Autumn, ’tis a bittersweet season

Posted on September 23, 2023 by John Kevin Hickey

But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.” – Salem’s Lot

Stephen King

Autumn officially arrived at 00:50 this morning here in the Mountain time zone. Cheers to the return of the best season of the whole year!

I have mentioned more than once on this blog that I am a huge fan of autumn (see: Autumn splendor in Colorado, Welcome back autumn you’ve been missed, Welcome Autumn, I’ve had enough of summer. It’s time to move on to autumn., and Autumn is here…finally!.

After weeks/months of blistering summer heat, the cooler days of autumn are a blessed relief. I can finally enjoy being outside again. I don’t turn in to a sweaty pile of clothes the moment I set foot out my door. I don’t handle heat very well. Never have. I spend almost the entire month of August hiding out from the heat, with the a/c running during the day and fans blowing all night. Being trapped inside all day leads to a bit of cabin fever.

However, when autumn rolls back around I am rejuvenated. The cooler days entice me back out into the yard, or onto the bike paths. It’s enjoyable once again to just relax on the patio, or in my hammock.

There’s so much to look forward to in the autumn months. Fall is the season of Halloween and Thanksgiving. Football has returned. Spicy chili and cornbread are back on the menu. The trees put on a stunning display to close out the growing season. The garden returns, albeit briefly, to its former glory. And the mosquitos have disappeared. Huzzah!

Still, I must admit that while autumn is my favorite time of the year, even I have conflicting feelings about the season. Autumn is a season that sometimes can engender introspection and sadness, for a variety of reasons.

After all, the days are growing shorter while the shadows grow longer, and the veil between this world and the next grows thin.

Autumn introspection and nostalgia; a season of sadness…

Moody autumn sunrise, Centennial, Colorado

Each season has a “feeling” to it. For me, winter is to be endured.

Spring is a transition season, but it is transition of optimism and renewed vigor, when the days have grown longer, and life abounds yet again.

Summer is the season of BBQs and the 4th of July, of vacations and trips to the mountains/beaches/whateverfloatsyour boat. It’s baseball games and summer concerts, pool parties and amusement parks. It’s the season that celebrates life.

Autumn, like spring, is also a season of transition. It heralds the closing of the year, and thus we become acutely aware of time slipping away. The season becomes one of sadness as we grieve the passing of time, the loss of our youth, the fading of our dreams and hopes, the passing of friends and loved ones. I think it is no coincidence that Samhain, All-Hallows Eve, and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), all occur in autumn. Every year we ask ourselves “where has the time gone?”. For better or worse, another year will soon be marked “complete” in our ledger.

For a younger person, this can trigger an existential dread. They may lament “what am I doing with my life?”. I know I used to. Now that I have reached geezer status, that question has been replaced with “I wonder how many more autumns I will be around for?”.

And, of course, we are all too aware that the long cold bleak days of winter are just a few short weeks away.

I know several people who actively detest autumn for these very reasons.

And of joy

Yet autumn is also a season of celebration and for gathering together with our loved ones. We rejoice in the harvest, and its attendant feasts. We revel during Oktoberfest and autumn festivals, pumpkin mazes and Halloween. We huddle together in late November to give Thanks for all our blessings. Many of us who celebrate Christmas like to close out the season by decorating our home in preparation for the first holiday of the winter season.

It truly is a paradoxical season.

There’s also a nostalgia factor about autumn. While I hated returning to school, it was fun to reconnect with friends I hadn’t seen in months. The first Scholastic book catalogs arrived in early fall. Playing football on the weekends. Planning what to be for Halloween. (For younger readers, there weren’t Spirit stores stocked with a plethora of costumes and Halloween decorations available. You either made your own costume, or your folks bought you a cheap, piece of shit costume from a department store that included a stamped plastic mask held on to your head by a rubber band). Going to the pumpkin patch to pick out the perfect gourd to make into a jack-o-lantern. Good times!

