A chickadee nest taken from our bird house, the majority of which, I believe, was made from Juniper’s fur. So cool!

pavement rose – an unfortunate name for a stellar scented shrub

lamb’s ear

traditional hyssop in blue and pink

Jupiter’s beard

dianthus

yarrow

showy milkweed

opuntia

pink evening primrose

callirhoe

rose that came with the house

purple cranesbill

Hiya! Welcome to more encouragement for turning a lawn into a xeriscaped oasis. First off, look at the variety of flowers currently blooming in the front yard. Do you notice a theme? I didn’t want to feel overwhelmed by color in either garden, so I chose to have only pink, white, purple, and blue out front; and red, orange, yellow, and white out back. Though there are a couple of aberrations, the opuntia (I thought it was pink) and the rose, which was one of the few plants that came with the house. Perfect in its imperfection.

So, aside from all the beauty and color, another great reason to consider a garden is the cost. If you’re lucky and have a well cared for lawn from the get-go, this may be of little interest. Since our back garden was such a mess of weeds, we would have needed a lot of pricey mediation to get it right. And at about 5,000 square feet, the minimum price to tear out the weeds, prep & grade the soil, and install a less thirsty sod would have cost about $25,000. Who knows how much it would cost to water, either. One neighbor said she pays about $200 a month. As our friend Sean would say, “That’s A LOT of cabbages!!”

Not to say we haven’t put a chunk of cash into the garden, about $10,000 for the front and back, but that is for everything – 15 tons of rock, hundreds of feet of edging, rental of the Bobcat, the cost of hauling away the old patio and associated garbage, more than 40 yards of mulch, and all the purdy plants, trees, and shrubs. But, as I mentioned in my last post, our maintenance costs are next to nothing.

I can’t imagine how much more we’d be paying to keep a lawn looking nice. All that crabbiness from moving the hose hither and yon surely would have led to a sprinkler system, which, for our large yard, would cost about $5,000 – 6,000, not counting annual maintenance. Maybe we’d upgrade to a riding mower ($1,200 – 2,500!) to cut down on the hour-long mow, too. So many cabbages!

So, yeah, we’re pretty happy with our choice to have flowers, shrubs, and trees over a lawn. It’s easy and pretty and so filled with life!

Illuminated skies over our little slice of Colorado Springs and the deluge that followed. I wish summer could always be this way, enough sun for life without sweaters, ethereal rises and sets, and enough rain to keep the earth damp and our two hearts aloft.

Oh, love…

crested white prickly poppy

orange horned poppy

red birds in a tree

feverfew

Japanese honeysuckle

black raspberry blossom

blackberry

red currant

lemon variegated thyme

It is frequently asked or plain assumed that our garden is more work than a lawn. All those plants – they must consume our days with backbreaking labor. Only the first half is true now. They do consume our days, in observation of spritely butterfly, bee, hummingbird, and sometimes wild romping dog in and amongst their blossoms. Our work is minimal, a few minutes here and there to pull errant weeds, a bit of water here and there when it is scorching.

It’s the real beauty of xeriscape. The work is mostly at the beginning, getting the groundwork laid, doing the planting, watering to get everyone happy and established. Had we chosen a lawn, we’d have so much more labor.

When we first bought the house and had a lawn out front and the giant weed patch in back, it took and hour and a half each week to mow and trim. Don’t get me started on all the time it took to move the sprinkler to and fro, getting every last square of turf, and the volume of water and fertilizer it required to keep it barely green. How crabby it made me! I LOVE green and crave it like mad when deep in the throes of winter, but I am wild about foliage and color and height, too. Grass simply cannot offer what a varied landscape can.

So, think of this as encouragement, for anyone considering a change of garden scene. Choose plants wisely, and do the hard work to get it going, and your garden will be more joy than care, too.