilizer, and pesticide inputs and documents projected environmental and cost outcomes
• demonstrate the ability to design and justify at least three high-impact sustainable landscaping projects by producing proposals that include goals, materials, implementation steps, and basic cost-benefit or ecosystem-service analyses
• evaluate common nonsustainable landscaping mistakes and special-site constraints and produce corrective action plans or alternative designs for at least two distinct site scenarios