If you’re interested, here’s a pretty good explanation for why we feel the way we do about autumn: There’s a Psychological Reason Why We Love Fall So Much (verywellmind.com)

The Grande Finale

Albert Camus stated that “autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is a flower”. For those of us who live in more temperate climes here in the United States, the fall foliage display is nature’s version of a 4th of July fireworks grand finale. This final blaze of glory ends of the growing season with a bang.

I have been blessed enough in this life to have witnessed autumn colors in several iconic places in the US.

From the New England states…

B.F. Clydes cider mill in Mystic, Ct
Sugar Maple in all its glory along the Freedom Trail in Massachusetts

To the mid-Atlantic states…

A blaze of color in front of the Smithsonian, Washington D.C.

To the mid-West…

Image by whisperingwoodsgoods from Pixabay Sorry, I couldn’t find a picture from my visit to Wisconsin. Enjoy this stock photo instead.

To Colorado and the mountain west…

Aspen color in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

To my very own backyard.

Native bigtooth maple in the Vintage yard

In the memories of my childhood, it seemed to me back then that the fall foliage display lasted for a long time. This memory is, of course, wrong. The truth is autumn’s grand finale is a rather short-lived spectacle, and always has been. Display length and intensity is totally dependent on the weather. Some years the show can last up to two weeks or more. Other years, an early hard frost or snowstorm can end the display overnight. Or perhaps an autumn gale comes along and strips the trees bare just as they’ve reached peak color.

Heck, just a couple of years ago, we here along Colorado’s Front Range had an unseasonably warm fall. Just as the temperatures finally dropped to the average and the trees started turning colors, a freak snowstorm came through. And that was that. Sorry folks, show’s over until next year.

And when that show is over, all that is left is the bare branches that seem to claw at the chilly sky, grasping for a sunny warmth that is denied them for many months to come. Then we know, really know, that winter is fast approaching.

The eastern, central and northern United States is one of the few places on earth where the growing season goes out with such a glorious blaze of color. For those of us lucky enough to live in such places I think it is important for us to slow down and enjoy the show, however long it might last. As an added bonus, it’s free.

The rejuvenated garden

Come Labor Day, the Vintage garden looks quite worn and threadbare. By late summer the plants have had a very eventful growing season. Late spring snows and freezes, followed by torrential rains, bashing winds and hail in early summer. (We are fortunate to here at the Vintage ranch. The hail we received was small and not too copious. Parts of Colorado got hail so heavy that snowplows had to be utilized to clear streets. Parts of eastern Colorado got hail the size of softballs!).

Once the rains receded, the plants endured weeks and weeks of heat and no appreciable moisture. And through it all were the legion of pests that gnawed and chomped their way through the buffet we so helpfully provided them. Squirrels, rabbits, caterpillars, grubs, leaf miners, aphids, you name it we seemed to have ’em. And the scourge from last year, grasshoppers, returned to wreak havoc of biblical proportions. It’s amazing there’s a garden at all.

But a week or two after Labor Day, something amazing happens. The temperatures moderate, and in some years we get rain (inch and a half last week). The predators have begun laying waste to all the pests. Mosquitos have been absent for weeks.

And the garden begins to recover and look almost as energetic as it did in early June. But this late season flush is different. In late spring and early summer, the plants are just reaching their potential size. That means there is a lot of space between each plant, like soldiers in formation. There is a formality and rigidity to the borders.

By autumn, everything has grown lush. The plants now lean, and sprawl and weave through each other. The garden is more relaxed, and so is the gardener. About the only thing to worry about is trying to get the last tomatoes or peppers to ripen before a cold snap ruins them.

As an added bonus, by this time there are far fewer weeds to deal with.

Thanks to diligent planning (and planting), the Vintage garden shines in late summer and autumn. Asters, goldenrods and sedums are flowering in colors that might have seemed gaudy earlier in the year. But thanks to the softer sunlight, the colors hues cooperate in perfect harmony. Plus, there is an audible quality to these plants; pollinators swarm of the flowers in such numbers that they make the flowers vibrate.

