XERISCAPE - Part 4

With my success in Grants converting a Hellstrip into a beautiful xeric garden, I was ready to expand my ideas to the house I purchased in Thoreau. It was a typical landscape of blue grass, elm trees, and a chain link fence keeping out the city herd of horses. Beyond the fence were more elm trees and rock that was the driveway. Where vehicles didn’t drive, sand covered the rock and blew into the air every time it was windy.

My first project was my Zone 1 area. Out the back door and kitchen I removed the blue grass and created a perennial garden. I removed the grass and put in a two feet cinder block wall. The soil was sand so I enriched it with peat moss, manure, and compost and put in a grid system drip line for every other day watering. The plants I selected to have color all year long: spring bulbs, summer had day lilies & delphiniums, and fall had yarrow & golden rod.

Zone 2 was the front yard which I rarely saw but needed something other than blue grass. I found someone who wanted the grass and when it was removed set about creating mounds and dips in the flat landscape. Some large rocks were placed for interest and I started drawing a pattern on graph paper where I wanted a drip system and flowers. Plants of the Southwest provided the Plateau Science Club with a fund-raising sale of Xeric plants and I stocked up. I laid the irrigation line, placed my drippers, and covered the line with 1” of soil. Then came the permeable cover cloth and a couple of inches of local crusher fine rock. Next came the plants and bushes placed by the drippers I had placed around the rocks and over the mounds. In the dips went the slightly thirstier Xeric plants which received some shade from a previously planted locust tree.

Zone 3 is my area outside of the chain link fence. All that blow sand had to be decreased! I needed grasses that would survive with minimal water and mowing. There is a New Mexico company, Curtis & Curtis that mixes grasses for different areas. They sent me a mix and with watering had a good stand of grass. It isn’t easy to keep grasses with 8-10” of rain so I still water two to four times a year. Weeds are a problem and I have some 4 feet tall grasses even the city herd won’t eat, but at least the sand blowing is gone. I also bought bushes from the forest service. Some did not survive the area but I do have some Golden Current, Wild Pink Roses, and Apache Plume. There are some flowers that have colonized the area: Gliarrdia, Paper Daisy, Mounding Peppergrass, Mexican Hat, and Scarlet Bugler Penstemon. I have tried to place plants and water them to get them started but they have all died from the lack of regular water and sandy soil.

Everyone has their challenges to garden in the arid Southwest but the successes make it all worthwhile.

This is the last in my articles on Xeriscape. As I put this section together, I reviewed what I did with my landscape. I did what seemed to flow with what I wanted to have around my home. Without knowing, I had incorporated the principles of Hydrozoning. These articles should have been titled Hydrozoning because there would have been no area for my perennial garden in Xeriscape. The next articles will be on my favorite Xeric plants.

Edith Iwan is a Cibola-McKinley County Master Gardener who lives and works in Thoreau. As a Master Gardener she assists the County Cooperative Extension Service in providing accurate, research-based gardening information to county residents. If you have any gardening questions, please call the NMSU Cibola County Extension at 505-287-9266 or NMSU McKinley County Extension at 505-863-3432