For beginners, gardening is like investing: it pays to play around in your imagination, observing how several alternatives evolve over a few months, before committing real dollars. The bigger the gamble, the more planning pays off. In the garden, big gambles include trees, which don't reveal their true nature for several years, and resource-hungry plantings, such as lawns.
At least once a month, visit a botanic garden (Tilden, UC, San Francisco) or a nursery with a demonstration garden (Yerba Buena in Woodside, Larner Seeds in Bolinas, Native Revival in Aptos, Sierra Azul in Watsonville,) to discover what appeals to you and to observe how plants change with the seasons. Most plants are labeled.
Late spring to early fall is a particularly good time to plan a native garden, but don't buy any plants yet!
All new plants need enough water to get through the dry season, but some drought-tolerant natives are sensitive to the molds that flourish in warm, wet soil, so they are easier to establish during the cooler rainy season. In addition, even nonnative trees and shrubs do better here if they're planted when the rains can help them grow deep roots.
One of the major costs of a garden is regular maintenance. Planting the right plant in the right place, choosing drought-tolerant plants, reducing or eliminating lawns, and allowing enough space for the plants' mature sizes will help keep maintenance low.
Keep in mind that even a low-maintenance landscape needs monthly to quarterly maintenance, depending on what you plant and on your tolerances. Even if you install hardscape or (much the same) a synthetic lawn, you will need to sweep or blow it off daily or weekly, and neither one is a safe play surface.
Well-planned meadows don't require the regular water, feeding, weeding, and mowing of a lawn, but they do require careful soil preparation that addresses weed problems well in advance of planting.
The lowest-maintenance and lowest-cost landscape is a heavy cover of mulch, available by the truckload from tree trimmers for free. Mulch looks better than a dead lawn, and your water bills will plummet. In addition, mulch both improves the soil and provides some of the ecological services that hardscape or synthetics can't. Any organic matter that falls on mulch will eventually be digested by the soil life, but on a hard or synthetic surface, organics become hazards or blights.
Not only that, but the easiest way to improve soil and address weed problems is to add 4 inches of mulch, with a light-blocking layer of cardboard or a few layers of newspaper underneath. Keep the mulch away from tree trunks, plant crowns, and structures, but if your yard is a blank slate, you can pile some types of mulch 6 to 12 inches deep.
To add interest and attract beneficial insects, you can add a few temporary plants – easy native or edible annuals – to soil pockets in the mulch.
© 2009 Tanya Kucak