Photo: Sig Kendrick. Instead of front lawn, this Kelowna homeowner opted to plant a wild meadow with drought-tolerant gaillardia and blue flax, along with other perennials, for this showy front yard that was part of this year's Kelowna Garden Tour. Many of you may remember a column two years ago, in which I decried some of the garden choices featured on that summer’s public garden tour.
The chosen gardens were stunningly beautiful, of course, but featured plantings which would be unsustainable, when, not if, stringent water restrictions were implemented. One garden was all hydrangeas, which require considerable water, and another consisted of 10 acres of turf grasses, beautiful in their own way, but by no means sustainable in our hot and dry summers. I was elated this year to see many gardens on the FlowerPower garden tour focusing on both sustainability and water-wise gardening.
Four of the nine gardens featured had no turf in their front yards. That’s right, no grass. One had an enormous patch of flowering thyme, which was absolutely beautiful.
If no one had been watching, I would have laid down in it so that I arose clothed in its delightful aroma. Another garden featured a stunning meadow planting comprised of native and non-native xeriscape plants. I was in heaven.
Meadow plantings look deceptively easy but they are actually one of the hardest to master and this design team did master the meadow garden. Yet another garden featured beds of drought-tolerant plants and .
