Surfin’ safari & succulents
Two homes. Two very different parts of San Diego County. And two totally different takes on what it means to have a droughttolerant landscape. But these homeowners both were winners of their respective water districts’ WaterSmart Landscape Con
test in 2020. ■ Tracy Stephenson took the prize in the California American Water contest with her front yard’s beach theme, while Susie and
Todd Brant redid their front yard with a succulent landscape that won them the WaterSmart Landscape Contest in the city of Escondido.
THE TALK OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD
With this surf’s-up landscape theme fronting a cottage-style South Bay house in San Diego, bordering Imperial Beach, all that’s missing is Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. This creative “Beach Blanket Bingo” setting was the brainchild of homeowner Tracy Stephenson, a registered nurse at Donovan State Prison.
Stephenson moved into the house in 2014. The front yard, she explained, was
grass with a lone flowering plum tree that she planted in a natural divot in the lawn, but between having no irrigation system and longtime drought watering restrictions, the grass was brown. Moving around a sprinkler connected to a hose wasn’t cutting it, and by fall 2018, she was ready to change it up.
“I was sick of watering the grass and I just let it go,” she acknowledged. “And then
I went down the Pinterest rabbit hole to get ideas for water smart, low-maintenance landscaping.”
The inspiration: What launched the beach theme was a find on Offerup.com — what Stephenson describes as a “Moana” boat from the 2016 Disney film.
“It was like a prop for a party, so I bought it,” she said with a laugh. “And that started the beach theme.”
The boat, which is the front yard’s focal point, has been through some iterations. First, it had a tub inside with a solar water fountain, but it didn’t get enough sunlight to work, so Stephenson changed it out for potted f lowers. After some false starts with a f lagpole, she figured out a way to get the “mast” standing, wrapped it in rope, topped it with a tiki torch and, taking advantage of the so-called she shed she had already built and set up as a sewing and quilting headquarters, she hangs homemade f lags that she changes out with holidays.
With Pinterest inspiration, Stephenson designed the rest of the yard as a beachfront, adding two Adirondack chairs in front of the house’s window and next to the boat. She painted them blue to match her front doors. Friends would show up with other beachy tchotchkes, like a little surfboard already detailed with the words “surfs up” that she used a blue wash on. She then mounted the hose holder to the back to hide the hose and water spigot. Another friend found a little lifeguard surf board that Stephenson placed on the other side of the boat. Still another presented her with a shell octopus that she’s placed on river rocks in front of the boat.
The details: Stephenson took on the design herself, then drew it all out for her longtime landscaper, Domingo Bahena. He and his crew removed the lawn and replaced it with little hills of decomposed granite and spread sand around the boat and in front of the Adirondack chairs, creating a rock border around the area. They placed and planted the heavier plants, and he installed a battery-powered drip system on a timer to irrigate almost all the plants.
The rest of the work, she did herself.
“I’m single and a Taurus, so I do everything independently,” she said.
Stephenson cut up leftover pallets from building her shed to create a boardwalk from the sidewalk to her front door and around to the side of the house, where she also has a bike shed.
To create a fence, she continued with the theme, buying pylons at The Home Depot that she cut to the height she wanted and tied them together with big fat lengths of rope she bought on Amazon. Adding to the whimsy, Stephenson topped the entrance pylons with a ceramic pelican on one and, on the other, a sign with two arrows — one Home and the other Beach, pointing in the respective directions. Behind each is an additional pylon topped with solar lanterns.
For the plants, Stephenson went to Terra Bella Nursery and “just picked out plants that look beachy. I winged it. I don’t know a thing and I didn’t learn a thing other than that they got really big.” The foundation plants she bought include Mexican feather grass, little palms, and bamboo that she planted in pots to try to hide her neighbor’s dead car, sitting on blocks nearby.
Costs: Stephenson protests that the budget “probably got away from me,” mostly because from fall 2018 until she finished last spring, she was doing it in stages. “I just kept buying stuff,” she said. But all in, she estimated she spent between $5,000 and $6,000. One issue was that she would buy plants that just didn’t work, or work where they were planted, so she would move them — which meant her landscaper had to keep moving the drip system.
