No. 20 // Watering Natives

I’ve always had small gardens, the ones you can easily check on and hand water, as needed. Getting out into the garden to visit my plants was never a chore - especially when we lived in the midwest and gardening was a very part-time, weather-permitting kind of thing.

Two years ago, we moved to Southern California and our new garden is more generously sized. In these past two years, we’ve managed to fill it with a variety of natives (along with some non-native favorites) and in an earnest effort to make sure each plant would be properly tended, we ran drip irrigation throughout. It’s been a luxury. I can get out and enjoy the garden, but I don’t have to actually do much of anything to keep it alive except make sure the drip timer is ticking. Perhaps, equally wonderful, the weed control is excellent because without the excess water, the weeds don’t have a chance to proliferate in this very sunny, dry Mediterranean climate. Could it be too good to be true?

In this case, yes! I recently learned, somewhat by accident, that drip irrigation is, in fact, NOT a good way to care for natives. So here I am, with a website literally dedicated to natives and I’m learning something altogether basic and new about natives. And not a minute too soon, because according to the very knowledgable people at Las Pilitas Nursery, drip irrigation KILLS most natives within 3-5 years!

According to their website, drip irrigated natives “grow fast and furious with lots of diseases. Then they just up and die. If your garden or landscape is coastal the landscape will live longer, but in the interior it probably won't survive past the third year.”

Las Pilitas also posted this handy guide for how to care for natives and other drought tolerant plants, which will undoubtably come in handy so my lovely natives can be enjoyed for years to come, giving life to local wildlife and human admirers alike. //