sprinkler barrier

[Anonymous]

I'm planning to replace my front lawn with low maintenancenative plants. My problem is that my neighbor's lush golf courselike lawn requires frequent heavy watering all summer and thesprinkler spray drifts up to 10 feet into my yard. This is aproblem since I don't want to limit my plantings to speciesthat tolerate garden conditions.

Can anyone suggest some low, dense plants that I can use as a barrier to stop the spray? Obviously, they will have to thriveon excessive summer water. It would be useful, too, if they weresturdy enough to withstand the occasional direct hit from apoorly aimed sprinkler my neighbor uses powerful jets.

Details: I live in foothills above Pasadena 15-20' winter rain -hot, dry summer. Soil drains well and has low nitrogen - thoughI'm not sure close to the edge if my neighbor uses fertilizer.Site gets direct sun all day. The area I want to protect is onlyabout 20' by 30' so the barrier should not be overwhelming insize.

Thanks for any suggestions.Andrew</p>

[Anonymous]

Andrew,

You say your soil has good drainage, so you mightconsider planting toyon Heteromeles arbutifoliaas a hedge. It apparently can handle gardenconditions and makes a great informal hedge/barrieror formal hedge if you want to prune. Check out theLas Pilitas nursery website www.laspilitas.com fora full description of CA native plants that mightbe suitable for your project. I envy yourlawn replacement project - I'm still trying toconvince my wife we should do the same. Good luck.

Jim</p>

[Anonymous]

Jim,

Thanks for the suggestion. I hadn't considered toyon butnow I will. In my situation I think it would have to be prunedto limit its size and, perhaps, increase its density. I'd appreciate anyone's suggestions or anecdotes re pruning toyon.

I concur with your plug of laspilitas.com. I'm a frequent visitorand just wish they would add a search engine to the plant description section. I've had good luck with plants bought attheir Escondido location another plug!.

Hope you get to start your project. I'm still a tyro native plantenthusiast, but can think of at least four sterling reasons whyit is the only way to go.

Andrew</p>

[Anonymous]

Andrew,

As for anecdotes about Toyon as a hedge; I've seen it planted and pruned as a hedge in two locations: Scripps Ranch and Poway in SD county. It makes quite a dense hedge and looks good year-round. It sounds like you're trying to create a low hedge to block sprinklers, so perhaps Toyon could create the hedge you need in a couple/few years. The Toyon in my yard was a gallon plant about 1 ft high when planted in May 2000 and now its longest branches are about 3 ft in length.

Jim</p>

[Anonymous]

We have been dealing with this poblem with my our lawn in Riverside, because for various reasons we did not want to rip out all of the St Augustine. Greg Rubin, owner of California's Own Native Landscape Design plug, and also associated with the fine folks at Las Pilitas in Escondido plug, was very reassuring and calmed my guilt. He said there is no conflict between lawn and natives, if you view lawn as wetland and plant next to it accordingly!

What many of us here in So Cal forget is that there are 'wet' natives that thrive right here in the middle of the desert. The key is to put the right plants in the right zones, moving out away from the heavy water source to the dry zones, as if moving away from a desert pond or streambed.

To develop a plant list of natives indigenous to our area and tolerant of the site conditions, I did my research on the Las Pilitas and Cal Flora web sites, cross referencing their plant lists with several different factors: plant community, plant type, and geography. From this I developed a list of riparian plants in the Chaparral Community native to Riverside County. As it happens, we just planted yesterday, so I can't claim this strategy worked, but it was the best approach I could come up with.

Among the approaches I can think of you can take to deal with the overspray from your neighbor's lawn would be the one that I took: treat your neighbor's lawn as a wetland, and plant in that area accordingly. If you want an immediate barrier, there are a number of medium sized native shrubs that would not need to be pruned like the Toyon I don't recommend that - too much like work!. Examples are any of the wild Rosas, Ribes, Rubus, etc. Also, you might think of planting in graduated stages that compliment your neighbor's lawn and transition into the dry area. An example might be to artfully plant Carex, Juncus, Pacific Coast Iris depending on sunlight, and other water-loving natives in immediate proximity to the lawn they will love the water, moving through drier riparian transitional plants to whatever you wish to plant.

Hope this helps. Good luck!</p>

[Anonymous]

I'm going to try Myrica californica, California Wax Myrtle. They will hopefully grow into a prunable hedge to cover up our chainlink fence. They'll be in shade under Pasadena's ubiquitous camphor trees and they'll get their feet wet from lawn sprinklers. I hope they grow well! If you haven't been there yet, you should take a short trip over to the Theodore Payne Foundation non-profit native plant nursery. They're just up the 210 west from you off Las Tunas Canyon Road in Sun Valley. The staff is very knowledgeable and they have a good selection of plants plug!. Here's their website: http://www.theodorepayne.org/</p>