Most of our display gardens are watered with drip, but this section has never had any irrigation at all. Over the 15 years since it was planted, this area has evolved and new plants have come in. It started with sagebrush, rabbitbrush and bitterbrush–the ‘big three’ of our lower foothills. Later, using the shade of these shrubs, I planted one small mormon tea and a couple of buckwheats–sulfur and arrowleaf. Over the years two more buckwheats–strict and whorled–have shown up on their own, along with narrowleaf milkweed, several globemallows and seedlings of the nearby netleaf hackberry and gambel oak trees.
Elsewhere at Draggin’ Wing we have fernbush, Fremont’s mahonia, littleleaf mountain mahogany, fernleaf yarrow, goldenrod, catmint and a few other sturdy plants happily growing without water. I think at this point most of our established shrubs really don’t need irrigation.
A totally no-water landscape might be considered the gold standard of xeriscaping. Without irrigation you definitely limit the variety of plants you can grow, but these experiments demonstrate that–with the right plants–it can be done!