California Gardening: What are you doing about California's water situation?, 2 by jkom51

jkom51 wrote:
Grass is a lovely thing, but in a choice between grass and flowers, I'll take flowers every time. So we have a cottage-style garden, broken up naturally into 15 or so separate beds. Most are watered by soaker hoses with quick-connect couplers, six live solely on runoff or an occasional (very occasional) watering. Living in a temperate coastal climate helps; we don't get more than four or five heat spells a year and they break after a week. On average I water once every 3-4 weeks.

Plants with similar watering requirements are generally grouped together. I mulch with cocoa hulls; I like how they break down quickly compared to bark. Our soil is adobe clay and useless; we dug out most (not all) of it when first installing the landscaping and put in the best quality compost we could buy. 12 yrs later the clay is slowly coming back, but the plants are mostly well-established so no problem unless I'm installing new plants, which I do far too often, LOL.

Water is nothing compared to the fertilizer and mulch we use. I have 3 Meyers and a dozen roses, and they are ALWAYS hungry!

I monitor our water usage precisely and have found that approx total of 2100 sq.ft. cottage garden takes between $15-17/mo. for the dry season. That's about 11 to 15 units of water in a 2-month billing period. This has dropped quite a bit from the first few years, as with bigger plants I soak longer but less frequently.

The entire garden - front, sides, back - is designed to look good all year round, and does. Even in the winter there are at least half a dozen types of flowering plants or shrubs on every side.