Water is Money. So is Time.

If you're considering updating your landscaping in Palo Alto, Los Altos, or for that matter any other town down through San José, you should know about the water conservation rebates available (up to $3,000!) from the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

I won't go into all the details here, except to note two extremely important qualifiers:

• Applicants must attain pre-approval by participating in a qualifying pre-inspection and submit a Request for Application Form to the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

• Projects that have been started, landscape that has died, or projects that have already been completed prior to the Notice to Proceed are not eligible.

In other words, don't do anything — don't even shut off your irrigation! — until you've requested an inspection from the County. Otherwise, even if you do the sensible thing and stop watering your lawn because you're just going to replace it with a lovely field of lavender and sage anyhow, you may be ineligible for the rebate. To schedule that all-important pre-inspection, call (800) 548-1882 or sign up online. 

Oh, yes, one other important asterisk: "Rebates are available until funds are depleted." In other words, don't wait to get started.

The list of criteria and approved water-wise plants and equipment is a bit mind-bending, so if you'd like any help navigating it all, call your friendly local landscape designer. 

Birth of a Landscape Designer

Over the weekend I stumbled across what I'm pretty sure is my earliest landscape design. This actually was a plan for my model railroad and dates back 30 years or so, long before I knew what a landscape architect was; and while it's not quite the rendering quality I strive for today, I'm pleased to see it includes several fundamentals: a drawing scale, dimensions, and a symbol legend.

Why do those matter? Well, because the purpose of a landscape design is to communicate an idea; and if you can't interpret the plan you can't get the idea.

A drawing scale, for instance, tells you whether what you're looking at is straight out of Stonehenge, or Spinal Tap. On my railroad plan, I noted 1"=1' : one inch (on paper) represents one foot (in real life). This scale worked because I was designing such a small area (9' x 4'), but it would be more typical for a detail drawing—for instance, to show the end cut pattern for an arbor beam, or a close-up view of an intricate tiling pattern on a patio.

For a full residential landscape, a typical scale might "zoom out" to be more like one inch represents four feet. This is too far away to show precise details like the end cuts on an arbor, but still close enough to show the overall idea with some specificity. By convention, you'll usually see this written as 1/4 inch equals one foot, or 1/4"=1'-0". Purists would call this "48 scale," because 1/4"=1' is the same ratio as 1"=48", or 1:48. Other common architectural scales include 1/8"=1' (96 scale) and 1/2"=1' (24 scale).

At 1:48 scale we can identify the table, plants,
seatwall, boulders, and paving patterns (here, 2' x 2')

For larger sites, the scale might zoom out farther, to an engineering scale such as 1"=10', 1"=20', 1"=100' or more. This shows more of our site in every square inch, which allows the full site to be documented on one sheet of paper, but at the expense of including detail. At 1"=100' you would know that an area is paved, but you would not see a 2' x 2' paving pattern.

A typical "bar scale" at 1:48

In the past 30 years I've also learned it's not enough to only write the scale: we should show it graphically as well. This usually takes the form of a checkered bar or a zigzag line, and it's included so that if the plan falls into the hands of someone who doesn't have a scale ruler—or if the plan gets reproduced at a larger or smaller size—the reader can still see how big a foot, or four or eight, should be, and interpret the design properly.

There's actually a lot more to say about scales: how to pick the best scale for your drawing, which scales to avoid and why, and how to switch gracefully between different scales. If you'd like me to write more about any of it, please chime in. And if you have a scale ruler of your own, check out this handy tutorial by FEMA.

I'll write more next time about dimensioning and legends. Or maybe legends of dimensioning…

Gardening in the New Year

I recently caught up with a friend from Maine, where the ground regularly freezes to 6' deep and footings for walls need to be poured 8' deep to get below the frost line. Makes our winters here in Palo Alto seem positively tropical, and even though the recent frosts are sending lots of things rushing into dormancy, there's still plenty to do in the garden.

Your roses may still look like they're ready to party, but it's really time for them to rest a while. Stop feeding and watering them in advance of pruning them next month.

Ditto your ornamental grasses, which will hold the frost and morning dew beautifully if you leave the seed plumes on just a bit longer. When you see them putting out new growth, that's your cue to cut them back "hard" — about 6" above the ground (till they resemble hedgehogs or sea urchins).

Your fruit trees should have lost most of their leaves by now. Once they're bare, it's time to prune them, remembering to leave plenty of fruiting spurs. If you're growing peaches, nectarines or apricots, spray with a "dormant season" spray while the weather is dry to prevent leaf curl and discourage insects.

Hopefully you got all your daffodil and narcissus bulbs in a couple of months ago; now it's time to pull the THC (tulips, hyacinths and crocuses) out of the fridge and plunk them into the soil as well. Because the Bay Area isn't Maine, these bulbs don't go into deep dormancy, so I like to treat them as annuals and pack them into pots.

