4 Landscape Design Strategies For Those Suffering With Pollen Allergies

If you're like many homeowners who experience seasonal allergies, you're probably reluctant to spend too much of your time, energy, and money on cultivating a lovely landscape — after all, plants depend on pollen in order to propagate, making it very difficult to create an allergen-free outdoor living space. Fortunately, there are plant choices and landscape design strategies that will minimize your exposure to pollen in your yard. Here's what you need to know about cultivating an lawn and garden area that will allow you to enjoy spending time in your yard without making your allergies worse. 

Limit Ornamental Grasses

Ornamental grasses can provide your outdoor living space with beautiful accents, but unfortunately, grass pollen packs a powerful punch for those affected by allergies. Part of the reason for this is that grass pollen is windborne rather than spread via pollinators such as insects and birds, and the other reason is that grass produces large amounts of pollen compared to other types of vegetation. Lawn grasses are all right because you'll be keeping them short enough so that they won't go to seed.

Choose Flowering Plants With Tubular Shapes 

Flowers with tubular shapes are designed so that pollinators such as hummingbirds can access the pollen using their long beaks. Since this pollen doesn't depend on wind to spread, it won't be airborne in your outdoor living space. As an added bonus, you'll attract hummingbirds to your yard. Examples of plants with tubular flower shapes include fuchsias, snapdragons, petunias, lobellia, and daffodils.

Choose Plants With Colorful Flowers

Flowers come in a variety of beautiful colors for a reason — bright colors serve as signals to pollinators that flowers are open for business. Since flowers with bright colors depend on pollinators for procreation purposes, their pollen won't be wafting on the wind in the same manner as their paler counterparts. 

Keep Weeds Down

Many seasonal allergies are actually caused by weeds rather than by flowering plants used in landscaping. This is because weeds put forth large amounts of airborne pollen in an attempt to procreate as widely as possible, and their flowering seasons tend to last right up until the beginning of winter. In mild climates, many varieties of weeds bloom all year round. 

A landscape design service can help you craft a customized plan for a beautiful outdoor living space that won't activate your allergy response every time you step outside.   


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