Portland Landscape Designer’s Advice on Watering

Portland Landscape Designer Carol Lindsay (with client’s puppy Lupe)

You know how Facebook gives you that reminder about something you were doing a year ago today…………Well! Let me tell you, a year ago today I was sick with worry about my clients’ gardens because of the horrible, everlasting,  record breaking,  summer of hell.  Do you remember?  It was unseasonably and unreasonably  hot early in our spring and it stayed that way all summer.   I grew up here and I was in shock and a kind of grief actually.  I missed our normal summer.

As a Portland landscape designer I’m always trying to teach  my clients about how to water.  Did you know you can train your plants roots to grow more deeply? This has many health benefits and one of them is that the plants will be less stressed in high heat periods, another is they won’t need as much water which is nice for your water bill and for the environment in general.

People who don’t know the tricks of proper watering really struggled with their plants and lawns and had many plant losses.  Most were busy watering every day and either rotting their plants or doing such a light watering that the only thing that grew well was their water bill.  A big shock for me was the number of clients whose lawns did not come back at all due to the extreme heat.  They let their lawns go dormant, something that thrifty Portlanders have been doing for decades.  The lawns did not come back with the fall rains.  This had never happened to anyone I knew before.  The spring of 2016 was very busy for Portland landscape design professionals.  People were replacing their dead lawns and remodeling their landscapes.  So now it is July of 2016 and it’s just starting to get hot.  Whether your landscape is mature or has recently been installed it’s not too late to learn how to water properly and protect your investment.

So it’s time to share my watering tips with you again.  SUMMER WATERING TIPS