Why Should You Care About Irrigation?

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Steve

I’m recycling a series of posts I made a few years ago about irrigation and the situation we are nearing regarding the world’s water sources and usage. Increased urbanization has produced an enormous thirst, world-wide, which, combined with Climate Change, are taxing us more severely than I believe we realize.

Irrigation offers something of a help in water conservation, but the greatest thing we can all do is to learn more about our role in saving water in a very general way.

Well, if you are not one of the millions of people who live in water-challenged environments, then maybe you shouldn’t. Know this, however: Water is the kind of thing wars get fought over. Right now, for example, Turkey has built a virtual TVA system on the Euphrates which has led to their control of the water that runs into Iraq and which produced extremely opulent vineyards and agricultural development which were once the wonder of the Ancient World. A drought has since occurred, meaning the rationing of this water tends to go to Turkish interests first. The result for Iraqi’s is less water, fewer crops, angry farmers and a new plague of snakes – and vipers at that, looking for homes. I could go on with current tales of tensions mounting over water issues elsewhere, too.

Here at home, much of my landscaping, living in Reno, Nevada, dealt with making this picture: (click any image to enlarge)

And this:

Into this result:

And this:

The lawn in the picture was insisted upon – as are lawns elsewhere. There is a turf farm lobby and fervent advocating for lawns in desert areas which is meeting some fierce resistance from common sense. While the arguments tend to stay political – and almost stupid in their simplicity and lack of insight – it is true that lawns are water-hogging enterprises. For my money, this is not to say they are not ever a lovely addition to a landscape. They are desirable in any number of a wide variety of ways – including cooling a place down in the Summer heat and providing some moisture for the air. I have always advocated a piece of lawn if the design was crying for it. But we no longer need massive swaths of lawns ala’ the English Model for the homes we decorate up out West. I have come to using lawns more for walkways in strips which make them special for barefoot walking and enjoying the green soothing effect. Besides, lawns are a lot of work!

Here in the United States, we face the same deal. Expansion to Sun Belt areas means a growing population using fewer and fewer water resources. Australia is another region who faces absolutely similar situations. Just like all other adjustment made apparent by our expanding populations – such as social benefits like rapid transit and skyscrapers – we will need to adjust yet again, but this time to a resource which we have always taken for granted. We have historically, in other words, undervalued water.

Acting responsibly at home just makes it easier on everyone when the hammer comes down. Using drip irrigation instead of bulk water-powering spray heads is just one way to save water for the crowd around us. Limiting our design to exclude humongous patches of lawn is another. Believe me, there are plenty of other ways to provide livable and gorgeous surroundings, even in a desert or semi-desert.

Irrigation provides the predictable measure of water spent on watering our precious landscapes and gardens. Its predictability and its accuracy are the keys here. Ill-aimed lawn nozzles can waste water egregiously, sending it down the street in a useless waste. But accurately-aimed lawn nozzles can efficiently water our lawns using less than half of the water we’d use applying an oscillating sprayer from our hoses. Watering a veggie garden by hand might just be the most wasteful utility of them all. A drip system will water the roots only, without evaporation or waste, providing healthier plants with an absolute minimum of wastage.

Providing the wide range of effects and tools now available to landscapers and designers can even result in crowds clamoring to see what all the buzz is at a well-lit up home. Notice this picture below how I am literally never without friends!

Anyway, adjusting we are doing. Irrigation companies now offer bonuses to those with ideas that lead to water saving technologies. This is “doing it right” and it also takes from plumbing (no pun intended) 😉 the many ingenious people among the general population for great ideas. In a sense, every small bit contributes to the overall whole. Smart landscaping and gardening persons are taking this all to heart. Being ahead of the curve in anticipating looming water problems might be one of the easiest calls ever. And, for sure, the stress of water-shortages has not hit with what will eventually be its full power.

Landscape Grasses – Constant Modifications

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Steve

Grasses

I’m recycling this post and adding some pertinent pictures because of an amazing couple of weeks – maybe month – of people asking questions about grasses.

