Water-wise Landscaping – Guide for water management planning
Envision a beautiful place near your home where there is native vegetation: grasses, sagebrush, oaks, and junipers or spruce, pine, and grasses. With an image in mind, place your house in the picture without disturbing the site. The view from inside your home is a natural garden. Occasionally you see deer and butterflies, and bird songs fill the air. Your water bill is reduced, there is little or no lawn mowing, and less fertilizing and maintenance. This is what Water-wise landscaping can be (Figure 3). It can be a contemporary landscape, a modification of a traditional
style, or a combination of styles – the commonality is low water use.
Water-wise landscaping is landscaping without wasting water. It includes planning a yard for your lifestyle, grouping plants together with similar water requirements, watering just to meet plant needs and using non-water consuming areas, such as decks and patios.
By using water wisely up to 50% of landscape irrigation water can be saved. Consider a typical quarter acre lot with a 7000 square foot traditionally landscaped yard planted to Kentucky bluegrass and common high water use ornamental trees and shrubs (Figure 4). The irrigation water requirement for these plants for 5 months, at 18 gallons per square foot (high water use), is 126,000 gallons.
Conversion of the landscape to low water use plants with an irrigation requirement of only 3 gallons per sq. ft. results in use of 21,000 gallons of water in 5 months. For many homeowners it would be preferable to plant one third of the yard with high water use plants at 18 gallons per sq. ft., one third with moderate water use plants at 10 gallons per sq.ft., one sixth with low water use plants at 3 gallons per sq.ft., and to install one sixth in a hard surface such as a wood deck, or brick patio, and walkway. This scenario would result in the use of 69,000 gallons of water for the season (saving 57,000 gallons). The water saving would be 45% of the total for the conventional landscape (Figure 5).
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