Dirt Cheap Landscaping Maintenance

 

XERISCAPE: WATER-WISE LANDSCAPING

 

 

Earth’s water supply is finite. What is here now is all that will ever be available no matter how many new needs we have in the future. For gen-erations of Americans, the distribution of our national water resources dictated where the majority of the people would live, where most of our manufacturing would be centered, and where the most pleasurable rec-reation would occur. In each case, the abundance of water was the key. The northeastern states grew in population and industrial prominence due largely to the generous water supplies provided by the lakes and rivers of those states. Those same lakes and rivers and the nearby ocean also gave the northeastern states a recreational advantage over other states. Eventually technology and inventiveness permitted other states to share in the bounty. Southern California learned how to tap into the snow melt of far distant mountains and divert it to the cities of the state, thereby permitting their growth and development. Manufacturers dis-covered that they could obtain the water they needed in the southern states by mining the fresh water of swamps and the Everglades. The landlocked Midwestern states opened international ports on the Great Lakes and linked them to the ocean via the St. Lawrence Seaway. Today our national water supply is more interconnected than it has ever been. 

 

It is also experiencing a greater level of stress due to overuse and mis-use than ever before, and there is no reason to believe that the stress load will ever diminish. Cities continue to sprawl and grow even though there is insufficient water to support the growth. Underground aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be recharged by natural forces. Our national hunger for new products and new synthetic materials is filling many of our water bodies with artificial waste by-products that cannot be decomposed by naturally occurring organisms.Today, despite a generally favorable public awareness of the need for water conservation and water quality improvement, our national water supply is in jeopardy. Government at all levels is attempting to  address the problem. Some of the legislation is helpful and long overdue. Some of it is short-term, knee-jerk reaction to an immediate crisis and is quickly forgotten once the crisis subsides. Landscapers are significant users of water and are frequently caught in the middle of a community’s water crisis.In the arid regions of the country the declining availability and  quality of water were first apparent. Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of California, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Utah all have regions where water quality or quantity is limited due to insufficient rainfall or other environmental factors such as drying winds or moun-tainous terrain. Though the native plants and animals of these regions adapted long ago to their dry environments (Table 10–1) the people who have moved into these regions of the country to retire, seek recreation, or work have not adapted. Instead they have tried to bring their lifestyles with them, causing New England and Midwestern houses and gardens to spring up in areas once home to the desert. Grassy lawns grow on desert sand, and eastern shrubs bloom from planting beds filled with carefully blended soil mixtures. As the population of the Southwest has grown, the demand for water has grown disproportionately faster.Other areas of the country are now beginning to experience water stress as well. Due to the demands of a water-greedy population and the environmental mistakes of past generations, fresh water supplies are beginning to fail in every geographic region of the nation. The resulting reactions generally take two forms. One form of action/reaction is legis-lative. Governments go after polluters, forcing them to stop further pol-luting activity and clean up their past mistakes whenever possible. The other reaction is usually to impose water use restrictions on the popu-lation, which is where landscapers get hit the hardest. Plants that can’t be watered following installation will usually die. Plants that are estab-lished will also die or be stunted if not given sufficient water to maintain them.