Xeriscape Gardening: Water Conservation for the American Landscape [Hardcover]

Connie Lockhart Ellefson (Author), Thomas L. Stephens (Author), Douglas F. Welsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1992

Xeriscape, or low-water landscaping is about gardening with less water whether engineered through changes in garden design, watering methods, plant selection, or a combination of all three.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As the authors of this superb volume take great pains to point out, a Xeriscape (a trademark developed by a Colorado task force) landscape consists not merely of "a few forlorn cacti surrounded by gravel." Rather, it is an outdoor environment that can flourish "without pouring thousands of gallons of expensively purified water down the drain in the process." Surely this is a concept whose time has come nationwide, given the recent droughts in the Northeast and South, in addition to an ongoing water crisis in the West. Garden writer Ellefson, landscape architect Stephens and water management expert Welsh take the reader firmly by the hand and concisely explain how to conceive, design and install a Xeriscape home landscape anywhere in the country. It's all here, from a comparison of mulch materials to what irrigation system to use--and how to set it up--to mind-boggling lists of perennials, shrubs, trees and annuals rated according to water needs for a score of geoclimatic regions in the U.S. (including Hawaii). Rounding out the book are exhaustive appendices listing yet more plant material. Photos not seen by PW. Garden Book Club and Organic Gardening Book Club main selections.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co (July 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0026141256
• ISBN-13: 978-0026141253
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,019,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Connie Ellefson grew up moving all around the West with her family, and developed an eclectic set of interests to write about, including baby names (The Melting Pot Book of Baby Names) conservation (two books on Xeriscape, which means low-water landscaping) and, most of all, traveling light! After multiple layoffs in her field of civil engineering, she realized she enjoyed organizing and decluttering her desk more than the actual engineering, so now she divides her time between writing, speaking, and hand's-on work as a professional organizer in Denver, Colorado.