(click on any picture to enlarge)

OK, I am getting obsessive. I know that. But show me a 4 season climate person who is not, right now. The long Winter is changing as sure as we sit here into some healthy Spring Power. I don’t know about anyone else, but I am drinking real nice and deep. Another walk, in another section of my neighborhoods, has resulted in yet more pictures. It isn’t time yet to show the previous pictures in time lapse yet – a thought I am chewing on – but I also think these serve my purposes well enough.

I made mention of Pieris Japonica the other day, complete with some luscious looks at their gurgling mass of blooms. I also mentioned I liked the Taiwanensis varieties a lot as well as the “Rosa” – redder – blossoming variety. Check this one out:

In fact, let’s just continue the walk without a lot of talk……….here are some Crocus I was thrilled with:

(I love that “woodland” look, the “naturalized” bulbs that somehow just seem like part of a gorgeous yard.)

This Star Magnolia is getting ready to bust out. I planted a few of these in Reno for people who had never had one before and they became instant fans every Spring and thanked me profusely. Since he and his wife were big home builders, it made the right impression for all sorts of reasons. It’s funny what a plant can do.

This extremely-pruned Photinia has changed from the green look of Winter to a decidedly red sheen from all the newer leaves busting out. It is always sort of arresting the effect a single plant can have.

Here’s an early look at your standard average early-blooming Chinese Pears:

(These we will return to. These guys really put on a show.)

The nearly sheer cascading branches in the foreground of these pink-blooming early Cherries is a gorgeous European Birch tree I have always particularly liked. The street signs add some real amateur authenticity!

Landscape Window Shopper Alert: I just always liked the set up of this home. A very modest, simple landscape, replete with a bunch of Rhododendrons which will make a gorgeous showing this Spring – their buds are huge. Very tasteful and perfectly proportioned, with those nice Firs standing tall, a cool-looking sort of Summer Place. We’ll be back by here with some killer Rhodie pictures later.

And finally a picture of our neighborhood park. I post this to illustrate a very typical North West look – plenty of Douglas Fir trees. In this arrangement, closely grown, they develop a literal canopy and the quietest walkways. A naturalized forest floor is being created as they grow with the grass which would probably grow in the forest were it not for the “duff” and debris the trees constantly produce from winds and the aging process. These are groomed by the Parks and Rec Department, so we get the benefit of trees and a soft green floor. Pretty cool.

Spring is pretty nervous out here in the Pacific North West. Oh, it’s showing up in small degrees. I spoke with my Mother the other night in Louisville and she is waxing on about 70 degree weather. My friend in Tuscon, of course – well, never mind. Phillip in the Bay Area can just shut up too! 😉 In any case, color me excited – which is the entire point of this post! The weather rarely clears 60 degrees – in fact, that would drive everyone outdoors in bunched packs of sun-seeking crazed cabin fever victims – yet, the days of frost are pretty much over so the plants can all feel reasonably secure about getting their reproductive gear together.

So I took a walk around the local ‘hood. Generally, this is an average neighborhood but it always has a fabulous array of perfect examples of just about everything plantable in the Pacific Northwest. There is a wild variety of homes and gardens which any walk can surprise and regale one with interesting floral sights.

Every Spring I get reminded of why my clients – to a man – all raved about and wanted me to make sure and plant Forsythia. Here is why (bearing in mind how “early” things are):

Daffodils and Crocuses always mark early Springtime. I am not sure they aren’t a week or two late this year, but – hey – who cares? The important thing is they made it.

Like I said – real early –

But the earliest Rhodies have even got into the act – and even before trees have leafed out. Notice below the Rhodies, we have a picture of your early Plum Blossoms. Those guys generally precede just about everything, save for quince and forsythia. This year they tied.

Of course, another week or two of good weather will render all this old news. But, honestly, who can take away the joy of seeing the new Spring, with all its little blooming glories? It’s been a rough Winter out here – plenty of snow, plenty of gloomy days in many many respects. At least we don’t have to pay for Springtime. This one is part of the Birth Package!

