Hi all, I would like to start a water friendly front house garden. In LA, we were just requested by our mayor to cut down on water consumption. I'd like a pathway & as you can see, we successfully killed off the St. Augustine grass. We removed all the roses that were in the front, & would like to keep the bird of paradise, take out the hibiscus bush. Thanks for your suggestions!
I tilled my front yard, planted mostly drought tolerant plants. What you're talking about is called Xeriscaping, you can google that to find more information. I'll just tell you some of my hands-on experience.
Here's what I've found. Till what you have now into the ground, do it when the soil is dry (not too dry), if you do it while wet you have the chance of ruining soil structure or worse making your soil waterproof. Wait at least two weeks before planting, that dead stuff tilled under decaying sucks available Nitrogen out of the soil. Planting immediately your plants will suffer from Nitrogen deprivation. Keep it moist.
When ready weeds should have sprouted. Use an action hoe to scrape the top of the soil. Weeds need sunlight, moisture, and good soil contact. The action hoe pulls them up and leaves them on the surface without good contact, and they dry out and die quickly.
Use and move hoses to mark where your beds will be. Experiment. Your beds need to be accessible from the front and back, meaning 6 feet wide is about as wide as it can go and still be able to pull out weeds in the middle without stepping in. Once you like the bed shape, use flour to outline it on the soil and mark the next one. For shapes, fun and casual beds should be kidney, boomerang, or a sort of a figure "8" shape, if you're going for an elegant formal look stick to circle, squares, diamonds, and rectangles. Landscaping software BTW is no match to going out there with garden hoses and marking the ground with flour. You could have the beds echo the shape or features of your house, for example have them mimic the shape of your windows to tie them all together.
Then pick the plants! Start with any trees first, then shrubs, then move to flowers. Trees need to be thought out first, as any shrubs/flowers underneath need to be shade tolerant. You can go here http://www.highcountrygardens.com/catalog/find/ and search for Xeric Perennials and enter your zone. A warning, their pictures are taken by a capable photographer, I see photography tricks in their pictures and then they're edited by just as capable an editor. They will not look THAT good in your yard. Find some you think you may like then look on this site to see normal pictures.
After picking the flowers go to the local store and get some compost or composted manure and organic fertilizer. I personally find the organic fertilizers with near equal numbers (like 4-5-4) to be best for flowering plants and the ones with high Nitrogen (like 7-1-2) to be best for lawns. I also purchase 40 lbs of composted manure for every 20 plants or so. It's important to add compost/composted manure to each hole.
The perennial plants I get come in tiny 6 packs, I try to get them locally if possible otherwise end up getting others online (and I haven't ordered from that company I linked). For every hole I dig 8" down, and about 6" around. I personally fill the bottom of the hole with composted manure & dirt and add a helping of organic fertilizer and for the rest use pretty much just composted manure/dirt mixture and a hint of organic fertilizer. I think that attracts the roots to go deep after the better stuff, helping the plant become more drought tolerant.
Learn about each plant to determine how the "top" of the dirt around the plant should be. You can either plant a little high, and build a small mound around the plant so it sticks slightly above the ground, that mound will shed water away from the plant for those plants that need things particularly dry, or you can make it level with the rest of the ground which will absorb normal amounts when it rains, or you can plant it slightly below ground level in a sort of "pocket" which will pool the water and soak the plant more than usual. Those that like water but can withstand drought (like Echinacea or Black-Eyed Susans) should be planted in a pocket type. Those that prefer it dry but can handle water (Achillea) should be planted the same level as ground, and those where wet feet is certain death (Lavandula, Kniphofia, Perovskia) should be planted above ground level with a little "mound" to shed water away but, again that depends on how much water you get.
Here's the mistakes I made. One section I tilled when it was wet, and it turned waterproof. After 4 days of what was like monsoon rain none of the water had penetrated 1" down so till when the dirt is dry! My first plants, I planted them right in the ground without compost or improving the soil with the assumption xeric plants mean little fertilizing or fuss and love to be planted in crap dirt. They struggled severely, started to turn yellow, and I saw no growth. I added some organic fertilizer it improved them 100x, but I must keep fertilizing them frequently because I didn't prepare the planting hole. The new ones I improved the planting hole first and those plants always take hold fast, do much better than my first ones, need less water, and less fertilizer to boot. BTW most drought tolerant plants won't be drought tolerant until they've grown for a year. The first year you will need to water frequently. Make sure you mulch, I read an article saying mulch was bad so figured might as well see what happens. Whomever wrote that article is an idiot. I needed to water constantly, it was an amazing amount of work to keep up with the weeds, and worse the soil was getting eroded by wind and rain the soil began to turn to dust. A friend commented to me if a yard that's got dust blowing around in it like the dust bowl of the 30's is coming into vogue, that's exactly what it looked like. I said heck with this, and losing all my dirt to dust in the wind and mulched which reduced my weeding from weekly to monthly, my watering from every 2 days to once a week, it looks much better, and no more dust. Do yourself a favor and mulch, make sure you mulch up to and around the plants, but not over them.
Some drought plants to consider where you are, and check to make sure they're not invasive are Coreopsis, Achillea, Dianthus, Eryngium Sapphire Blue (is sterile), Gaillardia, Hollyhock, Lavandula, Liatris, Lychnis, Perovskia, Rudbeckia, and Sedum.
This message was edited Jun 11, 2007 3:11 PM
This message was edited Jun 11, 2007 3:28 PM
