A Prairie Garden Journal    by Dick Meyer

Xeriscape
Refresher
Course

This is a Xericape Garden ↑

What had appeared to be a possible end to the region’s prolonged drought may turn out to have been little more than a mirage.   Higher than average snowpacks in the Wyoming mountains late last winter did not produce the expected levels of irrigation water into the reservoirs which store water for the region’s agricultural irrigators and indirectly to the region’s home and business owners as well.  And so the drought returns, or did it ever leave?
One benefit of the recent, perhaps now even more prolonged, drought has been increased interest by the region’s homeowners in how they can conserve water in their landscape.  Lawn and landscape irrigation can consume up to 60 percent of an average household’s total annual water usage—making this use of water one of the first targeted for conservation when municipal water supplies begin to run short. 

2.  Amend the soil of landscape beds with compost before planting and mulch the beds with organic wood mulches after planting.   This is another simple technique which can save a lot of water.  Amending the soil not only helps the plants grow better, but it also makes the soil of the landscape bed better able to absorb and hold natural rainfall as well as irrigation water.  That’s because organic matter acts like a sponge to hold water in the root zone, and mulch helps to reduce evaporation of water out of the soil.   Again, in my experience, landscape plants in a well developed landscape bed can thrive on 30-50% of the amount of water required to properly irrigated an equivalent  area of lawn. 

Not This ↓

Previous Articles

April 27, 2006
Crazy Clematis

May 04, 2006
Ornamental Grasses

May 11, 2006
Perennials

May 18, 2006
Herbs

May 25, 2006
Hummingbird Garden Party

June 1, 2006
Gardening with Kids

June 8, 2006
Wildflower Week

June 15th
Shade Garden

June 29
Thumbs, Feathers, Fruit

July 6, 2006
Reading Plants

July 13th
Back to the Oregon Trail

July 20th
Theatre West Garden Walk

July  27th
Notes from the Garden Walk

August 4th
Cereal Killers

August 10th
Grass Hedges

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And why not, because over 30 years of experience with xeriscape practices have demonstrated that it is not only possible, it is easy, to have a beautiful landscape while significantly reducing the amount of water used for landscape irrigation.  In fact, no other single household water conservation practice even comes close to saving as much water as the implementation of xeriscape practices in the home landscape.

So here’s a refresher course on xeriscaping.

1.  Reduce the amount of irrigated turfgrass to the minimum required for the family’s recreational use.  Most residential landscapes in Wyobraska still start out as “wall-to-wall” lawn.  Most new homeowners put in a sprinkler system and sod or seed the entire landscape.   Then several years later, they cut out some of the grass and put in landscape beds.   Xeriscape practice starts out from the opposite perspective—when envisioning a new landscape, it suggests that the homeowner first envision the entire landscape as low water use xeriscape beds, then envision irrigated lawn only in the areas where it is needed for family recreation or for visual “open space”.    In my experience, when homeowners are asked how much of their lawn they really need, most say 50% or less.  Because lawns typically consume twice as much water as even heavily irrigated landscape beds, reducing lawn size to only what is needed has the potential to produce significant water savings.

3.  Use water conserving plants, whenever possible.  The savings cited above are for landscape beds planted to comparatively high use shrubs, perennials, and ornamental grasses.  By using drought tolerant plants, even greater water savings are possible.  I have performed a number of “accidental” tests of drought tolerance of plants over the years, and I am always surprised to find how many plants there are that seem to prefer very little water.  Salvias, Russian sage, little bluestem, butterfly bush, rabbitbrush, golden rod, tall sedums, mountain mahogany, gamble’s oak, pinion pine, rocky mountain juniper, sea green juniper, and ponderosa pine all perform very well in Wyobraska landscapes with only natural rainfall supplemented with only occasional irrigation through the spring and summer months.  All will survive without any supplemental irrigation. 

4.  Irrigate plants according to their needs.  This principle of xeriscaping has been made easy by relatively new developments in irrigation equipment.  Sprinkler heads that apply the water more slowly allow the water to soak into the soil without running off.  New “do-it-yourself” drip pipe makes it possible to have a few water loving shrubs in the same landscape bed with drought tolerant shrubs—and each get the amount of irrigation they prefer.   It makes for landscapes that look lush and colorful, but which are very water stingy. 

Xeriscape pictures say it all.  Here are three pictures of xeriscapes from the Denver Water Board’s website.  The Denver Water Board coined the term in 1981 to promote the concept of water conserving landscaping.