A rough sketch drawn for a workshop I took at the community college on Xeriscape gardening. The class consisted of 12; mostly over 50 women and one man. It was kind of fun to meet some locals outside of the school. Drawn on paper and painted in Photoshop. (click image for details)
Xeriscaping refers to landscaping in ways that do not require supplemental irrigation. It is promoted in areas that do not have easily accessible supplies of fresh water. The word Xeriscaping was coined by combining xeros (Greek for "dry") with landscape. Plants whose natural requirements are appropriate to the local climate are emphasized, and care is taken to avoid losing water to evaporation and run-off. They heavily promote getting rid of your front lawns. Considering our lawn is a haze of yellow dandilions right now, Que and I are all for getting rid of it.
As far as garden design goes, Xeriscaping is almost always informal. Their philosophy is against severely shorn shrubbery. I've always liked English formal gardens for the 'winter interest', so this design is an attempt to create some sort of hybrid. Besides the lot of native xeric plants I've used, I've snuck in a wedge of boxwood or two. Rules are meant to be broken, right?
