Cool Home Improvement

Slow growing plants are often synonymous with water-conserving ones in many gardeners’ minds. Some Species of Rhus though, develop quickly, requiring modest amounts of water at the same time.

Many of the water-conserving plants available to gardeners in dry climates are slow growing. It is one of the prices that has to be paid for growing beautiful landscape ornamentals that require little or no irrigation through the year. The dry climate garden would be all the poorer without species of Grevillea, Myrtle, Pistachio, and Melaleuca, which are excellent plants but take a few years to reach the desired size. A number of species, particularly Grevilleas, actually suffer and decline following the gardener’s attempt to speed up their rate of growth by generous amounts of water and fertilizer.

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The lawn’s appearance can be made or spoilt by the quality of the edge. Keeping a neat lawn edge is especially difficult in Mediterranean and other hot, dry, climates.

A scruffy, untidy lawn edge is one of the things that really frustrate the average home gardener. Most of us dream of having the neat, clean edge we see in fine public gardens and perhaps in some of our neighbor’s gardens as well. In cool, moist, summer climates, where grasses from seed are generally grown, there’s no great problem in cutting a straight edge with a half-moon spade a couple of times a year or so, and then maintaining that edge with garden shears or perhaps with a mechanical strimmer.

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The gardener in a dry climate where water is at a premium, may look jealously at garden books from wetter climates, and dream of growing acres of lawn. In fact, reducing the amount of lawn invariably leads to better design solutions.

Leafing through a garden design book the other day, I was struck by a curious fact. The book is one of many by John Brookes, the renowned British designer. In virtually every case study presented, the size of the lawn is greatly reduced in comparison to the standard suburban garden most of us would recognize. As there is no indication in the book that Mr. Brookes is relating to water conserving gardening, it is safe to assume that design is his paramount issue of concern.

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