Xeriscaping

Last month we wrote about conserving water during a drought and we got several encouraging responses. This month we want to go a bit further into xeriscaping. If you Google the word you will find that it means pretty much whatever you want it to mean. Broadly, it means landscaping designs for dry conditions, but dry conditions can mean using very little water or using no water at all. We want to suggest the no water approach for homes that have small yards or for people who want to avoid fertilizer and mowing.

As a starting point we will refer to the late Robert Reich, known to to friends as Bob. He was a fascinating man who loved to joke about himself and his friends. He joined the Horticulture Department way back before the War, helped Eisenhower in winning it, and then returned to the department where he taught the principles of landscape design. It wasn’t a popular profession back then but Bob was an excellent teacher and artist. He began getting students from throughout the U.S. and then internationally. He outgrew the lab space at Horticulture and moved out to establish a Department of Landscape Design, that grew into a School of Landscape Architecture that was nationally and internationally recognized as a leader in the field. He was a great artist, knew plants well, and attracted an excellent faculty. After he retired they re-named the school: Robert W. Reich School of Landscape Architecture.

Back to xeriscaping. Bob was fascinated with the idea, but he probably called it Japanese meditation gardening, and he taught it rather than practicing it—his small yard on East Boyd was a virtual jungle. The idea we want to push is: Why should all lawns imitate old British estates with long expanses of green grass? We want to argue that a beautiful grassy lawn doesn’t really clean the air by taking up carbon dioxide. Yes, grass needs carbon dioxide for growth, then you mow it and compost the leaves, where they break down and give off carbon dioxide. So it’s kind of a wash.

To develop a xeriscape yard you will need sand, rocks, and innovation. First, spray the grass with a good broad-spectrum herbicide and order a load of sand. The amount will be your choice, possibly to a depth of three or four inches, but it could be less. Then you will need some rocks and stones. We were surprised at the number of good stone companies in Baton Rouge.

Define rocks and stones. Back when Bob was talking about the Meditation Yards you could go to a gravel pit where they have sieves that grade the gravel into rock-size, construction gravel, and pea-sized gravel. They would let you pick out the fairly large rocks for a small charge. The stone companies have probably become the current outlet for large rocks, but they also have flagstones, and boulders of various sizes. Sand also comes in various sizes and kinds. We recall when, a good many years ago, the late Dr. Earl Barrios, working with golf course managers, looked into different kinds of sands from the several companies with gravel pits on the Amite river, and compared the various products for use in building greens, traps, etc. He was evaluating grasses for greens, mostly, and found a wide range of suitability. When he tried to obtain the best for his trials, he ran into the old problem of having to put the proposed purchase “out for bids” and found that the best kind was not the cheapest. This is one of the frustrations of working for the great bureaucracy. Ed used to buy blasting sand for use in pot plant mixes. That, also, went out for bids but he could specify different particle sizes and all blasting sand was good.

As for the innovation—that is your job. The Japanese and Chinese gardens were often designed to tell various stories. Leon saw one in Japan that had been made by one of Bob’s students. It was beautiful but Leon couldn’t see any story in rock/sand designs. The guide said that only the designer really knew what the story was.

Now for xeriscaping in Baton Rouge. Why should we practice water conservation in an area where it always rains? Well we do have droughts that last for a month or two, but we old folks remember the Oklahoma and Texas droughts that lasted throughout most of the 1930s. The Sahara desert is in the midst of a long, long drought but satellite photos and archeological digs show that it has, several times, been a large, wet grassland. Our climatology friends say that long droughts are caused by the very high jet streams and that no climatologist knows why they form, move, or stay in the same place.

Those are just idle thoughts. We don’t think there will be any severe droughts in our lifetime—maybe fifty years from now. The reason we are suggesting xeriscape or meditation gardens is that they can be attractive and require much less maintenance than the British-style grass. Xeriscape maintenance means that leaves and dust will blow in, it will rain and weeds will start growing in the sand. You will need to spray with an herbicide occasionally and will need to rake the leaves. After raking the leaves you can rake the sand and re-arrange the rocks to tell another story.  Having a few smaller rocks in the design offers you something to throw at a dog or cat that wants to destroy your design. We don’t know of other problems but believe strongly in Murphy’s Law: Given enough time, anything that can go wrong—will.

So far we have been talking about a no-water garden. You can add drought tolerant succulent plants that will add to the attractiveness. This idea sounds good but most drought tolerant succulents are not very cold tolerant, so you may have to protect or replace them after freezes. Another “pretty good” idea is to use some dwarf landscape plants of Japanese origin. These are fairly common in our area and would fit into a xeriscape garden but you would need to dig holes for them—a few inches of sand isn’t enough. The maples are beautiful, and variable enough that some can found to fit the spaces and exposures available, and there are lots of small azaleas, in a wide range of sizes and blooming seasons. They will need occasional watering but most of the time you can just sit in the patio and relax.

This is the real old-fashioned lawn-chair landscaping.

Ed O’Rourke, Jr. and Leon Standifer are the authors of Gardening in the Humid South (LSU Press, 2002), now available in affordable paperback.