After many years of Drought conditions that can be both extreme and mildAnd Jahrzehnte of precaritySouthern California, which relies heavily on imported water, has placed major restrictions on how residents can use it. Residents will be restricted to only irrigating their yards once per week within weeks. Your days of lush lawns and flower gardens may be over.
This is just the beginning. Climate change is causing havoc on water systems across the globe. Drought conditions are expected for the Western United States. Through 2030at the most. What’s happening now in Southern California could soon be seen in broader swathes of the West. Watering restrictions could drastically change the outdoor environment.
The new rules were established by the Metropolitan Water District in Southern CaliforniaIt delivers water to 19 millions people in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. It declared a late April. Water Shortage EmergencySince June 1, residents are forbidden from watering more frequently than once per week. Individual water agencies in the area that exceed the limits will be fined. This could eventually trickle down to individual water users. If conditions worsen, the district may impose even stricter restrictions, including a ban on all non-essential outdoor irrigation. With an estimated 30% of a family’s daily water use going to outdoor irrigationIt is possible to reduce water usage and save water.
Yards across the region could become a dusty mess due to the strict watering requirements and the scorching heat of the Southern California summer. However, landscape architects and designers in the region believe this may be a great opportunity to eliminate outdated ideas about suburban landscaping. Landscape design trends could be accelerated by watering limitations. These watering limits will affect everything from the availability of plants to how they are watered.
Good-bye fronds. Hello, cacti.
Despite annual rainfall that’s often measured in single digit inchesGreater Los Angeles is still well-known for its lush green lawns and wide fields of grass. Thirsty trees like eucalyptus and ficus were planted with abandon in decades past, and though the region’s environmentally minded have been opting for succulents and cacti, green lawns make up the front yards of communities from Beverly Hills to Pasadena to Laguna Beach.
Mia Lehrer, landscape architect, says that drought-tolerant plants could be more attractive to people. Her firm, Studio MLADesigned several parks in Los Angeles that include species that can withstand low water conditions. garden outside L.A.’s Natural History MuseumThe park is located on a hillside overlooking downtown. These spaces don’t have vibrant, non-native flowers or jungle-like foliage. They use native grasses like Buckwheat, shrubs and trees like Manzanita that can withstand droughts. Lehrer states that some of the gardens, which were planted in 2013, only require watering every two weeks. “For many of us in Southern California over the last 10 years, the issue of how much water we’re using and what plant materials we’re designing into projects has been front and center of design,” Lehrer says.
But designing around water scarcity isn’t as simple as getting rid of all the thirsty plants and replacing them with species better adapted to dry conditions. Many species weren’t even available at commercial nurseries. “It was tricky finding the plant material,” Lehrer says of those early years. “Sometimes you had to grow them yourself during construction.”
Nurseries now sell a wider range of plants, so both landscape designers and amateurs can include them in their plans. Lehrer said. She hopes that designers and those commissioned to water them will be more open for this broad range of plants to be used in new projects. “There are so many varieties of trees that have come into the market,” Lehrer says, citing drought-tolerant trees like oaks and sycamores.
Los Angeles, CA. [Photo: courtesy Studio MLA]
Old water is good again
John Lesak, a principal at the architecture & design firm, is Page & Turnbull, and he says there’s been a growing understanding among designers that drought-tolerant design is the way forward for Southern California. These designs have been delayed by regulatory and permitting issues. He cites water-saving techniques such as water harvesting, which captures rainwater and graywater reuse. This directs non-toxic waste water from kitchen sinks or showers into the landscape, instead of the sewer. These concepts are more readily appreciated by some public agencies than others, especially those concerned about pets and people coming in contact with potentially unsafe water. “While the building folks may want to be doing this, the health people are saying hold on a second,” Lesak says.
These rules are starting to change. Lesak’s firm is working on a number of projects that are exploring new ways of landscaping without traditional irrigation. One is a pilot project for the San Gabriel Valley Water Conservation Authority that’s exploring new ways of capturing and reusing water on site. The project is a demonstration intended to show off new approaches to landscape design, and includes several wetland-like bioswales that can capture and absorb stormwater during the region’s infrequent rains, and large underground cisterns that can store recycled water for irrigation — approaches that can be tricky for homeowners to get permitted. The ideas being tested here could be adopted into residential yards or public parks.
This creates a new design challenge. These approaches require more space than a simple grid of sprinkler heads and buried irrigation lines. This can be difficult in a region such as Southern California where rains are rare and frequent. Any storage system must be able to withstand a deluge for several months. Lesak says that new projects need to be designed in larger areas so that cisterns can buried. But he says there’s a range of tools for accommodating the capture and reuse of water on site. “There’s a lot of exciting water storage technologies ranging from galvanized steel tanks to rubberized bladders that you can store in a crawl space,” he says.
More flexible regulations
In light of the ongoing drought, city agencies are being more flexible when it is time to approve new regulations. These regulations will require drought-tolerant plants. They will also encourage the removal and reuse of water from sinks or showers.
Los Angeles County has new health regulations, as an example. guidelines for the use of “alternative” water sourcesThis includes the non-potable graywater that comes from kitchen sinks and clothes washers. “It clearly called out how to address water reuse safely and encourages owners to address stormwater, graywater, rainwater, and recycled water without getting bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy,” says Kathleen Hetrick, a sustainability engineer at Buro Happold, an engineering firm with an office in L.A. “It gave everyone in the industry more confidence that water reuse is a positive for a project, and not a headache.”
California’s other governments are also making similar regulatory improvements. Hetrick said that cities such as San Francisco are exploring the possibility of using the technology. On-site recycling of so called blackwaterYou can also see what is flushed down the bathroom toilet, So that it can be used as irrigation. Cities are now being challenged by the drought and future water scarcity to think more broadly about where water comes from. “There are so many resources for creating the policy we need,” Hetrick says.
The changes underway have been building up for years, and the imposition of the region’s once-per-week watering limits may be a loud wakeup call to finally put them into place at a larger scale. That may not mean the widespread disappearance of the classic front lawn, but in a water-conscious future, they’re almost certain to be the exception rather than the rule.
