Running Dry

Imagine what your yard would look like, or your apartment or condo common area, if it received no supplemental water.  Zero. Not a drop.

My rain gauge, hiding behind the drought-proof Lemonadeberry.  Empty, as usually.
 Tuesday's precipitation was less than 0.05 inches at our house.

Maybe ideas about ornamental gardening will finally start changing, given the severity of the drought.  Southern California received more rain than in the previous two years.  But that was still about half of normal.  It probably won't rain again till December.  And the Sierra snowpack, where most of our water reserves come from, is the lowest in sixty years.  Even recycled water that is being used to water landscapes also needs to be used to recharge groundwater and prevent salt incursion.

This San Diego garden has not been watered in the drought. It includes a whole hillside. I am jealous.

I saw some gardens in San Diego at the CNPS Garden tour that received no supplemental water.  They were starting to dry out, and they will be mostly dormant this summer, but they will survive, and evergreens will look good all summer.  How would your garden do?

Most of these guys would be fine with no water for a few months.

What would I do if I could use no outside water?  Lose most of my pots.  Be more diligent in collecting household water (which I already do a little), and apply it to my more tender natives and fruit trees.  My established natives would be fine for a year.  Some of them would look great with no water: coyote bush, toyon, lemonade berry, manzanitas, cleveland sage, ceanothus.  Some of them would get scruffy or summer deciduous: sagebrush, the flowering desert plants, the shade plants like coral bells.  A few that were planted this year and not established could die.  I would add rocks!  And wildflowers would put on a show in the bare spots next spring.

This Purple Sage doesn't like garden water at all. (From Tomaz' yard)

If the drought keeps up another year and I didn't add supplemental water (as I did three times this winter) the garden will have a little more die-off.  But many hardy natives will hang in there.

And every garden that depends on automatic sprinklers would be long dead.  Think about it.

Our association-overwatered lawn.  Its days are numbered.  

Much is being made of the water used for agriculture and for meat production. A gallon for an almond.    I personally am suspicious of some of the numbers bandied about: "2000 gallons of water per pound of beef"– my cousins raise corn-fed beef and the corn that feeds them in Iowa.  Almost of all of their water comes from the sky.  And there's Allen Savory's work showing proper herding can prevent, and actually reverse, desertification.  Not that many people do proper herding, but some do.  Water politics are a mess, but we do have to eat.  We don't have to have tropical landscaping.

You and I are not farmers.  We are gardeners, and urban people who benefit from green spaces.  Now is the time to make the break.  Don't just cut back 25%.  There's never been a better time to kill your lawn.  Let the neighbors glare at your virtue.  Install a native garden this fall (because installing it in late spring or summer doesn't work.)  Watering every two or three weeks will keep local natives fat and green; some don't like that much water..  You can save money and water, attract birds and butterflies, all at the same time.

I don't intend to stop watering my roses yet.  But last year I cut back watering from every 3 days to every 5 days, and I think they're healthier.  This is 'Fame', very long lasting flowers.

Don't worry if you're not ready to rip out your whole yard and go native.  There are simpler water saving strategies.  Why be part of the problem when you can be part of the solution?  Stay tuned for information to go native or just conserve effectively.

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