Saving Water in Your Yard
For most of us in California, we get our water from one or both of two sources:
- Ground water stored in underground aquifers and refreshed through the percolation of rainwater through many meters of earth
- Snow melt from the Sierra Nevada mountains, which is piped and pumped to municipal water utilities.
Unfortunately, both of those sources are imperiled, the first through over-pumping (pumping it out faster than it is restored), the second by climate change, which is making the snowpack more variable, and making it melt faster and earlier.
As a consequence, water has become a very expensive utility.
My wife and I have reduced our summer water consumption by 75% and saved over $23,000 in the past 10 years by re-landscaping our yard with native plants. The results have exceeded our expectations. Our yard is now:
- Easier to maintain
- More beautiful
- More diverse
- Host to far more wildlife
- Better smelling!
- Less expensive to maintain
Maintenance
I used to have a lawn mower, a fertilizer spreader, a weed whacker, a gas can, oil cans, bags of organic lawn fertilizer, edge clippers… and a small shed to keep it all in! No more!
My maintenance equipment now consists of hand shears, lopping shears, a few shovels, and a wheel barrow — all of which I already owned. I got rid of all the rest, and freed up space in the yard where the shed used to be!
No more lawn mowing! While our new landscape still requires some maintenance, it is less, more enjoyable, and can be done on our schedule. Maintenance involves pruning native shrubs to keep them off paths, dead-heading flowers, and sweeping mulch off the walkways and back into the beds (the birds like to scratch it out when looking for bugs). Once a year, we cut back some of the plants to allow new growth for the next season, and evaluate what plants need to be replaced (they can get woody), which means removal and replacement (clippers and shovels).
Beauty
Our yard produces flowers year-round. Late winter through early summer is especially floral, with a changing kaleidoscope of ceanothus, California poppies, Wester redbud, salvia (sage), penstemon, verbena, coyote mint, buckwheat, ribes, coral bells, and others. But we even have flowers in December and January on our manzanita, and in the dead of summer on our California fuscia. This is great for the pollinators, which never go hungry – the bees, butterflies, moths, and pollinating flies, which we have in great abundance. It is also great for the hummingbirds, of which we have several in residence. And because our plants are not JUST flowering, they also produce seeds and berries, which the birds can eat year-round.
Diversity
The yard is MUCH more interesting. Instead of a flat, grass mono-crop with perhaps some foundation plantings, we have dozens of different species and varieties of plants of varying heights, colors, textures, and growth habits. And it changes by the season. There is always something blooming and something bearing fruit. And despite never using either fertilizers, pesticides or weed killers, we have very few weeds, which we hand-pull.
Host to More Wildlife
We have been very deliberate in providing year-round food and shelter for birds, bees and butterflies.
Walking up our front path, you will first see bees and lizards. There is almost always a lizard or two sunning on the walkway, which will scurry away into the bushes as you approach. We have honeybees and bumblebees, sure, but we also get quite a variety of native bees, some of which are enormous, and some of which almost look like gnats. And there are several small butterflies that can be seen pollinating flowers.
Come around to the back yard, and you will see squirrels, as well as hummingbirds, mockingbirds, hooded juncos, goldfinches, sparrow, chickadees, mourning doves, and even robins. In the Spring, you can literally hear our prunus ilicifolia (native cherry) tree buzzing from 10 feet away, with hundreds of bees feasting on a canopy exploding with butter cream flowers.
Better Smelling!
Approaching our front door, especially in Spring and Summer, you are bathed in the scent of several varieties of salvia (sage), ribes, ceanothus, and coyote mint. It is truly aromatherapy of the best sort!
Less Expensive to Maintain
I have kept careful records of our water use for several years before, and the entire period since installing our native landscape. We immediately saved 75% of our summer water (the rest was mostly household use). As the price of water has gone up, this has added up to over $23,000 in savings on our water bill!
It’s a total win in every way — a more natural, more beautiful, easier to maintain yard that also saves us money! What’s not to like? 🙂