AURORA — When Quink Arlt decided to convert her Kentucky bluegrass lawn into a Colonial Williamsburg landscape, she had no trouble finding picket fences, brick edging, early American statuary, or even the cannonball closer for her garden gate.
The plants, however, were a whole different matter.
How do you grow shade- and moisture-loving boxwood hedges and evergreen topiaries in a hot, dry, south-facing lawn with water restrictions?
The answer: You don’t. So Arlt, a former wood patterns designer for Better Homes and Gardens, began researching plants that would survive a semi-arid climate and still complement the Cape Cod house that she and her husband, Norm, bought in Aurora in 1996.
Instead of boxwood, Arlt experimented with Kobold barberry (Berberis thunbergii ‘Kobold’), a compact, low-mounding shrub that grows about 2 feet high and wide.
“I looked at it (Kobold) and thought, ‘Yes, I could plant it as a hedge and just trim it as it got bigger,’ ” Arlt recalls.
So she planted the barberries close together, and as they grew, pruned them to create a hedge effect on either side of the brick-lined flagstone pathway that leads to her front entry.
To create a topiary effect, she chose a small- specimen tree to stand behind a picket fence section on each side of her path.
“I first tried rose trees called Polar Joy, but after three years, they started dying off at the top,” she notes.
Then she planted White Chiffon rose of Sharon trees (Hibiscus syriacus ‘Notwoodtwo’) with greater success.
“I think this will be its third summer, and it’s been doing OK,” she says.
For additional “topiaries,” Arlt installed lollipop-shaped thornless cockspur hawthorns (Crataegus crus-galli var. inermis) in her carefully manicured landscape.
As for turf replacement, Arlt used several ground covers, including mother of thyme (Thymus serpyllum), woolly thyme (Thymus pseudolanuginosus) and dragon’s blood sedum (Sedum spurium ‘Dragon’s Blood’). She also tried Turkish veronica (Veronica liwanensis), but it kept turning brown in late summer.
“This (water-wise landscaping) all came about because water was going to get very expensive in Aurora,” Arlt explains. “And we were going on the tier system. So it really made us think that, as much as we watered the lawn before and took care of it, (Kentucky bluegrass) still didn’t look that great. So it really made you think, ‘How much did you really want to fight to have an actual lawn?’ “
With water conservation being an issue throughout Colorado, it makes sense to include drought-tolerant plants in landscapes.
Ray Daugherty, a horticulture faculty member at Front Range Community College’s Westminster Campus, grows a “dog-proof” grass as a drought-resistant alternative to Kentucky bluegrass. Called Dog Tuff African dogtooth grass, it was introduced in 2014 by horticulturist Kelly Grummons of Timberline Gardens.
“It is nearly indestructible, really low-maintenance and not a bad turf grass at all,” notes Daugherty. “In fact, it could possibly be a little invasive for some folks if they watered it heavily.”
What about homeowners who want to replace turf with drought-tolerant, lawn-like groundcovers in low-traffic areas? Daugherty recommends barren strawberry (Waldsteinia species), nailwort (Paronychia serpyllifolia) and wall germander (Teucrium chamaedrys).
He recalls a landscape-maintenance client who planted a 3-foot-wide strip of wall germander between his driveway and a retaining wall.
“It looked awesome, and it was really low-maintenance,” Daugherty explains. “Once a year, you ran your lawn mower over it, and that was it. And it was pretty evergreen, too, because it died back down to about an inch tall with a stub of foliage throughout the winter.”
For moister, shadier areas in your yard, you might consider other plant substitutions. For example, if you find ferns difficult to grow, try Corydalis ophiocarpa, a fern-like, yellow-blooming perennial that grows about 18 inches tall and wide.
If you don’t like your bleeding hearts turning dormant in midsummer, replace the traditional plant (Dicentra spectabilis) with the fern-leaved, longer-blooming Dicentra formosa. The formosa won’t go dormant till winter.
Suppose you have your heart set on a Japanese maple, but don’t have the moist, protected microclimate it requires. Daugherty suggests planting a burning bush (Euonymus alatus), fernleaf buckthorn (Rhamnus frangula ‘Asplenifolia’) or red chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia ‘Brilliantissima’) and pruning it into tree form to create an effect similar to that of the Japanese maple. Another option is the small, native Rocky Mountain maple (Acer glabrum), with its showy red or orange fall color.
But … what if you want to grow Oriental poppies, but don’t have enough sunlight?
You may be out of luck.
“Some plants just do not necessarily have substitutes,” notes Daugherty, “and (Oriental) poppies are kind of one of them.”
