By Kathy Ormiston

You want to cut down on your water use, but you are worried that covering your front yard with Coyote Bush might lower your neighborhood’s property values. Moreover, your idea of an upper-body workout doesn’t involve shoveling manure into a compost bin. The truth is, sustainability doesn’t have to be ugly or difficult. If everyone takes a few small steps in their gardens, the Bay Area is going to be better off.

The first step is to rethink the look you are trying to create in your yard. Natural is better, but that doesn’t have to mean wild and unkempt. Take, for example, a shrub that has been pruned into a topiary. It can be a great look in a formal garden, but topiaries require of effort and of gas-sucking power tools. Shrubs that have been thinned and lightly shaped with hand pruners can be lovely in the same way long, natural hair can be more attractive than a tightly sprayed updo.

Some shrubs, however, are just too big for their space. The solution is to replace overgrown shrubs with smaller varieties of the same plants. Today plant growers offer more small shrubs because houses are getting bigger and garden space is shrinking.

Try to keep leaves, pine needles and other organic material in your planting beds. If you get ambitious, you can shred them with a Weed Wacker or run your lawn mower over them. Organic material provides food for the soil and keeps moisture in the ground. Your yard should be neat, but you should not be striving for the cleanliness level of your living room. Tell your landscapers to use blowers on your patios, sidewalks and driveways, not on your planting beds.

California natives are hard to keep alive and often look like a brown, weedy mess by July. There are many drought-tolerant plants from Mediterranean climates and prairie ecosystems that fare quite well on the Peninsula. Some of my favorites are Columbine, Catmint and Black-eyed Susan.

Try a few plants to attract local wildlife. Letting your parsley go to seed is not only surprisingly attractive, but will make the butterflies very happy. Keeping seed heads on plants in the fall will give the birds something to eat in the winter months.

Get to know your irrigation system. I have seen irrigation systems go off daily because no one has replaced a battery that saved the water schedule after a power outage. If there is a rain shower, go out to your garage and shut off the irrigation system for a couple of days. Learn how to program your irrigation system so that you can water for short periods several times in a morning to prevent runoff. Water will be more likely to stay in your soil instead of running off into the street. With a little bit of effort, you will notice major savings in your water bill.

One of the most important things you can do to make your landscape more sustainable is to cut back on the amount of space in your yard set aside for lawn. Lawns are without a doubt one of the biggest users of water. Try increasing the size of your foundation beds, adding beds around trees and replacing some of your grass with ground covers. Aim for a ratio of at least one-third planting beds and two-thirds lawn. For the grass that remains, treat it in a more sustainable way. Don’t cut it short – the grass doesn’t like it, and you will only create dead spots for weeds. Use a mulching lawn mower, which returns high nitrogen grass clippings to your lawn, and you won’t have to fertilize or water as often.

Kathy Ormiston is a member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers and owner of Gingko Garden Designs in Mountain View. For more information, visit www.ginkgogarden.net.