Water-wise plants will also make the Mediterranean garden style hot in 2012, says Genevieve Schmidt, a northern coastal California landscape designer and author of the North Coast Gardening blog. Mediterranean landscape design, she explains, often features open and airy courtyards, light-colored, textured hardscaping such as mosaic walls, gravel beds or unglazed terra cotta pots and low-growing, drought-tolerant plants, hedges, topiary trees and vines (i.e. olive, bay and lemon trees, succulents, lavender, palms, roses and grasses).
Also, when it comes to cleaning the water, especially storm water carrying pollutants into local waterways, many people are turning to rain gardens. “These shallow depressions are filled with deep-rooted plants and grasses — all of them noninvasive, native or locally adapted — that can handle being inundated with water and also don’t mind being dry,” Zaretsky and Associates’ Coates says.
“Many gardeners are catching their own rainwater in rain barrels and cleaning or recycling grey water (wastewater from domestic activities like laundry, dishwashing and bathing),” adds Anthony Tesselaar, cofounder and president of Tesselaar Plants. “In fact, in many municipalities now, saving water is not only ‘in,’ but mandatory”.
