Ten years of landscaping and gardening without irrigation: Another book in the works

 Back in 2013 I started working for myself, and started hiring employees, with a nearly religious mission to make landscapes that use natives and need no water. ...And that get better with age and do ecologically good things, et cetera. Over the years, my landscaper era waxed and waned as I felt drawn to address crevice gardens and work away from my semi desert valley. But the mission remained.

(circa 2015, those were honest times...)

More recently, Especially during Covid, I found myself working increasingly as a "coach" for homeowners who were DIY xeriscaping their homes because of a shortage of available landscapers.  There have always been hands-on people who prefer to do their own work, and those with budgets. It is deeply gratifying to equip folks with the knowledge they need to take charge of their yards and make things that make them happy. 

After years of this, I of course find myself answering many of the same questions for people dealing with the same issues. I'd like to think I've gotten better with a decade now of practice in helping folks decide what they're going to do with a patch of earth. With a full ten-year scope, I've also reflected on the vast difference of then and now.

When I started I had little experience and native landscapes were a hard sell, a very hard sell, and I underbid in desperation for work.  I ate a lot of beans and rice. Luckily I had a few great mentors like Bob, and his integral book back then.  Now, I have to turn down work and I can barely keep up with the demand for it and am ever re-balancing what sector needs help the most to spread myself out most effectively. 

Another thing that has changed is that I'm not alone. 

Early on, and I think still to this day, the finest book on no-water gardening is French. FRENCH! Olivier Filippi's books still have not been surpassed, and isn't that embarrassing in some way to us proud Americans? But in recent years I've found friends like Jo Wakelin in New Zealand (her garden above) and John Murgel of CSU's Douglas County Extension Office.  He gave a mic-dropping talk to WildOnes a while ago that isn't available, but this parallel one is still up. Treat yourself to it- a real foundation of ground-breaking principles- over lunch. 

It feels like things are coming to a head. 

Emboldened with the experience of writing The Crevice Garden, I'm writing one on Irrigation-free landscaping and gardening. With the momentum of an even longer experience than my crevice work, and aiming to address the biggest issues dry gardeners face, with the working title of:

"No Water, More Flowers: Gardening and Landscaping with little to no irrigation."

I think there are isn't an elephant in the room about dry gardening, but a whole herd of them: What can you really expect without irrigation? When is it just inappropriate not to water?  Isn't that religiously dogmatic? How the heck can you possibly get what you need when you deprive yourself of such a tool? Where does this fit into ecologcal gardening? Aren't we just gonna desalinate the oceans and solve water shortages? What about fire? What plants can actually go without? Why do all these alleged xeric plants suck so bad at staying alive in drought when they were sold as "drought tolerant?" (I'm looking at you, Redbirds in a tree, Agastache, and Kniphofia!) 

Well, I don't think I will be the last word on it but I want to start a conversation. Now I'm going to put my slippers on and turn into my writing den; see you next year...