Prognosis for upcoming gardening season

Many nurseries both large and small , have suffered set backs with their nursery and propagation stock due to the freezing weather.
Most will recoup and have plenty of stock to offer but I believe it will be later in the normal horticultural season(s) than usual.

In the mean time here in Northern California we are less than 45% of normal in our rainfall .

These two important indicators do not add up to a very good predicition for the green industry.

With this early prognostication what steps should Californian Gardeners be taking ?

I think planting more drought-tolerant plants would be a good first step--I was reading an article in the paper about what would happen to our climate if global warming continues, and it'll be more dry winters like this one, earlier snowmelt in the spring which means less water to last through the summer so we'll become more and more like a desert. It was actually a really scary article, hopefully things don't get quite as bad as they were saying!

I also wouldn't be surprised if nursery prices go up a bit--if all the wholesalers suffered losses over the winter, some plants may be harder to find and the ones that are available may cost a bit more. Plus demand will be higher than usual since everyone lost plants over the winter and will need to replace them.

I think too, more drought tolerant. I need to go out for a serious assessment and see what did OK thru this cold snap, what didn't do well, that will help me decide what to repeat or avoid. I don't have the time, energy and room to coddle too much except for a few things I can move in smaller pots.
Back to my Lewis and Little garden dreaming.....

I'm also going to reassess the cold tolerance of what I have planted, only problem is my stuff was all planted less than a month before the cold snap, so I'm not sure if some of the things I really like might have made it if they'd been well established. So I might give some things a second chance!

The gardening market is shrinking overall, an inevitable squeeze of smaller lots and 2-income families with not enough time. This means more interest in hardscape -- outdoor rooms you can use. The problem is that most average families don't have a big enough budget for pro landscaping, so as the X-generation buys houses, there will be a bigger demand for DIY hardscape materials.

I expect to see more of the wonderful local nurseries eventually close, as the value of their land increases beyond what any annual plant sale figures can produce. I find it amazing that Golden is still in existence (thank goodness!), their property alongside Hwy 101 must literally be worth a fortune if they were willing to sell.

All my plants have to learn to survive on relatively little water. The abutilons have slowly been replaced, the cestrums and lavatera have to fight off scale with only minimal help from an occasional hose spray or dormant oil spray. There are many plants I think are lovely, but will not buy because they take too much water, like pulmonaria (featured this week in the SF Chron Home & Garden section). My only real water-lovers are a few hydrangeas and my three Meyer lemons. I've always been conscious of using water in the garden. During the summer I save the kitchen water I wash veggies in, to toss into my potted Japanese maple or the mini-roses in the front entry planter boxes.

There are many tough, dependable subshrubs and perennials that do very well on deep, infrequent soakings, helped along by generous mulching. Rhaphiolepsis indica (Indian hawthorn), "Ballerina" dwarf variety is great, it flowers 3-4x a year, never gets pests, lovely dark small leaves. Leptospermum and Phormiums need hardly any water in the summer. Aptenia's positively invasive if you water it (and it is actually invasive, so mine is surrounded by concrete and regularly pruned back) but bees adore it, so I like to keep it around. Santolina, lavendar and rosemary, like ceanothus, will die if you overwater them in the summer, so I'm always surprised I don't see more of these four drought-stalwarts used in our neighborhood landscaping. I use soaker hoses on most of my beds, which works very well. I have a lush cottage-style garden, almost 2000 sq. ft. of different beds, that I can keep looking good for about $15-20/mo. in summer. It helps, of course, that I'm in the Oakland hills so it's temperate here, not as hot and dry as Contra Costa or Solano counties.

We installed our gardens in 2002-4, so I was able to easily see the increase in our water bill compared to when we had no plantings at all. I was prepared for a big increase, so we were pleased and surprised that my extensive planning (replacing the adobe clay with compost, soaker hoses, and mulching) worked out so well, both water-wise and design-wise.

I'm not willing to give up on the rainfall until April. Our weather patterns have been ~two months off since the quake that caused the big tsumanis in Thailand. The earth was shifted slightly on it's axis from the force of that quake. We had a drier December/January last year followed by a lot of rain in March and April.
We are in process of sourcing barrels to collect rainwater from the garden shed roof to help with the summer watering. After the past 12 months of bizarre weather patterns, I believe we gardeners need to be prepared to wrap (with fleece frost blanket) or shade our gardens on short notice.

G_M,
Question.
With the arid conditions in our AZ desert and seasonal (beautiful) Monsoon I collected water runoff in a very large plastic garbage bin one year. The Monsoon rains are powerful, wet and short. From one downpour off just one part of the roof I collected a full bin of runoff. 'course our heavy rain occurs in Summer at about 110 degrees. I actually couldn't use the water collected fast enough and had to, unwillingly, discard it due to mosquito larvae. What do you plan to do to prevent possible infestation? Or can you use the water quickly?

You can buy products like Mosquito Dunks which will take care of the larvae. And a nice tight lid on the container will help keep them from getting into the container in the first place. Here if you store rainwater you need to be able to do it for a long time--we get all our rain in the winter and none in the summer, so you don't really have the option of using it quickly.

I never really considered the significance of why my Monrovia Summer Winds Nursery has devoted so much square footage to furniture and accessories for "outdoor living". Big Corp Partnership with Smith and Hawken. Nice. Guess they feel the "shift" taking place re less gardeners coming in for plants.

Aguane, check out this link. This group is in Tucson, AZ and may give you some ideas to help with the making the most of rainwater harvesting situation:

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

More info:
http://rainwater.org/rainwater_collection_how.html
http://www.harvesth2o.com/

Wow, this is wonderful information for me, G_M. Thanks so much. I'll take a new look at my new house to see what can be done.