Asters, sedums and ornamental grasses mingle on a chilly autumn morning

Grasses have set their plumes, and parts of the Vintage garden look a little like the prairie that it once used to be. And if the conditions are just right, some of the summer flowering perennials put on a new (albeit more sparsely) flush of blooms.

And some of these plants even put an autumn foliage display of their own. While these plants can’t compete with the giant blowtorch colors of nearby trees, they can add a subtle fire of their own down at eye level. Small shrubs such as viburnums, chokeberries, cotoneaster, and more add to show. Heck, even blue mist spiraea adds a touch of faded yellow to the mix.

The End of the Garden Year. Or is it?

Then comes the day, just like with the trees, when a storm or freeze comes along and ends the gardener year. But is it really? For you see, many gardeners view autumn not as the end, but as the start of the gardening year.

Consider this my friends: in autumn, we rake or mulch the fallen leaves off the grass, to ensure that they don’t matt down and kill the turf. We fertilize the grass with a winterizer in late fall to ensure a lush and healthy lawn come spring.

We cut down spent perennials and annuals that don’t provide winter interest to prevent diseases from overwintering in the old growth. Some veggie gardeners sow a manure crop, one that will slowly grow over the winter, to be turned over in spring to add nutrients to the soil.

We plant spring flowering bulbs in bare spots, so as when the temperatures warm again we will be cheered by their colorful blooms.

We clean, sharpen and oil our tools in preparation for the growing season ahead.

And of course, we intently study garden and seed catalogs over the winter, dreaming and scheming of big plans for the seasons ahead.

So be of good cheer my friends, while your garden (and its gardener) may go into hibernation soon, rest assured that the growing season is but a few short months away.

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Anxiety, gardening and the fine art of mindfulness

Posted on September 9, 2023 by John Kevin Hickey
Image by Julita from Pixabay

I recently discussed the various ways I manage my anxiety (see here: Living with anxiety: riding out the storm (mrvintageman.com). One of the best mental health tools at my disposal I have found to be is the practice of mindfulness.

Mindfulness has been all the rage for over the past 10 years or so. And with good reason. Mindfulness is a powerful tool in dealing with mental health issues, including anxiety and depression. It is NOT a cure by any means. But the practice of mindfulness and meditation has been shown to shrink the amygdala, and to weaken the neural pathways to the amygdala.

How I stopped worrying (not really), and learned to love the amygdala

Let me back up here a minute and give a quick overview of the amygdala. The amygdala (plural: amygdalae) are two, almond shaped clusters located deep in the cerebrum. The amygdala is part of the limbic system, and its primary functions are to process information, decision making and emotional responses.

It is also the emergency broadcast system of your brain. (Note: this is an EXTREMELY simplified explanation of the amygdala’s response in regard to anxiety). Say you’re walking along a path and come across a stick that looks like a snake. Or maybe it actually is a snake. Either way, your brain says “whoa, is that a snake”?

Your amygdala’s response is “SNAKE? DID YOU SAY SNAKE??”, and triggers your body’s fight, flight or freeze response. Which, in this particular case is actually a good thing. However, the mind of anxiety sufferers creates all sorts of threatening scenarios, imaginary or otherwise, on a nearly constant basis. Which continuously triggers the amygdala, and this puts the anxiety sufferer in a perpetual state of threat response.

When you put a body part under stress, it adapts by getting stronger. And like a mental bodybuilder, the amygdala responds to constant threats by getting all swole and buff. If the dangers and threats are real, this is a good thing. If the dangers are not real, well, it sucks.

Thus, for anxiety sufferers anything that might actually shrink the amygdala, even just a little, is a net positive.

Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay

Mindfulness and meditation: what’s the difference?

So, what is mindfulness? Simply put, it means being in the moment. You’re not thinking about the past, or the future. You’re in the NOW, man! If you’re eating dinner, then you’re just focused on your food and how it tastes. If you’re working out, then you’re focused on exercising correctly and on how your body is responding. Should you notice intruding negative thoughts, you just let them fade away and get back to focusing on the matter at hand. It’s actually very simple.

Like so many things in life, simple does not mean that it is easy.