Every year it seems we read about yet another incredibly attractive grass species. We watch as these hybridized and developed new and altered species express all that the clump grasses – and even lawn grasses – do to make themselves so appealing. Hybridized lawn grasses are in a constant search for a turf grass which won’t require using so much water to stay green and very substantial progress has been and is being made. But they are for another time. This is the Landscape Grass realm.

Landscape Grasses

(click any image to enlarge)

Comfortable small clumps such as these gorgeous small grasses shown here at the Portland Chinese Garden influence a walk, softening the impact of transitional areas and making them every bit as important to attend as the larger plants and views beyond them. Our attention begins at where we walk and it is plain to see these borders are a welcoming type.

Other grasses are hugely different – and serve different effects. The grasses below frame a Junior High School sign. As they develop, they nearly overwhelm it with silky seed fronds and the inherent yellow tints of the leaves themselves.

And, reaching larger dimensions, no grass discussion ever seems complete with mention of the Pampas Grasses we have all come to enjoy so much. Set here amid a rather stunning “All Grass” landscape design, complete with at least 3 different species comprising the entirety of this massed landscape planting, we see the effectiveness of form and structure as well as the simple beauty of the plants themselves.

Smaller grasses are equally effective when massed, as could be expected. Reliable, tough grasses survive and thrive in our landscapes requiring little outside of the odd yearly “haircut”. They are neither water or maintenance hogs, seemingly impervious to many of the diseases and problems in more delicate species. Full sun? No problem? Part sun? Take us there. Not great soil? Yum! This is an easy plant to come to like!

Some are just plain pretty all on their own, too:

And they are even nicer in numbers – in a grouping, changing the hard lines of cement planters and streets to a softer, less angular existence.

These landscape grasses can come in some startlingly understated form, small, wispy, wind-affected silk flags coming out of the ground around us. Put together they make a stunning mass of unique and surprising color.

This is my “Blond Bed”. 😉

Famous for their beautiful electric pink seed fronds, these “Muhley Grasses” at the entry to Yew Dell Gardens in Louisville, Kentucky, show another amazing possibility in the use of grass for color as well as form.

Easy-to-maintain, hardy and somewhat drought-tolerant, grasses of all kinds are making a monster inroad into the thinking of landscape designers. The newer varieties of these beauties are tending towards more color, more variegation, more amazing seed colors, silkier textures and just generally yet more applications within landscapes. Many of these grasses have been used even in the distant past, yet the newer stuff just keeps coming with wonderful new cultivars of impressive beauty and form.

I say keep it up.

Just Pictures – Archives And Recent

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Steve

Gleaned over the years……… and some very recent – as in last week.

😉

A somewhat perfect Vertical Garden – from Portland, Oregon.

(click any image to enlarge)

The lasting virtue of this relatively new technology is in its space-saving reclamation of Nature over Cement – among other things. Of course, who doesn’t like the otherwise fascinating look at small works of art hung on a wall or hallway?

Roses called in – said “Get a load of us!”

The Portland, Oregon Rose Garden proves yet again why Portland calls itself “The Rose City” – not that I doubted its claim.

Such a gorgeous setting, overall……

This humongous Weeping Beech always captivated me. It just keeps growing, too, quite happily. The entire “weeping” element of trees has captivated me for some time –

I began using them shamelessly in my own designs after seeing them in such circumstances – and in such profusion as exists around Portland.

I even remember when the picture above was looking like this:

But, yes, the fascination with Weeping Trees stayed. There was always something “sympathetic” about the downward direction of limbs and the coursing water looking so “in place” beside it.

It became something of a trademark in my water feature constructions –

But weeping trees may also claim their very own environment and stand gorgeously on their own in a soft, appealing gesture.

Did someone say roses? Let’s get drunk on some.

On my most recent visit to the Portland Rose Garden, my wonderful friend Annette and her family accompanied me – or I them – Annette played with her filter on a few –

to interesting ends……….

