High Elevation Gardening Web Log "Blog"

Meine Uberfrau, Gretchen, and I live in a walker-friendly community with berms and front yards. What to do with them? As I drive around town, I find that most people waste them.

Some people think they are still living in Phoenix, Black Canyon City, or some other dreadful place and create a desert in the High Country with gravel, cow skulls, a few stray junipers, and a couple of large rocks. Such yards look unfriendly, something like bone yards. Other Black Canyon types, such as developers, drop the accoutrements and use only crushed rock. All they need is a “No Trespass” sign. They also heat up the property in the summer and keep it cold in the winter.

In contrast, other people favor green lawn front yards. Migrants from the Middle West, East, and South often carry their lawns with them, wanting remembrances of things past. Green is at least friendly, but as a lawn it goes unused. I don’t see people playing croquet, cricket, badminton, polo, bowls, practicing chip shots, or grazing sheep on their Kentucky bluegrass water-guzzling front yards.

So why waste a berm and front yard with gravel, skulls, and unused grass? Sometimes front yards are used for storage, like rusted-out pickup trucks up on blocks. In short, land costs too much in Flagstaff to waste it by not using it, and that means attractive and useful grasses, flowers, and vegetables. Of course, this all has to be done water-wisely.

There are various water-wise grasses such as sheep fescue (Festuca ovina.) A densely tufted, dark green, bunch grass, it requires watering only during dry periods (once a month), stays green all year, likes lousy soil, and dislikes fertilizer. It can get by on 18 inches of rain a year. Flagstaff’s annual rainfall is about 23 inches. It can be sown in the spring, summer, and fall, or planted with plugs, although sowing is best and cheaper. Also, there are similar grasses, such as Elijah blue fescue, a blue form of sheep fescue. These cannot be used as a turf, but for a front lawn it is a far more interesting than regular turf grass.

As for usefulness, vegetables in the front yard are a must. For the faint of heart, they can be planted amongst beds of flowers so as to disguise them. They can be contained in carefully controlled beds with underground drip systems so that water doesn’t evaporate and isn’t wasted on places that don’t need it. Zucchini has big beautiful leaves and attractive large yellow blossoms that can be eaten along with the fruit. Bulls blood beet has a deliciously sweet fruit along with deep red leaves which when young can be used in salads. Of course, Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch kale, along with its cousins Siberian and Tuscan, has lovely leaves and is excellent in massed beds and borders.

Beds of tulip, iris, and daffodil are water-wise and after blooming can be over planted with wild flowers. They require little water and almost no attention. The list goes on to include, but not limited to, blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata), various penstemons, and the ubiquitous Russian sage (Peroviskia atripticifolia.)

Gardening in the front yard as well as the back and side yards almost doubles the arable land. When we think of how much that land cost us, we might think again about plastering it with gravel or water-stupid grass.

By Dana Prom Smith
The author is a Master Gardener volunteer for Coconino County Cooperative Extension. For more information about the Master Gardener Program, call 774-1868 ext. 17 or visit our Web site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu.