variability

When limiting the amount of irrigation required in a landscape it isn’t just a matter of what plants can be used to achieve a desired effect. It requires a change in mindset. Of course you have to choose plants carefully. You have to know what requires how much water, and how wet the different areas of the design are expected to be. It also requires design of the landscape elements to utilize what rainfall is available. But you also have to expect variability from year to year. The garden will look very different in a wet year than in a dry year.

In most sites we design, the expectation is that the landscape will look the same from year to year. Why is this? In unirrigated “natural” areas, the plants do fine from year to year. Sure we lament the lack of appearance of some annuals, or the fewer flowers and more browns. But the change in mindset requires that we appreciate the brown years as well as the green. Isn’t a landscape that is exactly the same from year to year boring? Instead of just the changes of blooming plants from season to season, we should also appreciate the changes by year. Some years will be wet and green, and some will be dry and brown. Both types are temporary. The seasons change and so do the moisture levels. We should appreciate the meditative dry years as much as we do the explosive green. Can we not be addicted to the fireworks of the flower garden? As exciting as the wet years are, aren’t our lives fast enough as it is? It is nice to have some quiet time.

This year, with the wet winter, the agastache burst out of the ground, producing big mounds of greenery. Then with the dry spring and most of the summer, they sat, not growing much. Then when they did put out flower spikes, the flowers were small or non-existent. Several plants produced empty calyces. With the wetter weather, some plants such as Agastache ‘Firebird’ have started to produce more flowers. Agastache rupestris has put out a few more flower stems. Agastache hybrids such as ‘Desert Sunrise’ have had a lot of vegetative growth, but next to no flowers despite the monsoon rains. ‘Ava’ has many buds but few flowers. This year, with all the winter wet, Karl (Calamogrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster') has grown to 5 feet tall. In a drying spring, it would only be 2, or with few flower stems. The moisture has allowed many of the stucco-ista trampled plants to recover. The Artemesia versicolor has grown so much that some plants are flopping, leaving bare stems in the center. This would not have happened in a dry year. Neither would I have lost four Yucca glauca, a Salvia lavandulifolia and two Penstemon linarioides to rot.

Of course, many of the native species have been least affected by the varying moisture levels. Sure the Snakeweed (Gutierrezia sarothrae) is bigger, the Yucca glauca growing in the swale has rotted out, but the Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa) and the Fernbush (Chamaebatieria millefolium) looks about the same as the dryer years.