Ways to change your garden so it’s resilient this spring

This year, the aridity of summer is creeping in early. With two drought years in a row, we face restricted water resources and wonder how our gardens can thrive with limited irrigation.

Spring in California is a major planting season. Good weather makes it pleasant to be outside. Warming soil and mild air temperatures are conducive to good root and plant growth, and the last frost date has passed. Nurseries are packed with a tantalizing array of plants, making this an opportune time to renew our places of solace and sustenance, our gardens. But with high expectations for our gardens and limited water resources this year, how can we best use the water we have?

You might remember the prolonged drought of 1976-77. For many of us, it was an initiation to a new lifestyle of accounting for and living minimally with what had been, conceptually if not actually, an unlimited resource: water. Hyper-vigilance was called for in what was once a private part of our daily existence. Showers were measured in increments of just a few minutes. Baths were out. Washing dishes meant using “wash water” and “rinse water,” no running water allowed. Even teeth brushing was included in water-saving efforts.

These practices, which became normalized over time, are still useful each year in our summer-dry climate and crucial in dry years like this one.

Troubling trends

In our homes, water-saving innovations happened. But outside, in our landscapes, a series of unfortunate trends exploded. Gravel gardens with a sheet plastic layer underneath became commonplace. Lawns were replaced with concrete, some painted green, others with fake grass glued on top. These surfaces prevent rainwater infiltration almost forever.

Highly flammable and visually nondescript junipers galloped across landscapes, touted not just as drought-resistant but as requiring little or no maintenance. These new landscapes were a symbolic and actual disassociation from nature. The large ground-cover junipers that carpeted neighborhoods generated less interest than the rocky and varied surface of the moon. A flat sameness prevailed in every season. With those drought years, gardens, for many, became a nuisance and were rendered null and void of life.

With our experience of recent years, we know now that these dense and highly flammable junipers, these landscapes designed in reaction to a limited water supply, threaten to destroy houses and neighborhoods by fire.

We have had a number of droughts since the first one that really caught our notice and made us think about water use differently. Despite excellent and extensive efforts by municipalities, water districts and interest groups to teach us how to garden appropriately in our area, lawn designs continue to ebb and flow according to levels of available water in reservoirs.

Gardens that embrace drought and make it a design feature have been too few.

Natives, compost and soil

But now we have available all the ingredients for transformed and locally appropriate landscapes, allowing us to refocus our relationships with gardens and see them not as a nuisance but as a vital aspect of our lives. In this drought, we can demonstrate how to create regional beauty that highlights our unique area and climate.

We are surrounded by outstanding and distinct native flora that readily adapts to home landscapes. Many plants from similar summer-dry regions that combine well with these native plants are available at nurseries.

Municipalities and businesses churn out high-quality compost, and drip irrigation supplies and technology are easily available. With them, we can lure butterflies, birds, pollinators, beneficial insects and hummingbirds to our gardens and expand our enjoyment beyond admiring the flowers to peering into them to get to know the nature that can be invited to our yards.

Soil is the best reservoir. We can create healthy soils with good porosity and water-retentive qualities so rainwater easily infiltrates and is held for plant use and to recharge groundwater.

Besides these general aspects of gardening, there are many specifics for planting, design and garden maintenance that increase a garden’s ability to thrive, especially in drought conditions. Success requires more than just choosing the right plants at the nursery. In the weeks ahead, this column will address practices to help gardens prosper. A beautiful garden delights all who see it.

Kate Frey’s column appears every other week in Sonoma Home. Contact Kate at: katebfrey@gmail.com, freygardens.com, Twitter @katebfrey, Instagram @americangardenschool.