Speaking of annuals, nurseries are brimming now with cool-season annuals such as nemesia, ornamental kale, and winter veggies. Now that the Christmas trees are gone, you'll also find a nice selection of camellias in bloom, and bareroot roses will be making an appearance shortly. For all of these I really like Regan Nursery, over in Fremont; Roger Reynolds (in Atherton) and Redwood City Nursery also feature excellent selections.

Finally, it's a prime time to lay down an inch or two of organic compost throughout the garden. I don't bother tilling it in, mostly because I'm lazy but also because I have faith that the coming rains will percolate all the good stuff down without my help.

Getting back to normal after the holidays can leave us a little time-challenged, but try to steal a few quiet, cool, sunny afternoons to spend in your garden before winter rains turn it into a muddy mess. Your landscape will thank you for it!

Branding the Landscape

Pop quiz: Is this my style, or my brand?

I was having an interesting conversation with a colleague the other day about "branding" in landscape design and architecture, from my perspective as a former marketing guy. "What's the difference between 'brand' and 'style?" she asked.

I opined that your style is the outward representation of your work, the "character" of your product. Most of us in the industry can describe the styles of our famous peers: Peter Walker's geometric rhythms, Andrea Cochran's juxtaposition of angled stone or steel against lush greens, SEAM Studio's outrageous artistry. Some designers' styles are so thoroughly and consistently expressed, they become synonymous with their creators: Piet Oudolf's all-season meadows, Oehme van Sweden's "New American Garden," Roberto Burle Marx's tropical cubism.

While there's nothing illegitimate about any of these, the problem with a style is that — although there's nothing like the original and none of us sets out to make a career as a copyist — they can be copied, albeit to varying degrees of success.

On the other hand, everything you do is your brand — not only your work product, but also your work process: your external and internal communications; your partnerships; your reputation (whether deserved or not). It's the culture of your company, even if you're "only" a company of one. Do you commit to delighting your clientele at every turn? Is it important to you to continually expand your knowledge of plants, technologies, construction codes? Are you as obsessive about spelling errors as you are about the angles of your lighting? These may not reflect your style, but they definitely define your brand. It's possible no one else will ever know whether or not you work with integrity and take personal pride in every single project. It's possible they will.

Because its constituencies are so varied and complex, a brand is a fingerprint — a personality. And as such, unlike a style, it cannot be copied. If you're interviewing designers, it may be worth asking them to describe their brands. And if you're a designer yourself, you'd better know what your own brand is.

Painting the Bridge

In case you've ever wondered: 

"Any Joe on the street can call himself a landscape designer. You don't need a degree. You don't need a license. That's a huge difference [compared to a Landscape Architect]." 

That's the wisdom of Dominic Zuccarelli, a 21-year-old landscape architecture major at Purdue University, as quoted by the Northwest Indiana Times. 

*  *  *  *  *

Bristle as I may at young Mr. Zuccarelli's assessment of my profession, I must admit (and actually have) that he's right. Which accounts for the volume of do-it-yourself advice out there… and the legions of disappointed do-it-yourself garden designers.

Another mess by some Joe on the street

Because as approachable as landscape design may be, it still is a process. To do it well one must digest lots of data and evaluate lots of variables. Getting to know yourself is a good, and necessary, first step; but at some point you also have to execute. And for most of us, a landscape renovation is a bigger undertaking than we can finish in a weekend. Oh, sure, it starts well enough: old plants are removed, new borders are marked out with a length of hose, deck boundaries are spray-painted on the ground.

Now, fast-forward a few weeks. Perhaps you've bought a carload of pretty flowers at the nursery, certain that would motivate you. But has your soil been amended? New irrigation lines installed? If you're anything like me, it's a good bet that length of hose remains unmoved, deck post holes undug. The new plants probably look about as bad as the old ones did. And worst of all, the rest of your life keeps churning along with endless distractions to keep you from completing this "simple" project.

I find landscaping can be a bit like the old myth about painting the Golden Gate Bridge: by the time you finish, it's time to start over. The "new" plants have outgrown their space or just plain died. You'd replace them, but you can't quite remember what you meant to do the first time around, and you really don't have the time or energy anyhow. So the too-big shrubs keep getting bigger, and the too-thirsty groundcover withers away, and your landscape never looks quite the way you imagined.

This is where the professional — whether landscape designer or landscape architect — comes in. Hiring a professional creates efficiency: they streamline your process, creating a logical roadmap from idea to execution. They also document the process, so you have a record of what should be done, where, and how. The documentation allows you to install your landscape in phases, starting and stopping the work as necessary and logical. It also allows other professionals — this time, the landscape contractor — to take on and complete your project in a timely manner, to a higher level of finish than most of us could dream of.

Yes, it all costs money. And it's anathema to the hardcore do-it-yourselfer, who would rather live with a half-finished (equals half-unfinished) yard than rely on someone else to uncover its potential. But frankly, I've got better things to do with my life than to keep painting that bridge. Don't you?