Your Guide to Xeriscaping

As the conservation movement in the United States gathers momentum, both consumers and contractors are beginning to re-evaluate the way they spend their time, money and resources.  

Water conservation, in particular, has become a major issue given the growing scarcity of this vital resource.  For landscaping contractors, conserving water means employing new techniques in order to provide customers with beautiful landscapes that don’t need vast quantities of water to survive. One technique that you should consider if your clients are clamoring for water-friendly landscapes is xeriscaping. Here’s what you need to know about this innovative solution.

Enter the Xeriscape
The term xeriscape comes from the Greek xeros, which means ‘dry,’ and refers to landscape design that focuses on creating landscapes that require less water for maintenance.

 Xeriscaping originated in the Western part of the country around the 1970s, specifically in regions where access to water was limited, such as Colorado. The technique is gaining in popularity though as public concern about climate change and resource consumption increases.

Xeriscaping Basics
It’s easy to let the imagination wander and conceptualize xeriscapes as an assortment of prickly plants in a dry, dusty bed, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, xeriscaping creates colorful, varied landscapes by focusing on key principles and strategies.

Planning and Design
Planning may sound like an obvious step for any job, but in the case of xeriscaping it’s particularly important. During this portion of the installation, landscapers must pay attention to the physical characteristics of the site, such as runoff patterns and seasonal shading, with the goal of creating a water-wise landscape. The focus is on minimizing the xeriscape’s impact on the environment. For example, runoff patterns will allow you to understand which areas of the site get a heavy dose of water when it rains, and that in turn will allow you to group your thirsty plants in a particular area.

Plant Selection and Grouping
One of the primary principles of xeriscaping is proper plant selection.  Your goal should be to select plants that can survive the local environment, and within that group, to find the ones that require minimal watering.

Pure xeriscapes often feature plants that do not require much water, such as desert and coastal species. These plant varieties have evolved in sandy or otherwise fast-draining soils, and sedums grow in rock crevices or over basalt formations with only six inches of topsoil. Too much water would drown these species, which makes them ideal candidates for a low-water zone of a xeriscape. However, one important item to note is that native plants are generally preferred over exotic plants.

“Native plants lend themselves to xeriscapes because they have evolved under whatever conditions your local climate offers,” says Kathleen Baughman, partner with Portland, Ore.-based Gretchen Vadnais Landscapes Architects, LLC.

After plant selection is complete, it is also important that you group plants with similar water requirements together in order to create water-use zones ranging from high-use areas to low-use one.
 
Irrigation
A well-designed irrigation system is the bedrock of any successful landscape, but for
xeriscapes success is measured by how little water is used by an irrigation system.
 
Most residential landscapes typically use spray irrigation for grass, trees and shrubs. Xeriscapes, by contrast, are composed of mulched areas, trees and shrubs and only occasionally require drip irrigation. Spray irrigation is regulated in gallons per minute, whereas drip irrigation is measured in gallons per hour, which means that xeriscapes use far less water within any given period to keep plants suitably hydrated. Claude Ceniceros, xeriscape incentive inspector with the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA), says, “The goal is to go from high-water volume spray to low-water drip without compromising the aesthetic quality of the landscape.”

Maintenance
Xeriscapes contain leave-alone plants such as cactus, yucca and juniper, which may lend credence to their reputation as ‘no-maintenance’ landscapes. This isn’t entirely accurate, though. Xeriscapes do require regular, routine maintenance including pruning, weeding and pest control.

The only stark difference between maintaining a xeriscape and a regular landscape is that the former requires a decidedly thrifty approach to watering. According to a study entitled Xeriscape: A Guide to Developing a Water-Wise Landscape, conducted by the University of Georgia, you should, “keep plants healthy, but do not encourage water-demanding new growth.”