Rise | We've Done the Research
The Benefits of Xeriscaping
Casas Del Oro Norte, nestled in an area below the Santa Catalina Mountains in Tucson, is a quiet community of about 130 homes built in the 1970s next to a golf course. While creating the community, the developer bought up substantial acreage and incorporated several parks. Planted in these parks were grassy lawns and several species of trees, including Aleppo pine, African sumac, and eucalyptus—all of which require lots and lots of water.
Tucson, of course, is in the desert, where temperatures in the summer rise into the triple digits. The monsoon season typically begins from early July to late July, continuing through August and sometimes into September, giving rise to hot days with high humidity, intense thunderstorms and rainfall, and flash floods. Now, fifty years later after the original development, summers are getting hotter; monsoon seasons shorter.
The developer’s plan “was wonderful thinking” back in the 70s, says Dianne Steinbach, who has lived in the Casa Del Oro Norte community for five years. However, “in terms of climate change, nobody can afford to water the parks that he designed, much less the big mature trees. When they don’t get water, they get brittle, and their 65-foot branches snap off.”
The 50-year-old irrigation system, tied to city water, is dilapidated. The homeowners’ association, of which Steinbach is currently president, has repeatedly voted down an increase in dues to help pay for new irrigation or watering the parks. Nonetheless, Steinbach says, “We decided in our work plan last year that one thing we had to tackle was to make the open space more sustainable going into the future—and figure out to do it on the operating budget we have.”
Table of Contents
“One way was to take the smaller area, North Park, and put out a request for proposal (RFP) for landscapers to bid on the design and installation of a xeriscape, which is expensive initially, but more sustainable into the future,” she adds. The homeowners association selected Northwest Landscaping in Tucson. This year, Northwest is focusing on infrastructure. “That includes re-grading the site with mounds, basins, and swales that direct rainfall away from the street,” Steinbach says, “a new underground drip irrigation system for the trees; new winding walking paths with a decomposed granite (or DG, a ground-up rock that mats down and doesn’t slide around); and local rock in other areas. Next year, we’ll start putting in native plants.”
What Is Xeriscaping?
What exactly is xeriscaping? As defined by The Plantium, a xeriscape “is a system of principles to create gardens and landscapes that reduce, or even eliminate, the need for additional irrigation.” In other words, xeriscaping is a style of landscape design that integrates drought-tolerant plants, land contouring, and water capture to nearly or totally eliminate irrigation and other maintenance. The word xeriscape comes from the Latin xero, meaning dry, and scape, meaning landscape—and is not to be confused with zeroscape, which is a yard filled predominantly with gravel and dirt and containing few or no plants.
What Is The Purpose of Xeriscaping?
According to EPA estimates, landscape irrigation (and other outdoor water use) accounts for 30 percent of water consumption in the U.S. In the country's arid western areas, household outdoor water use rises to 60 percent, with most of that water going to lawns. Whether you live in an arid or wetter climate, droughts can happen nearly anywhere. When drought occurs and a city puts limits on water use, formerly lush and highly watered landscapes can turn brown, dry, and brittle—taking a toll on plant diversity, as well.
By creating yards and gardens with native plants that have adapted to the natural rainfall of your region and that are also drought tolerant (meaning they can stay alive during periods of less than normal rainfall), homeowners can enjoy yards with plant diversity—and that attract native pollinators—that thrive even during water shortages.
A five-year Yardx study of 357 residential landscapes (conducted by Metro Water Conservation, the Bureau of Reclamation, and seven Colorado front range municipalities) found that homes using xeriscape principles cut their total amount of lawn by half by filling a quarter of their landscape with low-water-use plants and another quarter with medium-water use plants. This reduced their outdoor water usage by 30 to and 50 percent, which also saved the homeowners money on their water bill, year after year.
What are the Seven Principles of Xeriscaping?
There are seven xeriscaping principles described by the nonprofit Arizona Municipal Water Users Association's Xeriscape: Landscaping with Style in the Arizona Desert. They include:
- Good landscape planning and design
- Low-water native plants
- Turf
- Efficient, effective irrigation
- Soil improvements/amendments
- Mulch, and
- Maintenance
Let's look at each one in detail now.
1. Good landscape planning and design
Take your time and create a plan to maximize your site's possibilities while considering such issues as cost/budget, function (screening, directing water to existing plants, etc.), aesthetic preferences, maintenance requirements, water efficiency, and energy efficiency. Use your plan as a guide throughout the process. Think long-term. Consider whether, for cost reasons, you want to complete your landscape all at once or in stages.
2. Low-water native plants
Hundreds of low-water, low-maintenance native and desert-adapted plant species are available at local nurseries. Be sure to choose open-pollinated, “straight-species” natives whenever possible, not cultivars, which may be showy but may also require more maintenance and water. Desert homeowners didn’t only focus on the prickly or spiny plants; the desert is full of beautiful flowering native plants. Cacti come in a wide variety of dramatic shapes with gorgeous blooms in vibrant colors. Native plants like cacti help create low-maintenance yards without taxing limited water resources.
3. Turf?
Turf or lawn generally requires lots of water and maintenance, even when managed sustainably. But if a homeowner has pets or young children, small turf areas may be necessary and can be incorporated successfully into a xeriscape if properly planned, installed, and maintained.
Camille LeFevre
Camille LeFevre is an architecture and design writer based in the Twin Cities.
