how the neighbors are coping

Water restric­tions went into effect here in San Diego on June 1. So far there’s a short list of thou-shalt-nots, and the water dis­trict has pri­mar­ily tar­geted land­scape irri­ga­tion, the low-hanging fruit, with direc­tives like: no water­ing between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., water­ing only on spec­i­fied days based on your address, sprinkler-watering lim­ited to no more than 10 min­utes, three times a week.

Walk­ing around my neigh­bor­hood I can see a lot of peo­ple who’ve responded to the call. Some are just begin­ning to make changes, while oth­ers made changes years ago.

dry-yard-with-junipers-and-sago

I was down a cou­ple streets from my house when I saw this front yard makeover. Sim­ple. Just a few big plants cho­sen for their coun­tours. This is a house where the mod­ern lines of the house echo the style of the plant­i­ngs. The sago palm requires some water, but the other plants would do well going dry.

Walk­ing around I saw a num­ber of houses where more drought-tolerant plant­i­ngs were mak­ing their way into the land­scape. Each house seemed to have their own take on what a drought-tolerant front yard could look like.

dry-yard-with-red-brick

Some relied on hard­scape to replace a lawn…

dry-yard-with-red-mulch

…some went in for lots of mulch instead of a lawn, but not many plants…

dry-yard-with-mulch-and-succulents

…some for mulch with some plants, drought-tolerant or not…

dry-yard-with-junipers-and-gravel

…many of the yards that were reimag­ined as dry land­scapes many years ago seemed to rely on gravel and some plants…

dry-yard-with-dry-creek

…sev­eral used gravel with just a few plants to image a desert theme…

dry-yard-with-junipers-and-fig

…this one mixed gravel, junipers, and edi­ble landscaping–a fig–right out front…

dry-yard-with-mixed-planting

…many used what I’d con­sider a con­tem­po­rary look, employ­ing widely-spaced drought tol­er­ant com­bin­ing natives or exotics set in mulch or DG…

dry-yard-with-anigozanthus-and-grasses

…here’s another of the style where a few plants are set in the mid­dle of space they’ll never grow into. It’s def­i­nitely a look, as well as land­scap­ing that embraces the fact that things don’t need to be densely planted to look good…

dry-yard-with-roses-and-grasses

…many yards fea­ture some more water-intensive plants mixed in with ones that require a lot of water, a kind of plant­ing that a drip irri­ga­tion sys­tem can make pos­si­ble. These peo­ple used some roses along with plants that’ll look good with less water.

browning-lawn

Look­ing around you sense that this is a neigh­bor­hood in tran­si­tion. Some peo­ple are just let­ting their lawns go brown. Some may be plan­ning on redo­ing their plant­i­ngs. Oth­ers are prob­a­bly just wait­ing out the water restric­tions to go back to their old ways.

big-green-front-lawn

Some houses are still attached to their old ways that fea­ture con­spic­u­ous water con­sump­tion. Maybe at some point its was a sta­tus thing, show­ing every­one that you could spend resources on some­thing that can’t be used. But these days it’s hard not to feel a lit­tle hot under the col­lar when these are resources that are being taken from the rest of us.

Still, before I get overly tough on the neigh­bors, I want to give peo­ple the ben­e­fit of the doubt for a while. These are tough eco­nomic times. Redo­ing your land­scap­ing can be an expen­sive propo­si­tion. And there are peo­ple for whom deal­ing with a sprin­kler timer would be like ask­ing them to pilot the Space Shut­tle. (My father could never fig­ure out his timer.) And there’s a chance that peo­ple haven’t heard about the new restrictions.

shopping-center-watering-asphalt

But there’s one water-user that I’ll call out on the car­pet. This is our local shop­ping cen­ter, which pre­sum­ably is main­tained by peo­ple who know what they’re doing. But water­ing the side­walk and the asphalt…

shopping-center-runoff

…and then let­ting all the water run off into the storm drains, well, that does get my goat. But it’s not like I’m only grous­ing on a blog they’ll prob­a­bly never read. They’ve heard from me already, and I hope they’ll get in step with the neigh­bor­hood they serve.

But over­all I’m pleased. Peo­ple are get­ting the mes­sage and they’re doing some­thing about it. I think they get a sense that we’re all in this together, and we’ll find ways to deal with this water cri­sis. Not liv­ing in a neigh­bor­hood ruled by a homeowner’s asso­ci­a­tion, you can see that we’re all find­ing dif­fer­ent solutions.

Some choices will be bet­ter than oth­ers from the stand­point of water use, habi­tat, urban runoff or reduc­ing the heat island effect. Still, it’s encour­ag­ing to see peo­ple peo­ple wak­ing up from this fan­tasy of a lush, green, sub­trop­i­cal Cal­i­for­nia of end­less water resources.

June 26 2009 05:25 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • •

8 Responses to “how the neighbors are coping”

  1. Karen - An Artist's Garden on 26 Jun 2009 at 8:07 am #

    Well done for mak­ing your views known to the local shop­ping cen­ter.
    I enjoyed inter­est­ing tour around your neigh­bor­hood.
    K

  2. susan morrison (garden-chick) on 26 Jun 2009 at 10:56 am #

    Inter­est­ing to see how folks are cop­ing in your neigh­bor­hood. Because Bay Area water providers rely on dif­fer­ent sources, some were restrict­ing water last year, but have now ceased,while oth­ers are just now requir­ing rationing of vary­ing lev­els of sever­ity. I dis­like dri­ving thru neigh­bor­hoods where peo­ple just let their lawns go brown, but I know what you mean about tough eco­nomic times.