Meditation is similar to mindfulness. When you are meditating, you are not focusing on being aware of your surroundings. Instead, you’re focusing on quieting the thinking part of the brain. There are different ways to meditate: focusing on deep breathing or chanting a key word (such as OMM), or perhaps intently focusing on an object. It’s a way of calming the brain. But one does not need to meditate to practice mindfulness.

For a better explanation of the difference between meditation and mindfulness, check out this site: Mindfulness vs. Meditation (verywellmind.com)

I would like to point out that in order for mindfulness to work on anxiety, it must be done on a continual basis. Waiting until an anxiety attack strikes is almost pointless. Just like a muscle, the brain must be strengthened over time to handle stress. You wouldn’t start a workout program the day you’re going to move furniture. Same with mindfulness.

Before there were anti-anxiety medications, therapists, mindfulness…there was gardening.

Once I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, I learned that I’ve had to deal with an overactive emergency broadcast system my entire life. And over the decades, I have subconsciously found various ways to cope with it. Gardening, it turns out, was one of those coping mechanisms.

MrsVintage and I purchased our house in the early 90s. Shortly after moving in, we became parents. A couple of years later, another child arrived. Meanwhile, I was working a high-paced technical job, both as a civilian and as a member of the Air National Guard, where a mistake could be catastrophic. And, as an added bonus, my parents were getting older and needed my assistance more than before. Much stress!

Needless to say, my amygdala was getting quite a workout.

And then I discovered gardening. I became infatuated. In the words of Cliff Clavin: “there is a fine line between gardening and insanity”. I read books and magazines on the subject. I used to watch ‘Gardening by the Yard’ and ‘Victory Garden’ on the telly. MrsVintage and I visited nurseries and botanical gardens. Meanwhile, we dug all the rock out that lined our property and slowly replaced it with plants.

And so, over the years, a garden came into being.

So, what does that have to do with my anxiety? I find that while I am gardening, I am in a state of mindfulness. I am focused on the weeding and the watering. I observe the successes and failures. I am aware of the heat from the sun on my shoulders, and of the sweat dripping off my nose (hey, I never said everything about gardening is fun). That stupid voice in my head that is constantly trying to draw my attention to some possible catastrophe is surprisingly silent. I am in the Now.

There is a mistaken belief that you need to be seated in the lotus position, with flute music emanating from Spotify on your phone, to be mindful. Not true. You can be quite active and still be in the moment. I suspect that many people who do such hobbies as woodworking, or knitting, or martial arts, or whatever floats their boats, find these activities to be very mindful.

Nature, the all-natural anxiety medication

For me, the there is an added bonus to gardening: I’m outside. I have found over the years that my anxiety recedes quite dramatically in the sunnier months. A large part of that is that the sunlight is much more intense in the summer months, chasing away the winter blues. But it’s more than that. Gardening is a way of immersing oneself in nature. Many studies of been done that show marked improvement in people’s mental health when exposed to nature (Nurtured by nature (apa.org)

As a kid, I used to live outside during the warmer months. Whether it was swimming, biking, hiking, playing streetball (football or baseball on asphalt), climbing trees, or just hanging out, me and my friends were always outside. While my dark brown hair never quite bleached out to blonde, I certainly had blonde highlights by the end of summer. I now understand that it was no coincidence that my anxiety would return with a vengeance when the school year rolled back around. I was trapped inside all day, with nothing but artificial light and sterile walls surrounding me. One of the many reasons I hated school so much.

To this day, being outside in my garden is a natural anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medication for me.

I’ll be the first to admit that a garden is an artificial form of the natural world. Even so, a garden is a form of nature, even if a manmade one. Our minds don’t care whether we are walking through a wild field or a manicured landscape. It’s still nature,

Zen and the Art of Mowing the Lawn

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

Even before I started getting in to gardening, I always enjoyed mowing my lawn. I found it to be a relaxing and contemplative activity. Meditative even. While I am mowing I am mowing, if you know what I mean. I get a great deal of satisfaction after I finish the job. The lawn looks tidy and green. It looks well-maintained. If it weren’t for me, this patch of ground would be nothing more than a weedy patch, choked with bindweed and thistle. I am a mighty deity in my own backyard.

