Get the lowdown on xeriscaping, “the future of gardening”
Xeriscaping offers a great solution to gardeners who are at their wits’ end about the drought currently affecting large parts of South Africa. Here’s how it can help you to save water, time and money.
Your garden is responsible for up to 30% of your household’s water usage, but thanks to increasingly variable rainfall and municipalities closing the taps ever more tightly (and completely banning the watering of gardens), we all need to get creative with garden design. This is where xeriscaping enters the picture.
What is xeriscaping?
Some describe it as the future of gardening: in a nutshell, it’s about establishing waterwise gardens that need no irrigation and little maintenance, and incorporate many hard-landscaping features and drought-resistant plants – specifically plants with water requirements that correspond with the rainfall patterns of the area where you live.
Xeriscaping also uses plants to keep your house cooler in summer and warmer in winter, to protect it from the wind, and to conserve water run-off.
The X in the name stands for xerophytes, hardy plants that need virtually no watering once they’re