Concern for the environment and sustainable living has many customers thinking twice about landscaping that requires extra water.
Enter xeriscaping.
From the Greek word for dry, xeriscaping requires no supplemental irrigation. The term was developed in Denver to promote water-preserving landscape – but many customers misunderstand the concept.
“Zero-scaping is a facetious term that came from pros,” says Doug Bennett, Conservation Manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “It comes from a gross misunderstanding that xeriscaping means no landscape at all. A xeriscape isn’t just dirt and a cattle skull.”
Living and working in the deserts of Nevada, Bennett understands the importance of developing a landscape that is water efficient.
“In the West, landscape takes up the most water use, so we’re always looking at ways to conserve,” he says.
Trying to convince home and business owners to accept xeriscaping and the use of more efficient native and climate-adaptable plants can be an uphill battle.
“Part of getting people into water-efficient landscaping is showing them that it has equal quality to the lawns they were maintaining before,” Bennett says. “I have to show them samples of very green, fairly densely planted landscape to get them to consider a more efficient landscape.”
Another incentive for xeriscaping in southern Nevada is a rebate awarded to residents who replace a lawn with a water-efficient landscape. “Of course, that doesn’t mean zero-scaping,” he says with a laugh. “There have to be enough plants on the property that fifty percent is living greenery.”
The soil quality is another important component to xeriscaping, according to Ginger Pryor, State Master Gardener Coordinator at Penn State University.
“It’s one thing we stress with any type of landscaping,” she says. “If you have good quality soil, you’ll go a long way to improve drought stress on your plants. Good soil will hold water when it rains.”
To know if the soil is good for xeriscaping, it’s essential to test and understand the soil type.
“Learning the type of soil is more complicated these days,” Pryor says. “You used to be able to pull a survey map out and figure out the soil based on where you live. But now, soil has changed from fragmentation of landscapes, development and soil being moved around from construction. The type of soil on the property might not be the native soil.”
Pryor recommends testing the soil for nutrients and organic matter. “You need to have a high organic matter in the soil to hold water and allow the nutrients to be available to the plants,” she says.
One of the principles of xeriscaping is using appropriate plants. Next to creating a design, this may be the most difficult obstacle to conquer. Xeriscaping utilizes plants that are native to the area. These are the plants, trees, shrubs and grasses that will quickly adapt to the soil and the climate. Once established, they will withstand all but the most severe weather conditions.
However, people want what they are used to.
“If you look at landscapes in Albuquerque, they look like landscapes in Philadelphia or Des Moines,” says David Cristiani, Landscape Architect and Principal, The Quercus Group in Albuquerque, N.M. “They never look like places in the Southwest.”
For residential customers, it’s not just a matter of moving to a new area and wanting to have a familiar landscape in the backyard. It’s an ideal of what a lawn should look like.
“It’s unfortunate,” Cristiani says. “It makes America look like Generica.”
Also, he adds, residents tend to regard the natural local landscape as something nice to look at when it’s in the wild, but unattractive if it’s on their property.
Cristiani says he’s finding that attitudes toward native landscaping are beginning to warm a bit, mostly because residents have found the cost of watering unnatural or traditional landscapes is too expensive or their water use becomes restricted.
“Native plants require less water and maintenance input,” Cristiani says. “These plants are adapted to the soil, the plants around them and the overall landscape. They’re growing and thriving without anyone taking care of them.”
Examining plant life in its native habitat also provides a better understanding of why it grows the way it does. Spacing of the plants – which are closest to each other, what is the distance between plants of the same species, what grows high, what grows closer to the ground – explains how the plants live compatibly with the water and nutrient sources. Cristiani says emulating that natural spacing not only provides a water-efficient lawn, but one that looks natural to the overall landscape.
“It gives the yard a local sense of place,” he says.
However, before the xeriscaping begins, it is important to know what defines a local or native plant. Horticulture experts define a native plant as one that occurs naturally within a 25-mile radius and within 500 feet elevation.
“Elevation is something we deal with a lot in the west,” he says. “Albuquerque, for example, is in the desert at 5000 feet elevation, but within a few miles from the edge of town, you are at 10,600 feet. Plants up there don’t make it down.”
It’s also important to note the site’s eco-region. From that point, it is easier to understand microclimates and soils. “Know the region’s unique climate, geography and plant communities,” Cristiani says.
Xeriscaping can be as lush and colorful as any traditional landscape, according to Dennis Swartzell, marketing director of Mountain States Nursery in Las Vegas. And when designing the xeriscape, the lushest, most colorful area of the lawn should be in the location where the homeowners will spend the most time.
“It’s your oasis,” Swartzell says. “This is where you have the most water-consumptive plants in your palette. It could include turf or high water-use plant materials like annuals. The idea is to keep those plants that required a lot of water where you are going to be living. As you move away from the oasis, the water-consumptive plants should lessen.”
Swartzell disagrees slightly with the idea of focusing on only native plants.
“Native is all relative,” he says. “It’s better to think of adaptability. For example, if you use plants that are only native to the Mojave Desert, there aren’t many interesting plants to begin with and most of it is grown by seed. But if you’ve done your research, you’ll find that plants from the Chihuahuan Desert, which is a little wetter and cooler, are perfectly adapted to the Mojave Desert. Using those plants, you can increase your palette three-fold.”
However, people must be careful when mixing and matching plants. “A mistake I see every day includes taking plants from Asia that are highly water consumptive with a low pH requirement and mixing those with plants from the arid Southwest,” Swartzell says. “You risk putting too much water on the desert plants. It’s a lot easier when the plants are from the same climate base.”
Obviously where one lives will dictate the approach to xeriscaping and the irrigation needed for the plant system.
“When people back East talk about xeriscaping, they are talking about plants that can go for several weeks without any irrigation,” Swartzell says. “In the Southwest, there are very few plants that can survive that. In the Pacific Northwest, all you would need is a hose with a little sprinkler system on the end. It is really adapted to the area you’re in.”
However, climate can change and that will have an effect on plant life, says Rick Webb, president of the Louisiana Native Plant Society.
Typically along the Gulf Coast, annual rainfall can be up to 60 inches, but in 2000, the area went through a drought.
“Climate is weather over time, and during the drought period, the trees had begun to adapt to the new climate,” Webb explains. “Once the drought years were over, we saw a lot of tree stress because the trees were no longer used to the heavier rainfalls.”
Part of xeriscaping, he adds, is learning how native plants adapt to the changes in climate. Like Cristiani, Webb believes that xeriscaping should not only utilize native plants, but also focus on the plants’ natural growth patterns. Insects are part of the growth cycle, Webb says. Also, competition between plants can happen – the strong will survive while the weak will wither and die.
“Another thing about natural plantings is they’re never in straight lines,” Webb adds. “Don’t plant in straight rows. Space unevenly. And install an odd number of plants. That way, if some of the plants don’t thrive, everything will still fit in nicely.”
The most important thing to remember, experts say, is that the xeriscape landscape is a work of art, and like all works of art, it has multiple benefits.
“Xeriscaping’s water efficiency is critical to the health of our urban environment,” Bennett says. “We use one quarter of the water we did before. You’re building a landscape that could be there for decades.” PLD
Sue Marquette Poremba is a freelance writer based in Central Pennsylvania.