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Cob
Building Tutorial
Chapter 14: Landscaping
 While it’s entirely possible to finish your cob home
and then sod the yard around it, I prefer to go another route. The
organic look, feel and shape of a cob home allows it to blend in more
naturally with the nature that surrounds it. So to then add a manicured
lawn to a cob home seems to me to be defeating the purpose. I prefer
instead to use native plants around a cob home, leaving the landscape
around the outside with a more ‘wild’ feel.
If you’re planning on doing some landscaping, remember that a cob home
takes full advantage of the natural landscape. Part of doing so is to
actually use the outdoors as living space. While most regions around the
world won’t have outdoor living space that is usable 365 days a year,
you can take advantage of the months you do have available for outdoor
living by installing courtyards, benches, picnic areas or garden spaces.
One trend that is big even in stick-built homes is the outdoor kitchen.
Such a kitchen is easy to build using cob. You can build your own cob
oven, then build benches, garden walls, etc. to define your kitchen
space.
 Since cob itself isn’t entirely waterproof, you’ll have to finish it
with some sort of plaster for your outdoor garden walls and benches. For
the walls, you should also add a ‘mini-roof’ of some sort of material
that can direct the rain water away from the top part of the wall. One
look I really like for this is to make a small ‘roof’ of cedar shakes
(shingles). Just bury a plank vertically in the top of the cob, and nail
the cedar shakes to the plank, overlapping them as you go. The finished
product not only protects the wall from rain, but also adds a down-home
look to your garden area.
When planning your landscaping, study the look and feel of the
surrounding terrain. Notice how your home fits in with the surrounding
flora and fauna, and try to design your landscaping accordingly. Make it
feel natural. Trust your instincts. If something doesn’t work out, you
can always change it later. It doesn’t have to be perfect the first time
out. Think of it more as a process rather than a destination and you’ll
have a lot more patience with yourself and with the work.
 I would suggest that if you plan to do a lot of landscaping, you should
look into organic gardening. In keeping with cob building’s theme of
protecting the environment and caring for the Earth, organic gardening
and landscaping allows you to work with nature instead of against it by
not introducing toxic chemicals or unsustainable practices into the
environment.
The past century or so of gardening and farming in the United States and
the world has relied heavily on the use of pesticides. This seemed like
a good idea at the time, but we are discovering that this idea isn’t as
great as it once seemed. Garden pests evolve, developing new strains
that are immune to pesticides. Crop loss due to insects has doubled
since 1945. As insects become more resistant, more pesticides must be
used to have the same effect. This means that the insects get stronger,
requiring even more pesticides the next season, and so on in a
snowballing effect.
The way to break this cycle is to return to a more holistic form of
gardening. This more holistic system is organic gardening.
Organic practitioners work with nature, growing healthy gardens and
landscapes by using natural techniques for pest reduction and crop
fertilization.
If you are not familiar with organic gardening/landscaping techniques,
there are many resources on the Internet to help you get started. One of
my favorites is the In Harmony Sustainable Landscapes website at:
www.inharmony.com.
If you’re into gardening, you can incorporate a vegetable garden into
your landscaping project. Consider that many food plants can also be
ornamental in nature, so your vegetable garden can beautify your yard
while supplementing your grocery budget. By growing your own organic
fruits and vegetables, you not only save money on your food budget, but
you also contribute to your family’s health by not relying on pesticides
and artificial chemical growth agents.
 I have to put a plug in here for the benefits of a vegan lifestyle. I
know that many of you who are reading this book will be meat eaters. I
once was myself. But after researching the benefits of a vegetarian diet
for an upcoming book, I was so overwhelmed with the positive aspects of
such a diet that I made the change. I still occasionally eat meat at
holidays or dinner parties, and this makes it much easier to sustain a
mostly vegan lifestyle, but overall I eat meat less than twelve times a
year. When you consider the strain on the environment that our
beef-loving ways causes, it makes it much easier to make the change. For
example, it takes up to 5000 pounds of water to produce one pound of
beef! Not to mention the amount of deforestation caused by slashing and
burning forests to make room for grazing pastures.
 I think that the ultimate thing that tipped the balance in favor of
veganism for me is the fact that it’s much easier to feed yourself on
your own land if you’re a vegan. Vegans don’t need large parcels of land
for grazing cattle. A vegan doesn’t have to kill an animal or skin it,
nor learn how to preserve meat. Of course, you could go to the grocery
store and buy meat that someone else has already killed for you, but to
me cob building is all about independence and being as self-sufficient
as possible. One way to be independent is to decrease or eliminate your
dependence on the local grocery store.
A study conducted by the University of Tennessee demonstrates that it
would only take 1/8 of an acre to feed a vegan family of four. That
works out to little more than a ten-square-foot patch of good topsoil
per person!
There’s a multitude of health benefits from a vegan diet as well. These
include less cancer, less diabetes, less obesity, less heart disease,
less arthritis, and longer lifespan. If you’re interested in learning
more, there are resources in Appendix C.
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