CONSERVATION CORNER

SUCCESSFUL XERISCAPE GARDEN TOUR

Nice weather and a large crowd of enthusiastic gardeners teamed up to make the First Annual Xeriscape Garden Tour very successful. The Big Bear Group of the Sierra Club identified, evaluated, and coordinated eight gardens for this year's tour. The gardens ranged from small and sunny, large and shady, flat to hilly and even included a small lawn, pond, and stream. Each garden contained its own unique attributes, providing a wide variety of low water use plants and garden designs. Over 200 people registered for the tour and visitation was high at the gardens nearest the center of town. Although the gardens in the east end of the valley weren't quite as busy, the adventurous souls that visited all eight gardens were treated to delightful flower shows and a larger diversity of design options to ponder when designing their own xeriscapes. Eminger's Nursery hosted the starting point and enjoyed a busier than usual Saturday.

Next year the Sierra Club hopes to expand the number of gardens on the tour to ten or more. In addition, they hope to find a new set of attractive low water use gardens to add to the tour agenda. Thus, please consider nominating your xeriscape garden for next year's tour (possibly even CSD's!!). In the meantime, keep in mind that water conservation needs to become a way of life in the Big Bear Valley. And it should be clear to most folks now that xeriscape gardens are considerably more than pine needles, pine cones, junk refrigerators and leaning fences. So, get motivated, show your creativity, and spend more time in your yard developing your own low water use landscape.

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