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So, you've heard of xeriscape, right?
pull up your lawn, throw down some rocks and call it a garden. (ugh) Well,
not quite.
I'm Kyla with tuja wellness dot com and I'm here with Gwen, the executive director of
the Okanagan Xeriscape Association.
We're here to debunked some of those myth around the xeri - zero - zeri
xeriscaping
what exactly is xeriscaping? Basically xeriscaping is gardening with the natural
environment that you live in
So, gardening such that you are just using the natural rainfall.
and there's seven principles of xeriscape and i think they're fabulous. I
think it's the best way to have a successful garden is to keep all of these so
they're planning and design
practical turf areas, soil preparation, efficient irrigation
appropriate plant selection which is the fun part
mulching
and timely maintenance.
and, so what are some of the biggest misconceptions
well like you said at the beginning zeroscape people call it zero-scape
and it's actually xeriscape and x-e-r-i is actually the Greek word for dry, that's where it
comes from.
and the big, big misconception is people think it's rocks, cactus, straggling
plants - ugly, ugly
if you follow the principles of xeriscape you can have absolutely beautiful, lush
garden in almost any style, there's tons of plants to choose from
and i actually strongly recommend that you don't use rock mulch, it throws a lot of
heat back on your huse and on your plants
and it's really hard to weed out of
and what are some of the positive effects on the environment?
well number one you can save water and it doesn't matter where you live in
canada you can save water
the infrastructure for treated drinking water is getting more and more expensive
and cities are more and more going to be putting restrictions on using it on
outdoor irrigation so if you create a garden right now with using this
xeriscape principles your garden will be
really drought tolerant no matter what happens and you'll have a beautiful
garden even if the water is completely restricted. (oh, wonderful) And the other
positive advantages is that
growing your plants using the
xeriscape principles you have really healthy
happy plants so they don't attract pests and diseases so you don't have to use
nasty chemicals in your garden.
Nice. And where can we find out more information?
from the Okanagan Xeriscape dot org website
and there's a searchable plant database on there that will work for all of
Canada. Ah, wonderful.
And for Xeriscaping information in your community be sure to check out the links on tuja wellness dot com.
tuja wellness dot com
Happy waterless gardening!