    One thing that really dis­ap­pointed me last year — East Bay Munic­i­pal Water Dis­trict sent out a let­ter urg­ing all users to forgo plant­ing any­thing new due to the sup­ple­men­tal water require­ments of new plant­i­ngs — no qual­i­fiers, if, ands or buts. But doesn’t it make more sense to replace a lawn with a low water gar­den? Even the sup­ple­men­tal water required in the first grow­ing sea­son is less than a lawn, and the pay off is indef­i­nite. (Of course EBMUD prob­a­bly doesn’t read your blog, so not sure why I’m com­plain­ing here, LOL.)

  3. Steve on 26 Jun 2009 at 6:52 pm #

    This is a timely post, James. There are prob­a­bly 4 cat­e­gories of aware­ness for water issues which will face scrutiny: 1) the for­ward thinkers who plan water allo­ca­tion with city plan­ners and water boards/utilities; 2) Land­scape design­ers and installers who have seen the short­ages spo­ken of and who are adapt­ing accord­ingly, in sur­pris­ingly pretty and prac­ti­cal ways; 3)politicians who hate chang­ing any­thing at all because it con­fuses them and who there­fore come up with Dra­con­ian plans to stop all land­scap­ing; and 4) those in denial whose idea of land­scap­ing is a rid­ing mower.

  4. Michael on 27 Jun 2009 at 1:54 am #

    Hi James, Inter­est­ing to hear water restric­tions are an issue in San Diego. I live in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia and we’ve been in drought here for about the last 10 years. Water con­ser­va­tion is a big issue here as well. Drought tol­er­ant plants have also really come back into vogue and rightly so.
    Cheers Michael
    PS really like some of the gar­dens, the rocks and stones look great with plants and foliage.

  5. lostlandscape on 27 Jun 2009 at 3:07 pm #

    Karen, look­ing at the houses you’d swear it’s mul­ti­ple neigh­bor­hoods. We seem to be going a styl­is­tic shift as peo­ple remodel their homes, all this while peo­ple are shift­ing to gar­dens that use less water.

    Susan, the pro­hi­bi­tion against all new land­scap­ing is ridicu­lous and short-sighted if you ask me! Some of the water agen­cies around here are giv­ing cred­its for replac­ing sprin­kler heads while oth­ers are giv­ing cred­its only for installing plas­tic grass. A neigh­bor­hood full of white picket fences and fake turf to me sounds like a ver­sion of hell…

    Steve, I noticed that you just posted on a sim­i­lar topic. The con­fu­sion you men­tion is tough to get around. What is the pub­lic to think when one agency tells them to replace their sprin­klers while another tells them to plant plas­tic lawns? The con­spir­acy the­o­rist in my head won­ders if the lawn­mower man­u­fac­tur­ers and lawn-care lobby are con­tribut­ing to the cam­paigns of the politi­cians who are block­ing progress on this issue.

    Michael, thanks for stop­ping by. Your drought has made the news up here, and I think some of Australia’s solu­tions can teach us a few things. We’ve def­i­nitely been see­ing more mediterranean-climate Aus­tralian plants being used in our home landscapes.

  6. Country Mouse on 28 Jun 2009 at 5:26 am #

    One thing I miss about liv­ing in a sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood — walk­ing my dog around and look­ing at all the dif­fer­ent things peo­ple do with their yards. I some­times take a trip into town to do some sub­ur­ban hik­ing, just to have that plea­sure. In Scotts Val­ley and Santa Cruz neigh­bor­hoods I see a sim­i­lar tran­si­tional state — we’re not so dry and hot as you are in San Diego. As befits a forested region, I see use of wood mulch to space the plant­i­ngs more than gravel type mulch, with excep­tions. Dry stream bed type fea­tures are also attrac­tive and used a fair bit.

  7. lostlandscape on 28 Jun 2009 at 3:02 pm #

    Coun­try Mouse, I can see how wood mulch would be a more pop­u­lar and appro­pri­ate option for where you are–A yard of stones in Santa Cruz might feel like a land­scaped gravel pit. Rebecca Sol­nit has writ­ten often and inter­est­ingly about walk­ing, includ­ing her book Wanderlust.

  8. Bird on 29 Jun 2009 at 4:44 am #

    This is fas­ci­nat­ing, not just because I have often won­dered about your local cli­mate and what is pos­si­ble in it, but also the whole issue of water con­ser­va­tion and how seri­ous it is. I live in the UK which is known jok­ily world­wide as cloudy and damp, and yet we suf­fer our droughts too. I got into the habit of using grey water for the gar­den years ago wether we are hav­ing restric­tions at the time or not, and it always amazes me that even in a coun­try like ours where we could have plen­ti­ful water with care­ful man­age­ment and every­one doing their bit, this only ever hap­pens when hosepipe bans come in by which time it’s obvi­ously too late. Peo­ple just don’t seem to get that water is pre­cious, or believe that it could run out.

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