These days I am apologizing to many of those plants, because they are, or soon will be suffering mightily. If you are in a drought emergency area, so should you, because we now are in a position where we must be cruel in order to be kind. Some of our plants will have to be abandoned so that others might have a chance to live. Some will need to be cruelly uprooted or drastically cut back for the same reasons. We are in emergency mode. Extreme drought means that gardening as usual is only a pipedream. In fact there are drought emergencies in half the country right now. Drastic measures are needed if we want our gardens to survive at all.
For the plants, these are life and death decisions. The point now is not to have a lush garden - it is to save the plants you treasure without endangering our dwindling water supplies. So we have to make some hard choices.
First: Choose which plants will get water
The first, and very difficult, choice that you need to make is which plants you will abandon to their own devices. These will be the plants that are best adapted to drought conditions, These include the following.
- native plants
- those with deep taproots that may somehow find their way down to some moisture
- gray leafed plants covered with hairs that will help trap moisture
- tiny-leafed plants, which do not lose moisture as rapidly as their larger leafed counterparts
- succulent plants, which carry their own moisture supply.
The protective devices these plants have will not insure that they will survive. But with almost no rain this summer tiny-leafed lavenders and nepetas, the gray hairy leaves of the lambs ears and the succulent sedum all look pretty decent. They have much better chance of making it than the large-leafed hostas, the hydrangeas and other plants which do not have defense mechanisms for prolonged dry spells. Despite water rationing or restrictions, the plants which don't fall into the above categories will need whatever supplemental water you can give them.
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Carol Wallace's Virtual Gardening topic, please visit the Discussions page.