Re: Still no gardening

Sorry, but rock is accent in my book. Or it can serve as a mulch. Frankly, there are good plants out there that can thrive in difficult conditions. Intelligent selection of plants can yield an easy, low maintenance landscape. 

Kitty
neIN, Zone 5
----- Original Message ----- From: "james singer" <islandjim1@verizon.net> 
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Still no gardening
Ouch! 40K for a xeriscape? But we should've seen it coming. As soon as we realized water was a problem, all sorts of xeriscape specialists have tumbled into town. Mainly, they advise getting rid of the lawn [good idea] and replacing it with gravel, river rock, crushed quartz, decomposed granite, washed beach sand, or some such [bad idea]. Lawns and all their replacements are high maintenance. Fighting weeds in the gravel, I recall, was one of the labors of Hercules [maybe not]. Xeriscape should be native-scape without the undesirable plants, and require little more maintenance than the undeveloped tracts up the street. The real goal, I submit, is to re-create a natural landscape that somehow conveys the illusion--as questionable as it may seem--that your house belongs where it was built. 



On Oct 15, 2007, at 11:55 AM, Johnson Cyndi D Civ 95 CG/SCSRT wrote:


Still not much gardening going on at my house, although we did have a
nice weekend. Went to a wedding Friday on a big yacht in Newport Beach
(very ritzy!). Got home about 7 pm and thankfully we missed the
horrendous truck crash and fire that closed the big freeway interchange
we take to get home. We didn't hear about it till my sister called the
next morning to make sure we were okay, but I guess it made national
news.
I did manage to clear weeds out of another four feet or so of the
cottage garden out front. It isn't a long term fix because I was pulling
out two types of grass that both spread via underground runners. I have
no idea what one of them is, the other looks a little like Bermuda grass
but isn't. Guess it doesn't really matter what they are, unless I
bulldoze it and cut off the water, I'll be battling them for years to
come. But what I've done looks better for the moment and as it looks
better my morale goes up and I'm more willing to keep at it.  I am
pretty sure I'm going to hire a gardener to mow and get rid of leaves
over the winter months. I'm still debating (dithering would be more like
it) about getting professional advice on redoing the area. I did talk to
a friend who had a local company give him some advice on xeriscaping. I
looked at their website and went "Yuck"; they apparently have only two
looks, either gravel with a couple cactus plonked down or bare dirt with
a strip of lawn, a few rocks and some accent lights. I may not know what
I want yet, but I know that isn't it.  My friend didn't like it either
especially after they told him it would be $40K to do his yard!

Cyndi

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Island Jim
Southwest Florida
27.1 N, 82.4 W
Hardiness Zone 10
Heat Zone 10
Sunset Zone 25
Minimum 30 F [-1 C]
Maximum 100 F [38 C]

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