I suspect that this feeling is a faint echo of the satisfaction a farmer must get when he has harvested his field of corn/wheat/whatever. Obviously, we don’t depend on our lawns for our livelihood. But the concept is similar, if you get my drift.

Men take a gentle ribbing for their love of lawn care. Google “men and lawns”, and you’ll find a ton of funny memes. The sports website, Outkick the Coverage, even has a Thursday night lawn mowing competition during the summer. So sure, we can be a bit obsessive.

But you know what? That’s ok. Because in my opinion, the lawn is the American version of a Zen garden.

Peace and tranquility on a 1/4 acre plot

So that is the how and the why I got into gardening. But it is not just the act of gardening that reduces my anxiety. Enjoying the garden is just as rewarding as the doing. Gardeners as a whole are notorious for not being able to see the forest for the trees. Or, put another way, unable to see the garden for the weeds!

A visitor comes around and sees a gardener’s creation, they just take in the beauty of it. They don’t care about the weeds, or the lack of a strong focal point. To the visitor, the garden in a small slice of tranquilty.

The gardener, on the other hand, can ONLY see the sickly plants, the bare spots and weeds galore! That’s why a gardener has a hard time just sitting and enjoying his or her creation. It’s not perfect!

But not me. Oh, I definitely see all that as well. But I also see the wonder I have helped usher into this world. During the growing season I try to get outside every day, even on the hottest days, and just take in all the glory of my little miniature Eden. It never fails to bring me a sense of peace and contentment. The garden is MrsVintage’s and my sanctuary. Our retreat from the outside world. It is amazing how much being out there helps calm my anxiety for a while.

And that is why I am going to keep on gardening until my bones just can’t hack it anymore.

Postscript

Serendipitously, while I was finishing up this post I found this article by someone who also uses gardening to help with anxiety and depression: How Gardening Helped Me Quit My Antidepressant . I think she put into words even better than what I am trying to do with this post.

However, if I were to respond to this person, I would warn her that this newfound love of gardening may not be the total cure she currently thinks it is. When I first started gardening, I too was completely smitten. Gardening is both an art and a skill, and there is so much to learn and do. But like any relationship, the honeymoon phase will end, and this infatuation will fade to a quiet enjoyment. Then gardening will become another (albeit positive) part of her life. The risk becomes that her anxiety and depression might return, and she will get discouraged. It will be important for her to continue to monitor her mental outlook for the rest of her life, gardening or not.

However, I would never say anything to her because she wouldn’t listen to me anyway. After all, who am I? I’m not inside her head. Also, she doesn’t need that kind of “negativity” right now. She’s happy, and that’s all that matters.

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The best Xeriscape books for Western gardeners

Posted on August 2, 2023 by John Kevin Hickey
Image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Xeriscaping has unfortunately acquired a bit of a bad reputation amongst the masses. Sometimes called “zeroscape” by its detractors, the waterwise style of garden has been unfairly maligned because many home gardeners have misunderstood the principles of xeriscaping.

You can’t just cover your yard in a field of rocks, plant a few straggly and forlorn shrubs, and call it xeriscaping.

Ok, I guess you can do that, but it certainly isn’t xeriscaping, and it certainly isn’t attractive. Plus, without the cooling effects of a lawn/garden bed, your yard and, by extension your house, is going to be miserably hot in the summer. That is NOT what proponents of xeriscaping have called for. It is still possible to have a lush, beautiful landscape using xeriscape techniques; just one that doesn’t require as much water as a more traditional yards require.

There are 7 principles in xeriscaping: water conservation, soil improvement, limited turf area, use plants adapted to your area, mulch, irrigation and maintenance. Using these principles, anyone anywhere can create their own personal waterwise Eden.

In fact, you can have plants that require copious amounts of moisture in your landscape. Just have less of them. You can even have Kentucky bluegrass, the biggest water hog in most landscapes. Just don’t have a giant swath of it. A smaller patch, say, big enough for kids to play on or a spot for doggies to do their…business, is perfectly fine for a more watewise landscape.

