WINNING WATER BATTLES
Weather, grading issues added complexity but didn’t deter two contrasting solutions to thirsty landscapes
Weather, grading issues added complexity but didn’t deter contrasting solutions to thirsty landscapes.
For two 2020 WaterSmart Landscape Contest winners, the contrasts couldn’t be greater. Melissa and Josh Perrell, Santee homeowners who won the Padre Dam Municipal Water District contest, took a minimalist, less-is-more approach to their front landscape. Tim and Brianna Montgomery, the La Mesa homeowners who won the Helix Water District contest, subscribed to a go big or, well, go home attitude that not only addressed water issues in the context of plants but also in hardscape to prevent f looding.
A soggy start
The first thing to get out of the way is that the Perrells acknowledge that they are not gardeners, and they have no gardening aspirations. But at ages 32 and 27, they’re young and energetic. And as new homeowners, they wanted to save money.
“We live in one of the most expensive water districts after Ramona,” said
Melissa Perrell. “We live very modestly and were tired of our bills being so high, especially since we don’t use a lot of water. So, we just wanted to cut it and have something that was low maintenance.”
The couple’s house on a corner lot, which they bought in 2017, came with a small front lawn. In 2018, they applied to the Turf Replacement Rebate Program and sought estimates from landscapers. Discouraged by the costs and realizing the rebate wouldn’t cover anything close to the bids, they decided to DIY it. They had to apply for an extension from the rebate program, which gave them until the end of the following month. The Perrells picked a weekend to get it all done — and it happened to be a stormy one. Husband Josh didn’t want to put off the work, so they got it done in less than four days — including pulling up water-drenched sod.
The inspiration: The Perrells kept things simple with hardy, low-maintenance, low-water plants surrounded by mulch, with a riverbed of rocks cutting across the yard, and a swath of rocks
around half the perimeter not bordered by the driveway or house.
“A lot of people in our neighborhood have the riverbed, and that was the easiest design for us to do without having to have a tractor come in and level out different spaces,” Melissa explained. “For the actual design, I looked at plants on Pinterest and took photos of yards in our neighborhood that I really liked, and just built it around the rock river.”
A friend’s husband’s family owns a nursery, so he helped identify lowmaintenance plants.
The details: The couple rented a truck and got to work during the weekend rainstorm, digging up the grass. They laid down weed guard and, by Monday, Josh and Melissa’s father installed the drip system — after getting advice on what to buy and how to do it from a Home Depot salesman. Rocks for the riverbed and perimeter were delivered to the front yard from Alpine Landscape Materials, and the couple spread them out using a wheelbarrow. They bought a collection of plants, including lavender, rosemary, yucca and echeveria, from Kniffing ’s Nursery in El Cajon. The brown mulch came from The Home Depot.
“If money wasn’t an issue, we prob
ably would have put in decomposed granite instead of mulch, because the mulch can spread and then you have to replace it in a year or two — and we don’t want to ever have to replace it. But it was easy at the time,” said Melissa.
“I really like that there’s so many different colors, so even though they’re succulents, they’re not just green. There’s yellow, purple, orange. And it just gives you a variety,” she added.
Costs: The Perrells’ goal was to keep costs under $2,000. Doing the labor themselves was the biggest savings, but they also were prudent when it came to buying the plants.
“We bought small, knowing they grow big, and because they’re way cheaper,” Melissa explained. “Adultsize plants are much more expensive.”
Ultimately, the rebate came to just over $2,000, and the Perrells kept their costs to about $1,500, including the truck rental and dump fees.
The couple love the compliments they get from neighbors. And they love the fact that they barely water.
“We’re not garden people, so these are basically foolproof plants,” she said with a laugh. “I think we also like it more because we did it, and it was hard.”
A different kind of soggy start
While the Perrells faced a deluge on the weekend they chose to redo their front landscaping, the Montgomerys faced a deluge anytime it rained. They bought their Boulder Hill home in 2014 and discovered that, because the street is 2 to 3 feet higher than their cottage-style house, the grass yard and front of the house would flood anytime the weather turned wet. Once the region faced watering restrictions with the drought, the dying grass spurred them to make a dramatic change.
But the couple — Tim is a chemist for a biotech company and Brianna, an aesthetician, owns a shop called Lavender Blue in La Mesa Village — had much more to do than switch to low-water plants. To redirect the f low of the water from the front of the house, they regraded, and added a sidewalk and low brick wall, as well as a winding paved entry from the new sidewalk to the front steps of the house.
The inspiration: The couple started going to waterwise landscape tours across San Diego in 2017.
“We like a f lowering garden because our house has a cottage style,” said Tim. “It just wouldn’t look good if it were all just cactus and succulents. Neither of us realized what wonderful f lowering varieties of plants you could get that were still low water.”
The couple also looked at different plants and yards around their community to see what thrived, Tim recalled.
“In the fall of 2018, we hired David Clarke of David Clarke Design as a landscape architect. We told him the palette we wanted, that we wanted waterwise plants, and he came up with ideas. We researched lists of plants he gave us to look at how big they get and the colors. We finally made our selections and started grading the following January. We finished in May 2019.”
The details: Because Brianna’s father, Rick Pinnick, owns a commercial grading company, Pinnick Inc., the couple was able to get help with the initial overhaul of the yard. Pinnick brought over a backhoe and a helper to remove the dead grass and do the grading. And, because one of his job sites had a bunch of boulders, the Montgomerys were able to bring them into the design, as well as cobblestone rock that they used for a wall behind their olive tree. The couple hired a neighborhood handyman and his helper to install the irrigation and lighting, and build the cobblestone retaining wall.
After having the soil tested by City Farmers Nursery and adding the nutrients and mulch it needed, the
Montgomerys selected and planted a mix of vegetation from both City Farmers and Armstrong Garden Centers to create a SoCal version of an English cottage garden.
Lavender and rosemary share space with dwarf Mexican bush sage, blue fescue, ‘Sunset’ manzanita, and shasta daisies. The couple chose a fruitless olive tree from Moon Valley Nurseries, as well as a desert willow tree that blooms with pink f lowers. And they kept a row of original roses planted along the right side of the garden.
The result is a charming spray of color that attracts pollinators, birds and ladybugs, mixed with some open
areas, all broken up by a hardscape of brick, pavers and concrete, as well as distinctive boulders. Better still, there’s no more f looding.
The cost: Tim Montgomery estimated the cost over the years to be between $10,000 and $15,000, with the large expenses attributable to all the hardscape.
“We enjoyed working in the yard but had never done anything like this,” said Tim. “It was fun to research all the different plants, and we wanted to do as much as we could to maintain and help it along ourselves. So, it was really a learning experience for both of us, but a very enjoyable one.”