Water Water Everywhere

And by that I mean it's going down the drain. Water is a necessity and overuse of water is a luxury we can no longer afford. There is no less water than there was years ago, and in fact some of it is more available now as the icebergs have been melting. However, there are more people on this earth than ever before and most of those people are using more water than ever before. So we need more fresh water for all, and that is why it is so important for us to be frugal with the fresh supply we have. One way we've done that is with drought tolerant landscaping. This does not have to be cactus and it does not have to be dry and ugly. The concept of drought tolerant landscaping includes grouping plants/trees with like water needs together. So, in the front of our house where the sun shines brightest, we have the pomegranate trees with white lantana mixed in between. The pomegranate trees are Mediterranean and don't require much water once they get started. In fact, we learned the hard way the first year that over-watering them causes them to drop their flowers, which meant very little fruit that year. Like I said before, I'm not a purist.  I love tropical plants - they remind me of Hawaii and Brazil where my two sets of grandparents lived when I was little. So I have one small partial-shade section of my yard that has all tropical: gardenia, giant bird of paradise, ferns and begonias. The rest of the yard has drought tolerant plantings. That works for me and keeps our water use down.