As the WaterSmart Landscape Contest winner, Stephenson received a $250 gift certificate from California American Water for The Home Depot — and she already knows how she’s going to spend it: on an outdoor shower for her backyard swimming spa and waterfall.
How do the neighbors feel about it? Stephenson said, “Everybody just loves it. People drive down the street and stop and ask if they can take pictures. People walking in the neighborhood will compliment me on my yard.”
A FIELD OF SUCCULENTS
Where Tracy Stephenson took a whimsical idea and ran with it, Susie and Todd Brant dove into research and planning to identify how they would approach their front yard landscape transformation — and get the expenses paid for in the bargain.
The couple moved into their Escondido house in 2013. Susie Brant is a Realtor with The Honest Agent Team. Todd is a calibration technician for U.S. Department of Defense contractors. When they moved in, they had a nice green lawn in both the front and back of the house, but a year later they decided to remodel their 1,694-square-foot front yard. While they said their water bills at the time weren’t outrageous — about $160 a month — Susie explained that they were looking toward the future.
“We knew that our bills had nowhere to go but up in such a dry area,” she said. “We wanted to be proactive and do what’s better for the environment and better maintenance for us in the long run.”
The inspiration: Susie noted that she and her husband originally looked at pictures of gardens for inspiration.
“And this isn’t even what we ended up with, but one of the inspirations was looking at some flower gardens where there were just a whole bunch of different wildflowers and colors and things growing into each other. And that look is what appealed to us. So, we wanted to have a lot of different colors and shapes and variety, and not necessarily to be putting plants in a particular pattern.”
The couple visited the Cuyamaca Water Conservation Garden and were wowed by the succulents. They also took classes at Cuyamaca College to learn more about drought-tolerant gardening.
“The main thing was to make sure that what we were planting was drought-tolerant. It was really great to see all the varieties of everything that is drought-tolerant and learn that we didn’t just have to have a desert landscape,” Todd said. “We found there are a lot of other green plants that are technically drought-tolerant. We tried to incorporate different pops of color.”
The details: Initially, the Brants hired a landscape designer to help select plants, but, over the years, they’ve replanted on their own. The slope was already terraced, and the yard had sprinklers, but they put in low-water pop-up sprinkler heads.
As for the work itself, it was a mix of Todd’s labor and someone they hired to do the initial layout and planting. Todd laid out all of the dirt, and after the planting was done, he spread out the mulch, which he continues to do.
With an understanding of how to approach what and how much to plant, the Brants bought their succulents and other plants at Waterwise Botanicals in Bonsall and Escondido. They bought an assortment of succulents but added even more texture, color and height with agaves, bougainvillea, red fountain grass and jade. As a result, they got the color they craved, if in a different, less thirsty package. Most of the flowering comes in the spring, but with some labor, the couple is able to get multiple flowerings.
“We realized that if we go out after the first flowering and deadhead those flowers, it seems the plants are more encouraged to bloom again,” Todd said.
“It’s more enjoyable than mowing the grass,” Susie added. “But we’re out there every weekend pulling weeds or trimming plants back or planting new things. We’re definitely do-it-yourselfers as far as that goes.”
“The point is you’ve got to be patient, but the patience does pay off,” Todd said. “That’s the fun part, nurturing it a bit. I get to know I helped nature out.”
Costs: When the Brants decided they were going to redo their landscaping, they went through the San Diego County Water Authority’s Turf Replacement Program. The couple explained that at the time, the program paid $1.50 per square foot. Consequently, they got the whole project paid for.
But it required thorough planning, documentation of each step — from killing and removing the grass to showing they were using good soil — and paying the costs up front.
The Brants are thrilled with their succulent garden, not to mention the $250 gift certificate for El Plantio Nursery and bragging rights, thanks to a yard sign and certificate of recognition — all from the city of Escondido. The only thing they said they would do differently is to trust themselves more at the beginning in choosing plants.
“And we did somehow inspire our neighbors,” said Todd, “because a few other houses in our neighborhood have also put in drought-tolerant landscaping.”