44. The Native Meadow Experiment - Fall in a Drought
It has been almost 4 years since I started my so-called Meadow Experiment, removing my back yard lawn and replacing it with native grasses and other grassland plants, testing out all the recommended steps along the way to get firsthand knowledge of what works best. The main planting happened almost 3 years ago in February 2013, with additional plants added that November. These plants got supplemental water for the first few years, but this summer I have stopped watering entirely. I have heard from multiple sources that native plants should be established enough after 1 to 2 years that they no longer need irrigation, they can live off the winter rains. But I wanted to see how true this is, how they would survive a severe drought year without water.
Ornamental Dormancy
I think the results of this won’t be too surprising: many of the plants have gone dormant, turning brown and dying back. In the case of many of the grasses, this is a normal occurrence each year, and the brown seed heads are actually quite nice looking. Other plants have remained green but grown slower, and a few are probably not going to make it.
The Grasses
I think the grasses in my meadow will mostly survive this dry summer. Cool season grasses typically have late-summer dormancy, turning brown and essentially going to sleep until brought back to life by the winter (cool season) rains. As I’ve mentioned before, the normal maintenance for these grasses is to cut them back in the fall to make way for new growth, and I’ll be doing that in the next few weeks. So I have confidence that my various Festuca and Calamagrostis grasses will sprout new growth here in a few months with only a few losses.
Buckwheat and Iris
It has been interesting to me to watch the native Buckwheat’s behavior this summer, it’s a plant I don’t know that well. They have done fine without water this summer and put on a nice flower display and still have green leaves at this point. The hybridized native Buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. Rubescens) has done better than the locally native one (Eriogonum nudum auriculatum). Definitely a plant type I am going to start using more in my garden designs. The Irises (Iris douglasiana) are the other plant that still has plenty of green foliage which is a little surprising to me because you see Irises on the coastal bluffs of Northern California that turn mostly brown this time of year. I guess being a little inland and possibly a different soil type has made a difference.
Yarrow and Poppy
The Yarrow plants (Achillea millefolium and A. millefolium rubra ‘Rosy Red’) have been interesting with mixed reactions to the drought depending on the plant. Some went completely dormant by mid-summer while others had a new spurt of growth in August and September with smaller leaves and shorter flower stalks.The California Poppies (Eschscholzia californica) have also had a second wind this summer with smaller and sparser growth that wasn’t all that attractive, but I did get a few flowers. Both of these plants die back and turn almost black which calls out to me to be cut back and cleaned up, but I tried to leave the seed heads out on the ground for the birds. And not to leave out the Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium bellum) and Sea Thrift (Armeria maritima) plants, but they are more typical perennials that consistently die back in the late summer.
Winter Refresh?
Now we enter the “rainy season” which technically started on October 15 in the Bay Area, but the last few years it has hardly rained at all before January. Soon I will start cutting things back, removing dead flower heads and foliage but keeping the core of each plan intact. Hopefully some rain will come in November and December and all my meadow natives will sprout new growth. If not I’ll be filling in some spots with new plantings. As always it will be interesting to see how things evolve!
References:
Handouts and Notes from my attendance at the California Native Grass Association’s workshop:
Using California Native Grasses in the Water-Conserving Landscape www.cnga.org