By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Tucson writer Brad Lancaster's appearance on National Public Radio earlier this month led me to order his book, Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond. 

Frankly the first skim through was a little daunting. I got spooked by the charts.  And equations like "Estimated Net Runoff from an Impervious Catchment Surface Adjusted by its Runoff Coefficient."  On the second pass, though, I paid more attention to the illustrations, all of which are simple and clear and demonstrate there are dozens of things you can do to trap more water on your property without either being an engineer or hiring one. 

Lancaster's prose is as clear and straightforward as the book's illustrations.  And his passion and personal experience with his subject are apparent on every page. The list of the eight principles that guide his approach that opens his book are a good indication of both his writing and his philosophy:

Reprinted with the author's permission:

The Eight Principles of Successful Rainwater Harvesting.

1.  Begin with long and thoughtful observation.

Use all your senses to see where the water flows and how.  What is working, what is not?  Build on what works.

2.  Start at the top (highpoint) of your watershed and work your way down.

Water travels downhill, so collect water at your high points for more immediate infiltration and easy gravity-fed distribution.  Start at the top where there is less volume and velocity of water.

3.  Start small and simple.

Work at the human scale so you can build and repair everything.  Many small strategies are
far more effective than the one big one when you are trying to infiltrate water into the soil.

4.  Spread and infiltrate the flow of water.

Rather than having water erosively runoff the land's surface, encourage it to stick around, "walk" around, and infiltrate into the soil.  Slow it, spread it, sink it.

5.  Always plan an overflow route, and manage that overflow as a resource.   

Always have an overflow route for the water in times of extra heavy rains, and where possible, use that overflow as a resource.

6.  Maximize living and organic groundcover.

Create a living sponge so the harvested water is used to create more resources, while the soil's ability to infiltrate and hold water steadily improves.

7.  Maximize beneficial relationships and efficiency by "stacking functions." 

Get your water harvesting strategies to do more than hold water.  Berms can double as high and dry raised paths.  Plantings can be placed to cool buildings.  Vegetation can be selected to provide food.

8.  Continually reassess your system: the "feedback loop."   

Observe how your work affects the site — beginning again with the first principle.  Make any needed changes, using the principles to guide you.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

What defines a rose as romantic is all in your perspective, isn't it?  For my husband — and many rose fanciers share his opinion — the higher the petal count, the prettier the rose.  Romantic and sumptuous are synonymous. 

With me, it is just the opposite.  It's the singles that make me sigh.  Sweet innocence combined with primal wildness.  It gets to me every time.  That's why I'll find a place for `Watercolors', a new single hybridized by Tom Carruth of Weeks Roses, in my already crowded yard this winter. 

"Watercolors" has the same range of every-changing pinks and yellows as the popular shrub rose `Mutabilis', only all the colors are more intense.  Despite its delicate, hand-painted appearance `Watercolors' is as tough as nails, says Carruth. (Go to this page to find a source near you.)

Other singles with that same sweetness are `Dainty Bess', a clear pink hybrid tea with burgundy stamens; `Starry Night', a tough little shrub with bright white flowers that look like dogwood; and the rambunctious climber `Sally Holmes.'

More on roses:
How to plant a bare-root rose
How to care for roses

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

If you have a not-too-huge flat lawn, maybe it’s time to move over to a electric mower. They’re clean and relatively quiet, and you never add gas or oil (or spill them on the driveway when you’re hosing grass clippings out of the deck). I recently tested the Black and Decker CMM1200 19-inch cordless electric mower, which cuts 1/3 acre—the area of three pro basketball courts—on a charge.

More eco-friendly than notoriously polluting gas machines, this mower’s rechargeable 24-volt battery lets you cut without being tethered to a power outlet. It started instantly for me, and its one-touch blade-height adjustment was remarkably easy to use.

I found that while the CMM1200 was weak at bagging, it performed well as a mulching mower, letting fine grass clippings drop into the turf, decompose, and refertilize the lawn. Grass clippings are about 4 percent nitrogen—a primary nutrient—so it makes good environmental sense to recycle them.

At 76 pounds, this push mower is too heavy for easy use on slopes, but it’s well-fitted for flat lawns that are too big for manual push mowers. MSRP is about $475, but you can find it for under $400.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

It seems Susi Torre-Bueno, the president of the San Diego Horticultural Society and editor of their monthly newsletter, and I share the same messy habit.  When we deadhead or groom plants, we both let small plant cuttings fall to the ground to compost in place.  (Large cuttings from heavy-duty pruning still goes to the compost pile.) 

It doesn't look as unkempt as it sounds; everything quickly turns a uniform gray-brown.  When we want to present a neater appearance to the world for whatever reason, though--garden tour coming, in-laws visiting--both of us simply cover the clippings with a layer of mulch to create instant respectability.  Then we just keep repeating the process, layer upon layer, both layers breaking down to enrich the soil. 

