There Are Many Benefits to Switching Your Landscape Design to Xeriscape
Enough so, that more and more homeowners are making the shift. Some of the benefits include savings on your water bill, more sustainability, decreased yard maintenance, increased soil health as well as a healthy landscape and ecosystem for local wildlife. Sundown Landscaping is here to share some tips to help you transform your lawn into xeriscape.
Prepare Yourself & Your Yard for Xeriscaping
It takes a great deal of work to completely transform your yard into a xeriscape design. You may find that if you do it all at once, you will end up getting burnt out. If you take baby steps, the process won’t seem so overwhelming. A good rule of thumb is to plan on one big project each year until you have completed your yard.
Know what Plant & Water Zones You are In
This is one of the most important parts of making plans for your xeriscape. If you don’t choose the right plants for your zone, you will end up being disappointed when they don’t do well. If you have clay soil, plan accordingly with plants that thrive in that environment. If you have gravely soil that water drains from quickly, your plants need to be able to handle that. Also, the zone you live it has a big affect on how your plants will do. Zone 1 will get a decent amount of water and every zone after that will get less and less. Plants that don’t need a lot of water to thrive will not do well in such a wet environment. Colorado Springs is in Zone 5b and fortunately there is a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, nuts and other plant life we can grow here.
What is the Easiest Way to Remove Grass from Your Lawn?
Some people decide to remove all their grass at once, while others will do small sections at a time. There are several ways that you can effectively remove grass from your landscaping. Following are some tips:
- Solarization: You can cover your grass with a black sheeting that will soak up the sun and work to kill your grass. This isn’t a fast method and could take up to 8 weeks to complete.
- Sheeting: This is by far the slowest process and should be started in the fall, but you will be layering compost, cardboard or newspaper and organic matter like mulch on top of each other until it is completely covered and about 18 inches thick. This will leave you with nutrient rich soil in the spring that is ready to plant.
- Dig Up Grass: In the spring when the soil is nice and wet, you can use a shovel to dig up the grass for a quick removal.
- Vinegar: Vinegar will kill grass and should be applied like an herbicide. Once the grass is dead, it should be easy to remove it.
If you are interested in making the switch to xeriscape, but aren’t up to tackling it on your own, the landscape specialists at Sundown Landscaping can help. Call us today!