When Green Is Bad: Lush (Non-Native) Lawns

BY STEPHENIE FREDERICK
Water Committee

Did you know that 40%-70% of a single-family-dwelling's water bill is due to watering the yard? We Southern Californians try to maintain a rainy-state Midwestern look with our green, luxuriant lawns, and we enclose the lawns with trees and shrubs that hail from more watery climes. Then we water everything way too much (including concrete surfaces).

For the sake of water conservation and your wallet, you can create a more drought-tolerant landscape with natives, a rock garden with succulents, or cactuses. You can also start growing an edible landscape. Although food crops do need water, they do require a lot less water than turf grass or other thirsty landscape plants, and they can be watered with very efficient drip systems that place water on the soil next to the plants only, not promoting evaporation but actually promoting efficient use of water.

Changing your landscape does need a bit of ground work especially if you are planning to do it yourself. Read about drought tolerant plants and landscaping, visit native plants nurseries and then slowly start replacing the water hogs, stressed or dead plants with some natives. You can intersperse natives with established plants or even fruit trees, but you need to group plant with similar needs to create so called hydro zones. Drought tolerant or California native plants do need water until they are established. Some natives tend to go somewhat dormant in summer. Planting natives during the hot season stresses the plants and success is difficult. The fall or early spring is the best time to plant natives because they take advantage of the seasonal rains and cooler climate.

A more eco-friendly yard does not mean planting California native plants only. For example, one could draw from many colorful drought tolerant plants native to other Mediterranean climates such as Southern Europe, North Africa, Western Asia, South Africa, and Australia.

Information about California's native plants is widely available. Amazon.com offers many books about our natives: California Native Plants for the Garden (Borstein, Fross, and O'Brien) and Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens (Keator and Middlebrook). Another source of information is the California Native Plant Society. You'll find many benefits from membership: a useful magazine, workshops, tours of established home gardens, and frequent meetings that bring together fans of California's native plants. Go to www.cnps.org to get acquainted.

Another site to visit is Native Plant Profiler at www.theplantprofiler.com. A creation of the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, the site furnishes information on sixty of the local native plants that are most useful for landscaping.

Also online is the California Native Plant Exchange at www.cnplx.info, which will help you select native plants that are appropriate for any location in the state (remember that Los Angeles and Orange Counties have many climate zones). The site will also direct you to nurseries where you can buy plants.