Gazing up toward the mountains there is no sign of snow. Driving south on the freeway, up the Grapevine, the hills are still mostly brown, the grass and wildflower seeds germinating much less than normal.
These are signs of great significance. The weather has never been quite like this. We’ve had dry years, drought, a few wet years, but I’ve never experienced a Bakersfield winter without southbound winds. Usually clouds accumulate by the Grapevine. There have hardly been any clouds, let alone any tule fog.
Back in 1977, an extremely dry year, a tremendous dust storm pitted windshields and blew down fences. Headlines told of the “Great Bakersfield Dust Storm” in capitals. But 1977 started wetter than 2014.
The coast has been storm-free, judging by the lack of seagulls in town. In most winters, they avoid coastal storms by flying inland. In previous years, I’ve seen flocks of seagulls in fields and parking lots, waiting out the bad seaside weather.
The most disturbing sight isn’t visible from ground level. Satellite images of California reveal hardly a trace of white in the Sierras. There has never (ever) been so little snow at this time of year. Neighboring states have also announced extreme drought.
It’s not like the planet is drying up. In far regions of the globe floods, snowfall and hurricanes have set records in the past year. The issue here at home is that global trends show wet places getting wetter and dry ones becoming drier. Bakersfield has never had to take extreme measures for coping with drought. Santa Barbara has rationed water in the past. There were stories about companies offering to paint lawns green so they wouldn’t look dead when the homeowner decided to turn off the sprinklers all summer.
This column has dealt with drip irrigation and water-wise gardening practices before. (An Internet search for “irrigation” and “Shiell” brings them up immediately.) The first place to cut back on water waste is in residential landscapes. Resetting the irrigation timer seasonally is the first step, and costs nothing. Taking measures to guarantee water doesn’t run over the sidewalks and down the gutters makes more sense every day.
Green space makes clouds
Back when I earned a master’s in landscape architecture, two classmates and I did a water resources study on Santa Catalina island. Catalina has only one small reservoir, located in the largest canyon. Water prices have always been high, so much so that desalination of seawater became economically feasible (at several times the price of mainland water). Most of the island is desert-like, the few shrubs that survive somehow coping with constant nibbling by large populations of feral deer, goats, and pigs.
Historically, Catalina was forested, mostly with a lovely tree called the Catalina ironwood (which unfortunately is neither frost hardy nor clay tolerant, so it can’t thrive in Bakersfield). There are records of the deforestation of the island, and of a corresponding drop in rainfall.
Clouds form over cool spots, over the ocean or over lush green areas. Hot dry ground creates updrafts, like a hair dryer aimed at the ceiling. Cloud formation happens when airborne particulates (of which we have a surplus) become the substrate for condensation of moisture.
That means the air at a given elevation has to be cold enough for moisture to condense. Heat arising from sun-warmed bare ground, pavement, rock mulches, roof tiles and sidewalks makes it hard on clouds. Having plenty of healthy trees and other landscaping has a cooling effect.
The point here is that drought and heat become a scratch-and-itch problem, where the one makes the other worse. Dried-up landscapes become hotter, heating the air above.
If the drought wipes out greenery the problem gets worse. So it’s important in a drought to continue sufficient irrigation to maintain the health of our plants. Covering bare ground in bark mulch or deep-rooted groundcovers helps retain moisture in the soil.
Water-wise choices
Xeriscape, literally dry landscaping, is not limited to cactus gardens (although cacti and succulents make great additions). Many flowering and ornamental plants don’t need frequent watering to thrive. They come from regions with similar climates, cool-season rainfall and hot summers, and are not limited to native varieties.
Plants of the Mediterranean, South Africa, parts of China and India, and arid sections of Australia make up the majority of Bakersfield greenery. Most California native plants in horticulture come from the coast or mountains. Just because a plant is native to someplace in California doesn’t mean it wants to grow in our heat or our soils, especially species from the north coast.
Most natives are so well-adapted to summer drought that moderate summer irrigation stimulates unusual growth, making them shorter-lived than in nature, and larger and weaker too. There are cultivars of native plants, horticultural selections either found in the wild or bred by hybridizers, which tolerate summer watering much better, and for this reason named cultivars of plants like Manzanita, Ceanothus, Artemisia, and woody Salvia are preferable.
Not every part of a garden needs the same amount of watering, unless it’s designed that way. Lawns take the most water, and deep-rooted woody plants take the least.
Climatically it makes a lot of sense to let growing trees shade out lawns and then replace the lawn with something more shade-tolerant, but more often than not homeowners choose to cut the tree and keep the lawn. In this year it seems water-wise choices will be particularly important.
Richard Shiell is a professional photographer and gardening enthusiast. If you have a question for him, send it to btowngardenwriter@hotmail.com.
