Diamond (s) Can Be a Water-wise Girl’s Best Friend

Today my fellow blogger Cheryl and I had the distinct pleasure of doing a radio interview with Dave Diamond of Salem Radio’s “Community Today” public affairs program.  Although we have done other radio and television interviews for the Blue Thumb campaign since it began its second year back in April, this session was a pleasant surprise and worked especially well. Like many of you out there in Blue Thumb Land, our radio host Dave wants to convert to a more water efficient landscape but is still quite hesitant to begin changing things because, “I don’t know where to start!” We blushed and subtly suggested that he start with the Blue Thumb Pledge, our blog at www.bewatersmart.info  and an automatic shut off nozzle on hoses—he replied, “I can do that!” We replied, “And that’s how you get started as a Blue Thumb”. Congratulations, Dave Diamond!  Tiny bites but easy, really easy for anyone—this is also what we suggest to our readers and those just getting involved with conserving water in the landscape. What a coincidence!

We knew then that even though it was an interview, we had a host asking us landscaping and water conservation questions he’d been personally curious about. Of course, we were thrilled!

We went on to talk about the “new California landscape”, a term coined by my dear writing partner, Ms. Buckwalter. We often see people trying to replicate landscapes using plants just not appropriate to our area. They reason that if it grows in Connecticut or Virginia, it’ll grow here; but it rains on the east coast and irrigation is rarely, if ever, a concern. They also seem to be OK with letting their grass go brown in winter—something we have a tendency to resist strongly. Another example of “exotic” (not native to the region) plants much closer to home? The lovely coast redwood—as in native to the coast of California and not the central valley.

These California natives are well suited to areas cooler and foggy, where they get up to sixty percent of their water directly from fog surrounding the leaves—thus the name coast redwood. They may be natives, but not around here, where a mature redwood of seventy or eighty feet can easily lose and guzzle down several hundred gallons of water every day during the heat of our summers. There are other trees, such as the graceful deodar cedar, with similar characteristics but requiring virtually no summer watering after establishment. There is a beautiful grove of these cedars at the Interstate 80/Highway 65 interchange. They are mixed with Chinese pistache, another low-water shade tree, and in fall, the colors are spectacular. Many varieties of the cedars exist with colors range from gold to deepest green.  No water, no pests, no problem—you save money and do something good for the ecosystem.

We went on to answer more questions, as we have written about many of them in the Blue Thumb blog. Happy to oblige, we shared some of our best thoughts about water conservation and how to go about being aware of its importance, even though we had a wetter than expected late fall, early winter, late winter, early spring, late spring, and early summer.

We hope you’ll join our reading public and tune in for the complete interview on these stations. Check listings for times via the websites provided below—they will be streaming the broadcast as well. We’ll air on the Group’s four local stations: KFIA www.KFIA.com  ,  KKFS, www.1039TheFish.com , KSAC “Money 1055”, www.Money1055.biz  and KTKZ, www.KTKZ.com  August 28, 2011 and are confident that you’ll find a convenient moment or two to listen and get “water-wise”!!