Water-Wise Garden

We live and garden in a Mediterranean climate. If the plants chosen from our gardens are also from Mediterranean climates, they will be naturally well suited to our warm, dry summers and cool, moist winters. Incorporating these climate appropriate plants into your garden is the essential first step to creating a low-maintenance, low-water garden.

Mediterranean and Water-Wise plants include most of California’s native plants, as well as plants from other similar climates around the world, such as much of Southern Europe, large areas of South Africa, southwestern Australia, and western Chile.

Once Water-Wisewater-wise plants are selected and installed, then several other techniques can be included.

1. Reduce or Eliminate Lawns

It may sound drastic, but it is the most water conserving single action you can take. Turfgrass uses about three times the water of most common landscape plants and about five times more than native plants or most Mediterranean plants.

2. Upgrade to a Weather-Sensitive
Irrigation Controller

Imagine programming your home air conditioning and heating system to come on and turn off at specific pre-set times and durations, regardless of temperature.

That is still how many irrigation controllers operate. It makes no sense.

Switch to a weather-sensitive controller right away and your irrigations will automatically adjust to the weather, just like your thermostat does for to the temperature inside your home.

3. Fix Your Irrigation System
& Cycle the Applications

Test the efficiency and accuracy of your irrigations. A simple “can test” is easy to do and will provide incredibly useful information about where and how much water is being applied to your garden.

Next, a depth test to know how deep that water is moving into your soil. To do this, after an irrigation, push a piece of 3/8” rebar into the soil in a few places. It will slide in easily to the depth the water has penetrated, then stop. That is how far you are irrigating.

Lastly, program your timer to “cycle” to three short waterings instead of one long one. Three five-minute cycles, with a one-hour rest period between, will deliver water much more deeply than one 15-minute cycle and require less frequent applications.

4. Convert to Low-flow Sprinkler Inserts

Most sprinklers deliver water at about 1.5 to 2 inches per hour. If your sprinklers overlap, like they should, that’s 3 to 4 inches of water per hour, more than the heaviest downpour you have ever experienced.

Soil simply cannot absorb water at the rate of most irrigation systems. In many cases this can be solved by simply unscrewing the top tip of your sprinkler and exchanging it with a state of the art low-flow tip. It is not much harder than unscrewing the cap on a water bottle and screwing on a new one.

Low-flow heads will deliver water about four times slower than other heads.

5. Hydrozone • Hydrozone • Hydrozone

Thirsty plants next to low-water plants in a landscape are a common scenario. Lavenders next to roses, geraniums under olives, and lawns and shrubs that are intermixed in each of these scenarios it is always the thirstiest plant in the group that dictates the water use in that hydrozone.

Simply placing plants with the same water needs together, in the same irrigation zone, will conserve large amounts of water. Put the geraniums with the roses, the lavenders under the olive and separate the lawn from the shrubs. You will still have the same plants in your garden but will save considerable water– with the same plants!

Garden Recipe

California native and other Mediterranean climate plants are numerous, far too many to list here.

A Few of Our Favorite Low-Water, Native
& Mediterranean Climate Plants to Get You Started

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