The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D.,
Ph.D. (5/2/2015))
G. K Chesterton,
an English journalist and writer of the early twentieth century and author of
the Father Brown mysteries, wrote that art is what people do with their
limitations. In Flagstaff Coconino
County
The
real issue is the means to lush, beautiful gardens on less water than a tropical
excess. Indeed, excess is a threat to a water
budget. Also, excess is bad taste. As the poet Robert Browning’s pointed out in
his poem Andrea de Sarto, “Less is
more.” The opportunity for Flagstaff
Happily,
God has given us imagination and the Mexican feather
grass Nasella tenuissima,) a gardener’s
delight. Its leaves are so fine that
they sometimes tangle, but sadly not a tangle with which to dally. Yielding to a breeze with the grace of a
ballet dancer it does a light fandango with castanets and in triple time in a
good wind, a blessing which Flagstaff
All
of these survive, even prevail, on budgeted water, needing water only during
dry spells. The blue fescue gets even
bluer with less water. The voluptuous
blooms of the bearded iris are one of the few beauties of the world who
flourish on benign neglect and low maintenance.
Of course, benign neglect doesn’t mean abuse. They need some water and appropriate
nutrients.
The
word “iris” is a Greek word meaning “rainbow” or metaphorically “halo.” John of the Apocalypse wrote a lovely verse
using iris, “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped
in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and
his legs pillars of fire (10:1.)” The
setting reads like a thunderstorm over the peaks with flashes of lightning, a
rainbow threading it was way in and out of a virga, and the brilliance of the
sun blazing through gaps in the clouds.
All of the colors in that scene can be found in irides (plural of iris) whose
beauty can become, as the Book of Common Prayer reads, “an outward and visible
sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”
Perennial
grasses are available for gardeners on a water budget. Unless a lawn serves as a playing field, a
golf course, or a place for children’s play, grasses suitable for the Southwest
offer an intriguing texture. Creeping
red fescue (Festuca ruba), a
finely-textured, dark green grass, does well out of the sun, forming lazy
whorls in the shade. Sheep fescue (Festuca ovina), a dark green, lies flat
and in mounds in various patterns and needs mowing with a weed-whacker once a
year. Both of these need only 12 inches
of rain annually. Flagstaff
Many bulbs and
rhizomes love gardens on a water budget.
A lushly xeriscaped garden can have color spring, summer, and fall. Beginning with Wordsworth’s “fluttering and
dancing daffodils” (Narcissus) and
tulips (Tulipa) in late winter and early spring, the list continues through the
bearded iris and the western blue flag (Iris
missouriensis) and perennials such as the firewheel (Gaillardia pulchella),
blanket flower (Gaillardia aristata)
and various penstemon such as the Red Rock penstemon (Keckiella corymbosa) and
the Rocky Mountain penstemon (Penstemon strictus). The drought tolerant geranium-leaf larkspur (Delphinium geraniifolium) is a
long-blooming perennial as is the Russian sage (Perovskia atriplocfolia) and that old favorite of country gardens,
the hollyhock (Althaea rosea). A resource is Janice Busco and Nancy R.
Morin’s Native Plants for High-Elevation Western Gardens
Copyright
© Dana Prom Smith 2015
Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit
Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona
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