Fortunately for us the soil is a well-drained silty clay loam that does not experience shrink/swell cycles, so there is no need to water the foundation. If the foundation needed watering, I would make sure everything around the house could handle temporary wet feet as well as dry periods. Certain plants are perfectly suited for this type of scenario, such as Seep Muhly of North Central Texas.

Ty

I do just the opposite. I xeriscape everywhere else, water the foundation, and put things that like a little extra water in my foundation beds.

I try not to put water hogs there so they don't suck up all the water but around my house I have dwarf wax myrtle, Texas betony, Gregg's mist flower, some micro yaupons, Turks's cap, stuff like that. Some of those don't need extra water but don't mind it.

Good to know lucas tx. I only have soaker hoses around my foundation now and wondered if it would look funny to have full plantings next to the house and not so much farther away. But I don't know how much xeriscape dh is going to be open to, so I may just be dreaming.

I have been planting with natives for the last 8-10 years, keeping the moisture loving ones close to the house and gradually eliminating the non-native and thirsty plants further out. My ultimate goal is easy maintenance. I'd like to eliminate most of the grass and still have a yard that blends with the neighborhood.

I've let a section of my backyard go completely native and both my dh and my neighbors seem to hate it. I love it. Right now it's covered with wildflowers. I don't know about the rest of you, but finding natives at local nurseries is really hard.

I'm tired of spending time and money on the yard. I'm ready to enjoy it more. If I could figure out a plan that kept the weeds out too, I'd be a happy camper.

Another thing that is bothering me about my yard the way it is now and they way I'd like it to be is chiggers. Our yard and vegetable garden is overrun with the little beasties. I have grass in the backyard near the house, and I cut it at 2+ inches so it will retain some moisture and crowd out weeds. I also mow some walking paths through the wild part of the backyard, about 6' wide and I mow those close to the ground. I spread sulfur pellets on the grass and walking paths and it helped with the little varmits, but we are still being bit. I am going to do the vegetable garden today. Dh planted the garden this year and he put the tomatoes too close together and it is all I can do to walk between them. I suspect that is where most of the chiggers are too.

Most of the xeriscaped yards I have seen have tall growth in the yard. How do you deal with the chiggers? Or do you just not walk through the yard?

My problem is mosquitoes, most likely from my neighbor's yard since she has saucers under all of the pots and I doubt she empties them...since she doesn't remove the volunteer hackberries and other volunteers that sprout near her trees. Only part of my front yard is truly xeriscaped, and what's not plant is mulch, but I've not had a problem walking by it to get to the mail box/paper.

I have a neighbor who piles stuff next to the fence next to my garage. It's as far from her house as she can get, and about 15 feet from my garage. She never mows right there and has at least one plastic fish pond laying there collecting water. I need to get some mosquito dunks to toss in there.

A little OT, but this blog post illustrates the main reason I'm hesitant to implement my xeriscape plan. I still have a grass space in my plan, but a large part of my front yard will be gravel or decomposed granite and native areas. But I am afraid it will be a turn off to the majority of prospective buyers when we sell.

Link is fixed. It's a GW error that breaks a link when I edit a post.

On the linked blog, the yard was xeriscaped and that part may have looked good but it does look a bit haphazard in the photo, but the original owners planted a vine that took over the front of the house. I would have removed that vine too as it made the whole thing look bad.

But the new owners ripped out everything except a tree or two and put a high maintenance grass lawn & flower beds back in.

This post was edited by marti8a on Mon, Jun 10, 13 at 11:18

The blog has been removed or isn't available.

So, was it a negative experience with a xeriscape at selling time? I look at Oak, Rock, Deer's and Roselee's front yards and just see lovely landscaping.

Texans (and HOAs) are going to need to change their thinking that a beautiful green lawn is the norm here. It's just not responsible to use all of that water to maintain a big lawn and neighborhoods have to get away from requiring it. I saw some lovely xeriscapes in Midland in 2011, where nobody has a green lawn. At least there is green in a xeric garden :-)