The difference is Susi has a name for this process.  Well, actually, two.  "Lasagna composting," or "the lazy-woman's-garden-practice-that's-actually-good-for-the-garden."

Whatever you choose to call the technique, we know it works.  We both have lovely friable soil that's full of earthworms.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Winter is pruning time, and it gives you the perfect excuse to get outside and do some gardening that matters. This year I’ve been clipping away at everything from dogwood to spindle tree with new Genus pruners from Leatherman. At $90 (street price), they’re double the cost of Swiss-made, industry-standard Felco pruners, so they have a high bar to clear. But many things make Genus pruners competitive.

For starters, these American-made secateurs do their primary job—cutting twigs and small branches—as well as anything you can buy. Second, Leatherman’s engineers have come up with a safety that doesn’t accidentally lock during use. And the Genus has an array of add-on tools in the handle that actually come in handy. Pruning a wicked patch of rugosa roses, I flipped out the saw several times during my work to quickly remove thick, hardened old canes that were too big for the pruner jaws.

This isn’t the Portland, Oregon company’s first shot at making pruners: they introduced another series last year, but the extra tools folded into the outside of the handles, where they tended to chafe hands during routine pruning. To overcome that, this model has the knife, screwdrivers, saw, sprinkler adjustment key, and file on the inside of one handle. To access them, you rotate the handle 180°, putting the tools on the outside where you can easily open them. This is definitely a pro-quality tool that should find a place in your tool shed.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer.

A seed catalog switching from line drawings to photos doesn't seem like a big deal.  But when the photos are so crisp you can see which lettuces are crunchy and which are tender and don't have to rely on the copy alone to convey that information, it is an exciting change.  But see for yourself.  The Cook's Garden, a specialist in European and organic produce, was always a pleasure to read.  Now — just in time for prime lettuce-planting season — it's a pleasure to look at, too.

Yugoslavia Red

Crystal

Silvia

Four Seasons

Go to a greens growing guide.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

If you have a sloping yard but don't have the budget, energy, or time to tackle full-scale terracing, there is another way to keep more of that precious rainfall on your property instead of draining off into the street.

Install what Prescott, Arizona landscape architect Steve Morgan calls "eyebrow terraces" around your plants. An eyebrow terrace is a planting well open at the back (the upside of the slope) and flaring out on either side.  Its shape catches runoff, allowing more rainfall to soak into the soil and the plants' root zones. 

Because it is going to be more permanent than a planting well, an eyebrow terrace should be constructed with a little more finesse.  "Strengthen the terrace by adding rubble rock from the site [or other small stones], concentrating particularly on the central portion," suggests Morgan.  "And taper off the slope face of the berms to make them more stable and more natural." 

Finally, if it goes with your landscaping style, sow native grass seeds over the berms when you're finished.  They'll make the eyebrow terraces all but disappear.

Click photo to enlarge:

See more ways to green your garden.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Nuts about plants, Chris Hansen has a passion for finding great new trees, shrubs, vines, and perennials and getting them into American gardens. He does it through Great Garden Plants, a mail-order supplier he recently co-founded with Mary Walter.

Hansen, who lives in Oregon, developed a nearly unparalleled contact list among breeders and growers when he worked first at Wayside Gardens, then at Terra Nova Nurseries. They've paid off. For example, Great Garden Plants is currently offering a series of new hellebores developed by Ernie and Marietta O'Byrne at Northwest Nursery in Eugene, OR (see following item).

In his days at Wayside, Hansen could only offer varieties when they were able to secure a minimum stock of 5,000 plants. Now he has more flexibility. When he finds choice plants in small quantities, he buys them and posts them until they're gone. It has the serendipitous charm of a flea market, but the quality of a high-end boutique.

To see what Hansen is doing, go to Great Garden Plants.

photo courtesy Great Garden Plants

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Among the hellebores offered by Great Garden Plants this year, a couple of excellent yellows and a good black, all bred by Ernie and Marietta O’Byrne, stand out.

Yellows. ‘Mellow Yellow’ is an intensely colored, single-flowered variety with red markings at the base of the stamens, and ‘Golden Lotus’ has a lovely double array of yellow petals with green bases and yellow anthers.

Black. 'London Fog' is their entry here—a dark beauty that really stands out above green moss or white snow.

Like most hellebores, these are at their glory in winter, when not much else in flowering, and grow in all but desert and coldest-winter climates. Both are available in limited quantities.

For more about hellebores, read Easy Color for Winter Gardens by Sunset's Julie Chai.

photos by Chris Hansen

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

I love both cats and large houseplants, but together the two can spell trouble. Cats, sadly, seem to prefer potting soil to kitty litter.

A mulch of beach pebbles or rolled river rocks solves the problem. Just layer it over the potting soil, where it will do no harm to either cat or plants, but will (to my eye) look better than potting soil alone.