Landscaping for drought

By Deborah Simmons President, Fredericksburg Chapter NPSOT

As Fredericksburg prepares to enter Level 4 water restrictions, our yards will have to make do with less watering. Xeriscaping is the term given to landscaping with low water use in mind. What does this word conjure in your mind? A yard covered with gravel and two lonely cacti sticking up? If so, I have good news. You can have a lovely yard with low-care, drought tolerant plants.

The key to this approach: plant natives. Native plants are plants that were growing in our area on their own before the European settlers arrived. They are adapted for our climate and soil conditions. What couldn’t survive without tending, died. What lived became our native plants.

Native trees include towering pecans, cypress, cedar elms, cottonwood, and western soapberry.

If your place can’t handle the full-grown size of large trees, choose smaller flowering species like goldenball, Eve’s necklace, anacacho orchid and desert willow. Well adapted to our area, these trees are unperturbed by the Hill Country’s cycles of heat and cold, flood and drought. You can grow native trees from seed or buy small seedlings.

Plant trees in the fall, which gives the root systems all winter to develop before they have to cope with summer heat.

Flower beds with native plants are full of autumn sage, flame acanthus, blue mist flower, blackfoot daisies, coneflowers and fall asters.

Choose an array of plants that flower from the first warm day of spring until the first frost of winter. Buy small plants, which transplant more reliably, and plant in the coolest part of the day. Water them in, especially in the first week.

They may need supplemental water to get them through the first summer, but once established, they are tough as nails.

Some people recommend eliminating lawns to create less water use in the garden, but lawns too can be drought tolerant. If you sod with a grass adapted for a wetter climate, it will die without watering.

Instead, plant local native grasses: Blue grama, buffalograss and curly mesquite grass. Some of these grasses have roots that extend six feet into the ground. Compare this to Bermuda grass, which turns brown when its one- to twoinch roots can’t reach water.

Native grasses can stay green all summer long. Some don’t require mowing. For those that do, mow them with the blade set higher. Taller grass cools and shades the ground, reducing evaporation.

If open to a softer look than a traditional lawn, plant a meadow. A meadow has the short height of a lawn but includes broadleaf plants in addition to grasses. Little plants like peppergrass, tube young, and menodora can augment the grasses in your meadow, creating a lawn-like look that is visually distinct from the beds, comfortable to walk on, and more visually interesting than grasses alone.

Using native trees, shrubs, flowers, and grasses is not a reluctant compromise we are forced to make to reduce water use. A native garden is less work, more innovative, and more attractive than a sterile rectangular hedge on either side of the front door.

Native plants also attract desirable wildlife. Birds come for the berries and seeds. Butterflies and hummingbirds visit the flowers gathering pollen and nectar. In even the smallest of gardens, you can build a tiny community of critters.

The need to restrict water use is a challenge, but it is also an opportunity to be more creative and experimental with our gardens. You don’t need a master plan or a certified professional.

Plant a few natives. See how they do. Add a few more. A vibrant native landscape will begin to appear. If the city requires more cutbacks in water use, you will be able do your part without sacrificing a beautiful garden.

To learn more about gardening with native plants, drop by a meeting of the Fredericksburg chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas.

The NPSOT chapter meets the fourth Tuesday of every month at 6:30 p.m., at St. Joseph’s Halle, 212 West San Antonio Street. Meetings are free to attend.