Posted by Adam in Richland on February 6, 2008, 8:19 pm, in reply to "What kind of plants do you have"
Hi Peter,
I'm mostly into native plants of the dryland American West. I have just moved to a new residence, so I am kinda starting over, but that is a great opportunity!
The Chihuahuan Desert is probably my favorite North American ecotope. There are a lot of plants from there that we can grow here, and also quite a few that are more of a struggle. I like to take plants from various places and mix them together into a jumbled, but coherent landscape. Mostly in my front yard, I plan to take many of our regional shrub-steppe standards -- big sagebrush, rabbitbrush, basin wildrye -- and mix-in what I can from elsewhere. Wildflowers from the Great Plains, yuccas from the Mojave, chollas from the Great Basin, ocotillo from the Sonoran, agaves from the Chihuahuan. This sort of thing. I do plan to have a slightly wetter area on my side yard where I can have a few reminders of my childhood (Seattle), so I'll try a madrona, mahonia, manzanita, and rhodies over there. Overall, though, I want to set an example for residential landscaping for a place that gets 8 inches of rain per year. Contrary to popular belief, we don't live in Ireland; but you'd never know that by driving around this place.
Anyway, I just potted some stuff tonight that arrived from Las Vegas where I bought some stuff a couple of weeks ago -- mostly opuntias. I have a lot of stuff in pots! I'll be busy next month getting things into the ground. Overall, I think our winters will accommodate a lot of plants, but it's just those one or two episodes per year where it doesn't get above freezing for a week that are the killer. I'm trying to develop my overwintering techniques.
Anyway, good to hear from you Peter. We'll have to meet-up some time.
Cheers,
Adam
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