Pieris Japonica has always been a favorite of mine. I especially like those ice cream-like clusters of blooms on this gorgeous broadleaf evergreen. There are also many varieties, as well, including the rosy-colored ones and the especially effective Taiwanensis. This one really needed a picture.

The local State Plant, Mahonia Aquifolium, (Oregon Grape) is in the foregound here and sporting some early buds which will soon be bright yellow flowers, which, in turn, will become the purple “grapes”. I’ll snap some pictures as they develop because they are a true local wonder to me. Love them. That interesting row of mature Pieris are beyond those Mugho Pines at a nearby complex in an effective example of mass planting.

This Star Magnolia is another of those early bloomers, this one just getting underway. It will make another killer picture as a week or two goes by. Interestingly, it and the Mahonia’s actually do well in the Reno climate. In fact, almost all these plants do, when given some shade, even the Rhodedendrons.

Come to think of it, what more appropriate picture could I include for the real gardeners among us than this? Paul here is applying his most high tech solution to the conundrum of inserting plants into the Earth. Notice the intense concentration, the incredibly fluid style and his utter managerial competence as he applies himself to solving the problems at hand!

Some stuff you just can’t teach! 😉

Gardening season is right around the corner. I know of some folks who have already got some “starts” going on bedding plants and garden veggies and who await Spring’s advance like tigers waiting for prey. As soon as the sun comes out – BAM! – on go the clogs.

For landscapers, it’s always the time when people make the call, asking when they should turn on their systems or to hire someone to come out and perform that feat for them. In many cases, restarting irrigation systems can be elaborate and mistake-prone, especially if newer firms or people are doing the work. In other cases, a couple of switches get hit and they are off.

But that’s for those who have systems.

Who Should Have an Irrigation System?

It’s a perfect question. It is also actually pretty easy to answer:

Anyone who gets tired of hauling around hoses and who feels trapped by the labor of having to supply water to gardens and lawns they have at home.

Anyone who puts off a vacation because the neighbors admit they are finally tired of coming next door every day to monitor and water your garden.

Anyone who puts off a vacation or a night out because of their garden.

Anyone who over waters, who forgets those hoses running or who watches half of what they applied running off the lawn and down the street. This latter issue, my friends, gets expensive.

Anyone who wants to save some money over the long haul.

Anyone who worries that water is a dwindling resource.

A well-designed Irrigation System releases one from the trapped and the sometimes expensive feeling of all the above.

How Can An Irrigation System Improve My Life?

If you are the proud – or even semi-proud – owner of a plot of land that grows things, then you probably spend at least some time watering. In most cases, there is supreme enjoyment of laying on water manually – holding the hose in your hand and feeling nurturing and attentive to your garden plants. The issue is not to take this pleasure away. The issue is far more oriented to things like time and efficiency.

The light spraying of lawn and garden sprinklers or the subterranean applications from drip irrigation emitters directly to your plant roots are designed to apply the most efficient possible applications of water in the most efficient time frames you can design. It allows a perfect world, really. The history of irrigation has been written by players of the game. It has evolved now into an art form that merely advances in minute ways, having been somewhat perfected, much like computers, for hands-on pleasure and ease of use.

It is now possible to literally go away and come back later to an abundant garden without the rigamarole of all that hands-on effort. For those who like to travel – or who need to – having an irrigation system performs an important task:  It lets you garden.

I told you it was simple.

Modern times are heading at us like a freight train. An expanding population increases the need for water resources like never before and we find ourselves these days on the verge of wondering where the heck it’s going to come from. Here’s an irony – living in Portland, Oregon, set solidly in the Pacific North West and subject to incessant rainfall for fully half the year, we find ourselves in drought conditions many Summers. Something so apparently reliable as water in a rainy climate is less than that, it turns out.

