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Drought Tolerant Landscaping
June 19, 2014
Everyone is talking about it, here in California unfortunately we are living in a drought. What does that mean for landscaping? There are many customers that have called requesting a change in their landscapes to be more drought tolerant or requesting drought tolerant landscaping with new installations. That means choosing plants that do not need to be watered as frequently and also less if no lawn. We have done many landscapes like this because they are low maintenance and really appeal to the consumer. Some ways that we have made our landscape installations more drought tolerant and less maintenance is as follows:
- One way to use less water is to find plants that don't need quite as much to survive, like Lavender for instance.
- Another way to conserve water is by building your own raised bed for flowers and vegetables.
- Hardscape elements step up to the challenge of a drought tolerant landscape. Plus they add so much extra to any landscape and require little to no maintenance to keep looking beautiful for years.
- Groundcovers are a good way to catch water that might be lost on a slope for instance.
- We always recommend adding mulch to any landscape we install. Mulch is essential to conserving moisture and it helps cut down on weeds.
- Showy flowers usually require a lot of water and we try to add hardscape elements like boulders and small rock walls to add special touches without always having to use flowers.
- Once established, shrubs and evergreens need very little water, except in extreme droughts and they provide plenty of color.
- Drought tolerant plants offer less showy blooms but make up for it with interesting foliage. One such plant is Japanese Blood Grass, although it could become a bit invasive, if taken care of properly it is beautiful and adds a lot of color.
- We also like to use oversize boulders to fill in gaps in a drought tolerant landscape by adding unexpected focal points
Another way we strive to ensure good growth for drought resistant plants is by adding the proper soil amendments. - Different varieties of evergreens also provide structure and color to a landscape without the use of a lot of extra watering.
- Also using a drip system wastes less water by delivering water directly to your plants with little to no waste.
- By adding walkways without concrete but instead using things such as water permeable pea gravel or DG it can offer another solution to water run off.
- Planting a drought tolerant landscape does not mean you need to give up and eliminate high need plants. It just means that you will need to limit those plants to use as dramatic accents.
- Below are some pictures of ideas of drought tolerant landscapes we can help you achieve. We believe that a beautiful landscape is still very achievable even living in our drought.
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