Waterwise plants in the Vintage garden: upright sedums, sea lavender, yarrows and ornamental grasses are both beautiful and drought tolerant.

Watering Zones

The term “xeriscape” was created by Denver Water back in the 70’s. “Xeric” means “dry” in Greek. One of the techniques of xeriscaping is breaking your landscape into three zones. Zone 1 is the high-water use section. This is where you put the plants that need lots of moisture. Usually, this zone is located near the house because that’s where the water spigots are located. And closer usually means more convenient. And convenient is good.

If you want a turf area for your kids or dogs to play on, this is where you would plant it. Just keep it no bigger than what its intended purpose requires.

Zone 2 is for plants that can handle drought handily but would appreciate supplemental watering during the hottest and driest parts of summer. Think lilac bushes or many ornamental grasses. Think lush, but not jungle!

Zone 3, the zone farthest from readily available water sources, is where the truly xeric plants go. This is the home of cacti and high prairie plants. This area will be fairly sparsely populated by plants. Fewer plants means less root competition.

Now, I should point out that waterwise gardening is not just for Western landscapes. It’s just that what is considered waterwise in Connecticut or Florida is going to be a LOT different than Colorado or New Mexico.

After all, in places east of the Mississippi the rain tends to fall from the sky like…uh, well, like rain. Not here in the West though. Excluding the Pacific Northwest, when it rains out here, it’s time to break out the party favors and have a celebration!

Xeriscaping books for the Western gardener

I should make clear that most of the books I’m recommending are generally written for gardeners in the Mountain states and the western Plains state. While the principles of xeriscaping are the same regardless of location, different regions of the country will have different requirements. For example: Texas, southern New Mexico and southern Arizona have hotter summers and milder winters than Colorado. So, their plants are going to have different requirements than what Colorado or Montana would need.

The conditions that most these books address have hot summers and very cold winters. Pretty harsh conditions I think you would agree. Still, I think any reader who is interested in reducing the amount of water their landscapes consume will find these books illuminating, no matter where they live.

Let’s get to them.

Xeriscape Handbook

The Xeriscape Handbook, written by Gayle Weinstein, is part of a 3-book series produced by Denver Water (I’ll get to the other two in a sec). Xeriscape Handbook is the to go to resource very anybody interested in installing a waterwise garden.

I’ll be honest, it’s a pretty dry tome (pun intended). It reads like a technical manual because it is a technical manual. But it will give you all the information you will need: planning out the site, improving soil, building an irrigation system, planting techniques and more.

Although published in 1999, the information in the book has held up well with the passage of time.

Xeriscape Handbook (bookshop.org)

Xeriscape Plant Guide and Xeriscape Color Guide

The Xeriscape Plant Guide and the Xeriscape Color Guide are the other two books in the Denver Water series. These two books are companion pieces, and are the “fun” part of Xeriscaping: getting to pick out the plants.

The Xeriscape Plant Guide is a detailed description of over 100 waterwise plants. It covers the plants attributes, growing conditions, bloom period, disadvantages, and good companion plants. This was the very first xeriscaping book I purchased. It was published in 1996, and let me tell you, a lot has changed since then. When this book came out the waterwise plant options was pretty limited. Now there are thousands of native and adapted plants that do well in the West. Still, this is an excellent book to get started with.

Published in 1998, the Xeriscape Color Guide goes into more detail on the 100 plants listed in the Xeriscape Plant Guide. Many of the plants listed have quite a wide variety of bloom and/or foliage color, and this guide covers them all. It also gives better information on when the gardener can expect the plants in question to bloom.

I highly recommend purchasing both books together. While the Plant Guide a stand-alone book, the Color Guide isn’t going to be as useful without being able to reference back its big brother.

Xeriscape Plant Guide: Amazon.com: Books

Xeriscape Color Guide: Amazon.com: Books

Xeriscape Colorado

Xeriscape Colorado by Connie Ellefson & David Wing is unfortunately going to be a bit harder to find. Published is 2004, it apparently has gone out of print. Too bad, because this is perhaps the best of the books that I’m recommending.

