Water Efficient Gardens | Your partner for a water efficient, beautiful garden.

How to Harvest Rainwater and Build a Beautiful Landscape

New year, new rain. It has been a wet start for California in 2019. Since the start of the year, several strong storms have hit the state, each bringing some serious amount of rainwater. As a result, the majority of the state is no longer in some dryness conditions it was in before. In the year’s first snow survey conducted on Jan 3, the snowpack water content was 67% of average;

A Christmas Wreath Made With All California Native Plants

It is Christmas time! All the decorations are full on: the lights, the flowers, the tree, and yes, the wreath. Surely you have seen many different kinds of wreaths, some made with real plants, some plastic. Today, we are going to show you a very special one – a wreath that was made completely with California native plants.

How Can A Garden Thrive In Hot Summer

Feeling really hot this summer? It’s right. Everywhere you go, you can see news about record high temperatures and wild fires. In such hot weather, how can plants in a garden survive and thrive? Record Temperature July 2018 is the hottest month in California since 1895, when the temperatures were first recorded.

How to Completely Change a Weedy Lawn

This weedy lawn had been bothering the homeowners for a long time. It was a nice lawn when it was first put in, but needed to be maintained often. As busy professionals, they really did not have the time. On the other hand, they wanted to be friendly for the environment and have a small footprint. The lawn, they felt, used too much water.

Water Saving, and More: the Benefits of Drip Irrigation

When we think about installing a garden, often what come to our mind first are the design and plants – which plants to select, where to plant them, and how they will look? While these are all very important, there is another equally critical aspect – how to keep the plants alive after they are planted? That points us to – the irrigation system, mainly, the sprinkler and drip.

How to Attract Pollinator to Your Yard in 3 Steps

A golden monarch butterfly stopping on a bush, a hummingbird sucking from a flower…a view that everyone would love to see. The good news is, we can turn a yard into a pollinator friendly garden and enjoy such a view often. Pollinators play a vital role for the eco-system, and for us humans, yet their populations have experienced dramatic decline in the last 20 years.

Make Our Garden Pollinator Friendly

There are so many benefits for converting a lawn to water efficient gardens. The most significant one, of course, is water saving. Compared with a lawn, a landscape with drought tolerant plants can save 30-80% of water. In a dry place like California, such water saving is extremely important.

A Race for Saving Water

On Apr 14, 2018, I participated the Great Race for Saving Water in Palo Alto. This is the fifth Earth Day celebration hosted by city of Palo Alto. It is a 5K run/walk and kids 1K fun run to “raise awareness about water resources, conservation and environmental health”.

Turn an Empty School Lot Into a Veggie Garden

On a beautiful April morning, on the campus of an elementary school in the Silicon Valley, just after the school start time, while the whole school went from the hustle and buzz accompanying drop off into a total quietness, at this corner, however, happy chatters and bursts of laughs could be heard some distance away.

Great Makeover Story: From Barren to Beauty (1)

This story is about an amazing transformation from barren to beauty. When the owners moved into the house, the first thing they wanted to change was the front and back yards. It was barren, utterly unattractive. The main part of the front yard was this hard surface covered with sand. It had been used as a parking space for years.

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