Every homeowner wants a garden with pretty flowers boasting spectacular blooms. The issue is that many of these plants are thirsty, requiring plenty of water to keep them flowering throughout the growing season. That’s a problem for people living in areas where water is a scarce resource. We put together these tips for low-water-use landscaping and drought-tolerant plants to give you ideas for your garden and yard.
Low-Water-Use Landscaping and Drought-Tolerant Plants
Choose Porous Materials for Hardscaping
Use porous materials in your garden hardscaping to save water when watering plants. This helps you use water more efficiently. More water will end up in the soil, and you’ll get less run-off.
Use porous materials between your paving stones to allow rain to soak into the soil and build the water table. Layer mulch between plants to suppress weeds and decrease water loss.
Implement Dense Planting Strategies
Shade the soil with densely planted beds to slow evaporation during the warm hours of the day. This strategy also crowds out the weeds, lowering the need for mulching the beds. Choose a collection of flowers and plants that conserve water (more on those cultivars at the end of this post).
Plant Groundcover
Groundcover acts as a living mulch for flowerbeds, creating a drought-tolerant garden. This low-growing plant minimizes water run-off from hardscaping elements in your yard, like sidewalks, paths, and steps.
Choose water-conserving perennials with small stature to tuck between steps and gaps in walkways. They also offer a range of colors to the garden when they bloom in the summer for visual interest.
Mulch to Conserve Water
Mulching your flowerbeds is essential to creating a water-wise landscape. Use gravel and an inorganic mulch around your drought-tolerant perennials, grasses, and plants. It’s a low-maintenance option and makes a permeable path to prevent water run-off.
Rely on Drought Resistant Plants & Flowers for Your Low Water Use Landscaping
Low-water plants can make it through times of water scarcity and dry conditions. These plants won’t experience changes to the way they bloom and their visual appeal because of these conditions. They can bloom during the warmest periods of the summer and use water efficiently to lower your watering costs.
The new standard for southern California landscapes is “low-water lush,” replacing the previous “xeriscaping” principles of using gravel and succulents. Lush landscaping principles involve plants offering luxurious leaves, fertile soil, and productive flowerbeds with low water demand.
It’s a rising trend in low-water landscaping design. It’s now common throughout areas of the United States where water supplies dwindle during the year’s warm months. This drought-tolerant landscaping design implements many water-saving tactics.
Group plants together that are hardy and that don’t require supplemental water to bloom and thrive in the garden. Plants with similar water usage requirements will thrive together. Several evergreen varieties and cultivars provide height, structure, and color to your landscape with well-draining soil.
Choose hardscaping elements like boulders to fill in gaps in your flowerbeds, and opt for native plants to create a focal point.
Drought-Resistant Plants To Consider
Here are some of our top choices for drought-resistant plants to add to your low-water landscaping project.
- Coneflower (Echinacea)
- Lamb’s Ear (Stachys byzantina)
- Red Emu Bush (Eremophila maculata ‘Valentine’)
- Red-flowered penstemon
- Lantana (Lantana camara)
- Russian Sage (Perovskia atiplicifolia)
- Pink Muhly Grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris)
- Shrubby Germander (Teucrium fruticans)
- Lavender (Lavandula)
- Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa)
- Black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia)
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Arbor Hills Trees & Landscaping Services can provide you with everything from detailed maintenance programs to unique plant production, and other services in between. That means we build water features, walls, patios, irrigation, walkways, outdoor kitchens, lighting, and anything else you can help us dream up. Our professionally trained staff can build the landscape of your dreams and keep you from breaking any Home Landscaping Rules.
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