Sage Outdoor Designs » landscape design

I typically steer clients away from products that are man-made reproductions because they mostly don’t come close to measuring up to the original. I find this to be true for almost all porcelain tiles attempting to be stone (with the exception of Porcelanosa). And while artificial stone veneers are often a cost effective option, I think they don’t hold a candle to natural stone, especially now that there are so many thin cut veneer stones available (Thompson’s Building Materials has my favorite selection for natural stone veneers).

So when I find a man-made product that I can’t tell is fake, I think it is worth noting. The fiber cement shingles by Nichiha are one of these products. Natural cedar shake is expensive and requires a lot of upkeep. Nichiha’s option gives the same look without repainting or restaining. They designed them to have a lot of variation so they look hand-stained, and the colors are fantastic. Dixiline is supposed to start carrying their brand locally.

Since outdoor tile and stone can become very slippery when it rains, I like to use a micro-etcher on any honed natural stone tiles, porcelain tile, or other potentially slippery paving outside. My favorite is a local company called Sliptech. Here is their website: http://sliptech.com/

Their product creates tiny pockets in the surface of the tile. We test it on each material before applying it on the job, but so far it has not drastically changed the finish or color of anything I have tested it on. I would probably be more hesitant to use it on a polished stone, since it may cut down on the shine, but I wouldn’t typically use a polished stone outside anyhow.

Not having to worry about the slip factor opens up a whole new world of products for use outdoors. I especially recommend the treatment when doing a waterjet mosaic in the front entry, since these are often honed.

In the search to save water a lot of people have been deciding to put in artificial turf. Hundreds of companies have cropped up with newer, better, fake grass. Aesthetically, it has made leaps and bounds recently, but when my clients ask if I recommend using it, my answer typically is “no”. So I wanted to take the opportunity to compare the up and down sides of artificial turf.

The upsides:

1) It doesn’t need to be watered. At Kate Presents, we consider this a pretty big upside.
2) It doesn’t need to be weeded, mowed, fertilized, or aerated. It is easy for people with busy lifetsyles.

The downsides:

1) It isn’t grass! It isn’t alive so you lose the benefits of real life plants. It doesn’t remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It doesn’t cool the air. It doesn’t squidge nicely under your toes when you walk barefoot.
2) It can get quite warm. Be especially aware of companies that use recycle tires for their filler material. It is black rubber, so it can get hot enough to burn kids and pets feet. Opt for the sand filler instead, if the company you chose offers it.
3) It is a petroleum product. There really isn’t any avoiding the central issue that it is essentially a green plastic carpet laid down outside. I’d like to see us use less plastic in the landscape, not more.
4) Most brands are not recyclable. With a few noteworthy exceptions, the backing and blades are inseparable and therefor unrecyclable. ProLawn is one of the few companies that has a product hat can be recycled.
5) It is expensive. Although it is possible to find deals in the $8-9 a square foot range, most companies offer their product at around $12 a square foot installed.

So what else is there? I think the key is that we need to let go of our belief that gardens should be 90% lawn with some trees and shrubs around the edges. It is possible to create beautiful outdoor spaces without a lawn or a fake lawn. Here are a few images that I hope illustrate this:

A lot of people love the English Garden style with its colorful perennial borders and boisterous flowers, but a typical English garden is very high maintenance and typically high water use as well. Here are a few drought tolerant and low maintenance plants for an English/California garden:

From top left: Penstemon ‘Margarita Bop’, Buddleja davidii, Anisodentea hypomandrum, Geranium ‘Johnson’s Blue’, Lavatera ‘Red Rum’, Gaura lindhamaerii, Artemesia ‘Powis Castle’

A lot of my clients ask me if there is a way to tell whether or not a plant is drought tolerant just by looking at it. They want to be able to impulse purchase plants at their local nursery and know that they will work in their low water use gardens. It isn’t always possible to tell, but the following can at least be helpful.

Drought tolerant plants, or plants that will work in a xeriscape garden (which comes from the word xeric, which just means dry, not from zero, as many people think), are going to have a few simple characteristics that they evolved to help them live in dry climates. If you look for the characteristics, they can be the give-away for what the plant might want.

1) Xeriscape plants often have a grey-green color to their leaves, not a green-green. This is because they are from places where light is abundant but water is scarce. They want save their water but can afford to loose a few chlorophyll cells. Plants that live in places like rainforests have the opposite problem. They get plenty of water but are probably shaded by a tree canopy, so they want all the chlorophyll they can get in their leaves so that they can absorb what little light comes their way. So rule #1 is: Grey-green is probably drought tolerant. Green-green is probably not.

2) Dry climate plants may be fuzzy. This layer of fuzz helps them to lose less water from evaporation. Wet climate plants will almost never be fuzzy- they will be waxy instead, like a Philodendron. So rule #2: fuzzy probably indicates drought tolerant and waxy probably indicates water loving.

3) Xeriscape plants tend to have small leaves. This also helps them conserve water because the pores in leaves are where most plants lose water from. Since they probably get all the light they need, having small leaves doesn’t stop them from doing plenty of photosynthesizing. Wet climate plants tend to have big leaves so that they can soak up more light (think deep forrests, rainforests, shady glens). So rule #3: xeriscape plants have small leaves and wet climate plants have big leaves.

So, which is which?

The first photo, Philodendron evansii, has big waxy green leaves (and yep, it likes its water) and the second photo, Acacia redolens, has grey-green, small leaves. It is very drought tolerant.