As the title suggests, this book is specifically for Colorado. However, mountain states such as northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, as well as parts of Utah and Wyoming will find this book applicable and informative.

Part tutorial and part plant list, if you only want to purchase one book on Xeriscaping, this is the one.

Used copies can be found on Amazon:

Xeriscape Colorado: The Complete Guide: Amazon.com: Books

WaterWise Landscaping with Trees, Shrubs and Vines

Waterwise Landscaping with Trees, Shrubs and Vines, by Jim Knopf, was published in 1998. I’m starting to notice a trend here: a profusion of waterwise/xeriscape book released in the late 90s. This is no coincidence. The mountain states were wracked by a pretty severe drought in the mid-90s to early 2000s.

This book specifically covers the trees, shrubs and vines that are adapted to the conditions found in the mountain states, the desert southwest and southern California. A very good reference book.

WaterWise Landscaping with Trees, Shrubs, and Vines: A Xeriscape Guide for the Rocky Mountain Region, California, and Desert Southwest: Amazon.com

Xeriscape Flower Gardener

The Xeriscape Flower Gardener, published in 2003, is another waterwise book from Jim Knopf. This book is a reference for perennials and annuals, but this time the plants showcased are better suited to the mountain states.

The Xeriscape Flower Gardener: A Waterwise Guide for the Rocky Mountain Region Amazon.com

The Undaunted Garden

Ok, this isn’t a xeriscaping book per se. Lauren Springer grew up in Pennsylvania. She has worked in the horticultural field for many, many years. She moved to Colorado after getting married and, needless to say, the change in venue was something of a shock for her.

The Undaunted Gardener is Ms. Springer’s voyage of discovery in gardening in the West. In her book, she details how she planned and planted a garden to not only thrived with little moisture; but also looked good in all seasons in spite of the vagaries of weather that Colorado is notorious for. Hot dry summers, cold wet winters, high winds, horrific hailstorms, tornados, blizzards, etc., etc. Colorado weather is a mighty challenge for gardeners.

Word of warning: Lauren Springer is very well educated and very experienced in the horticulture field. I didn’t pick up on that for many years, which is my fault, because she relates all that in her writing. I mention this because a lot of the plants she grows, and the projects she undertakes, are beyond the means of a weekend hobbyist gardener. She lists plants that you just cannot pick up at your local gardening center, or even most online retailers. This woman has connections!

In conclusion

You may have noticed that all of the xeriscaping books I mentioned are twenty years old or older. This is for two reasons. One, by now I have a pretty solid grasp on how xeriscaping works. The general principles have remained pretty much unchanged over that period of time. If need be, I can keep up to date on the latest trends by looking online. I have little use for more.

And two, I am not a professional book reviewer. I am not plunking down cash on books I don’t need.

If you’re looking for more recent releases, Pam Penick’s The Water-Saving Garden: How to Grow a Gorgeous Garden with a Lot Less Water and Lawn Gone!: Low-Maintenance, Sustainable, Attractive Alternatives for Your Yard are supposed to pretty good. Ms. Penick has a blog dedicated to gardening in the Austin, Tx area: Digging | cool gardens in a hot climate (penick.net) I find her blog quite inspiring, and I recommend checking it out.

Nan Steerman’s Hot Color, Dry Garden: Inspiring Designs and Vibrant Plants for the Waterwise Gardener gets good reviews on Amazon, so that might be worth checking out as well. Hot Color, Dry Garden: Inspiring Designs and Vibrant Plants for the Waterwise Gardener

Slightly off-topic

If you want to see waterwise landscaping in person, check out some of these demonstration gardens:

Colorado Springs Utilities demonstration garden

Colorado Springs Utilities Xeriscape Demonstration Garden (Colorado Springs) | Plant Select

Aurora, Colorado demonstration garden

Aurora Water-wise Garden | Plant Select

Broomfield demonstration garden

Demonstration Garden – Broomfield County Extension (colostate.edu)

Happy gardening!

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