Having lived in Reno, Nevada as I have yields another irony: They may be better off. The planners in Reno developed large reservoirs in times past which – admittedly – depend on snowfall during Winters, but snow in the Sierra Nevada Range is pretty predictable. Nevertheless, they have also reached a controlled panic stage since the city expanded so rapidly. When we look at Las Vegas or Los Angeles, then we see real panic with plenty of reason. Indeed, a controlled panic may be the way to typify things all over, in the end.

The explosion of landscaping in American Society, where economic times have yielded so much wealth and improvements within the span a just a couple of generations presents us with something of a quandary. As immense as the landscaping designing of our homes by ourselves or others has become, we find untold numbers of people gardening for food as well. Neither of these things is particularly in the category of “sinful” – in fact, far from it. Yet, each requires a perspective and the sooner we acquire a reasonable perspective on our roles in improving the areas of water wastage and include a few less water hogging elements, the better off we will all be.

What adjustments do we, as gardeners and landscape designers and professionals have to play in improving things?

Are Lawns Intrinsically Evil?

I have spent much time converting grass lawns to beds and plantings. Grass is indeed very water-intensive, as wonderful as it can be. I have come to grips with this fact by actually changing much of the focus of my own designs from lawn-dominated English models of landscaping – a truism in the US thus far for 100 years – to elements that feature alternative elements. Things as simple as flower beds or planted shrubbery occupying a larger area actually end up making for a far more interesting landscape in the end and certainly draw less water. This most certainly does not exclude grass lawns from consideration whatsoever. But it does mean the massive areas they once occupied can be replaced and broken up. Of all the elements in a landscape which use most water, I am afraid grass rules the roost by a long way. Looking at the waterfall above and the lawn below it, if you were to compare which uses the most water on a daily basis, you would find that the grass uses approximately 100 times more. Naturally, the waterfall merely recycles existing water, although its evaporation and its “splash loss”, especially in high winds, requires an automatic irrigation control valve to top it off daily.

Nor is grass necessarily that hoggish. We have found that hybrid grasses have been developed which root very deeply and thus require not only fewer applications in terms of their numbers, but even of time and general volume.

The Advent Of Irrigation In Common Usage

When irrigation systems first arrived onto the homeowner and commercial landscape scene, they were used to relieve us of the pain of manually yarding hoses all around the property and, of course, of depending on rainfall. Not only was this a labor-intensive chore, but it also set us up for immense waste. Falling asleep, forgetting the sprinklers – any number of possible minor disasters were possible and a timed irrigation system was actually an improvement in so many various ways. I will even offer the distraction of beer itself in my list of possible ruinations for lawn watering. Yes, sad but true.

But irrigation technology evolved in a million different and congruent directions. Better and more efficient sprinkler heads, better and more reliable control valves, the advent of easier-to-program clocks and timers, drip irrigation (a huge one!), all conspired to make the entire edifice of irrigating plants and grass more efficient. It has come to a point where now a good design and the most modern equipment can cut in thirds or even much more what used to be unnecessarily voluminous amounts of water to sustain our garden’s growth.

Better and more water-conservative designs make it possible to create masterpieces of efficiency even on large tracts of land. Blooms galore, weird and wonderful features like waterfalls, sculptures, patios, gazebo’s, outdoor ovens and fire pits and just the serendipitous arrangements of contrasting or congruent colors in similar masses or in riots of divergent colors are available to a water-wise gardener/landscaper. The current challenges to designers are cost-related as well, bear in mind. Water will simply cost us more. I cannot envision a world where the cost of water decreases. Therefore, and probably foremost, conservation will not only be environmentally responsible – it will be frugal.

I am going to focus on water for the foreseeable future in here. It is looming Springtime and we will soon be reactivating sprinkler systems for people here in Portland and down in Reno for the Summer to come. As well, some of us will be wondering how to approach irrigating things for the year to come. I just think it is most timely now, when we are planning, to understand some essential principles involved in irrigation and water-wise gardening in general.