Of course, some require No Filter – Nature does it for us……

For some supremely stupid reason, I often laugh when I see this picture:

My Current Quandary Is What To Like Most About Spring??

Which blooms rock most?…………..Is it the Rhododendrons?

The absurd profusions of the Spring-blooming Crabapples and Cherries?

Or did we miss something?

Dogwoods, for example?

Speaking of “absurd profusions”…………

This is an excellent method of exposing some archives………..Hope you enjoyed it!

😉

The Use Of Grasses In Landscaping

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Steve

Using various grasses in landscapes is not particularly new. Dating back from a period when the UK’s interest piqued towards the new Pampas Grasses, imported from the more arid South American countries, grasses soon made their usefulness spread to the wider world. It’s certainly easy to see the attractiveness of Pampas Grass, and even more so when their sheer size and rather stately presence becomes bedecked in such gorgeous seed fronds as those show below.

(click any image to enlarge)

The truth is, grasses were especially greeted owing to how these large broom-like fronds manifested. Their dried effects have become highly desirable in indoor settings, often dyed but always soft and sturdy. There’s really nothing quite like them.

But the more intrepid gardeners and landscaping aficionado’s stayed hard at work, developing and hybridizing yet more oodles of newer grasses. The results are simply mind-blowing. It does seem that grasses are receiving more innovations than nearly any other garden/landscape species. Here is a bizarre plant, full of the most unusual potentials -note the color!

This is the Panicum Virgatum “Prairie Sky“.

I’m not sure we were entirely ready for blue blooms on grasses, although, to be honest, after seeing the wonderful Muhly Grass (Muhlenbergia Capillaris) which is being more widely used as accents in landscapes, one should probably not be the least bit surprised:

The blooms seem to be the thing, so far, and with ample reason……………and yet…………….

We find ourselves, as designers and plant lovers beset with a range of options which is nearly brand new – and offering entirely new effects to present to the wider cosmetical world.

The very shapes and forms of these gorgeous species make incredible “edge softeners”, appearing in a fuzzy tight globular form even prior to the emergence of their lovely fronds. As a pure shaped effect, the roundness and soft lines of these various grasses do not even take advantage of their other attributes, which can include variegation and strange and very colorful striations:

They mix well with other plants, such as lilies, as evidenced here in the Papa John’s Pizza world headquarters in Louisville – a fascinating bit of landscaping a bit East of town which features not just these gorgeous grasses but an extremely impressive waterfall and lake.

In appreciation of someone’s elegant craftsmanship, the waterfall at Papa Johns:

Some of my favorite grasses we implemented along the mosaic pathways at the Portland, Oregon Chinese Garden, during the construction of that killer city block’s worth of ancient and white hot landscaping: 😉

One can readily observe the referred-to “softening effect” of such charmingly lumpy and colorful small plants which – when massed – provide the beginnings of a virtual embrace by the landscaping surrounding this well-crafted walkway.

Smaller and less awe-inspiring grasses such as these rather simple, non-invasive clumps of delicate-bladed grasses, bend in the wind, offering a kinetic green presence which amplifies the senses and presents us with a helpful presence in spotlighting these gorgeous glass sculptures displayed here at Yew Dell Gardens in Louisville as produced by local high school artists and offered for sale at the time.

Grasses can add “peculiarity” to an otherwise somewhat normal environment, not simply because of the fronds, but with the content of its shape as well.

Highlighted here by a load-bearing Sun, the magical look is achieved in the gorgeous fronds of this Miscanthus as the sun highlights it’s crystal-seeming clarity.

I have become an outrageous fan of grasses in general. When combined with the various sedges and water grasses such as Papyrus, the realm of these plants goes from arid to swampy in short order, offering a range of planting possibilities it is nearly impossible to lose at.

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Category Archives: Design Themes

Why Should You Care About Irrigation?

Landscape Grasses – Constant Modifications

Just Pictures – Archives And Recent

The Use Of Grasses In Landscaping