What the heck is Xeriscape?

My that’s a funny word.  And fun.  The Denver Water Department invented it for our enjoyment.  But luckily for us, the usefulness of the word extends beyond semantic fun, it also helps you conserve water.  The word comes from the Greek xeros, which means “dry” and the old boring word landscaping, which means, well, you know what that means.

Anyway, you xeriscape by planting plants suitable for a dry climate where a dry climate actually exists, like Denver.  This way, you cut back on your consumptive use of water, which is what landscaping is.  This is important because consumptive use is the worst kind of water use.  At Greenfitter Home Supply, our first love is the great water-saving showerhead, which saves on non-consumptive water use.  This means that when you use water during a shower, the consolation is that the water does at least go back down the drain and into the watershed, although not to be used by the community again (unless it is recycled, like Aurora, CO, but that’s a different story).  Consumptive use, on the other hand means that you spray the water on your lawn and it gets evaporated into the air eventually, never to be heard from again.

Furthermore, keeping a lush green lawn where the climate doesn’t want you to have one takes ALOT of water.  Often, outdoor water use is over 50% of a household’s water use.  So we get to Xeriscaping, which simply means that you plant and cultivate your yard with beautiful plants suitable to where you live (which do not need you to pour water on them year round).  A genius idea!  So if you live somewhere where the plants growing in the vacant lot down the street don’t match the plants in your yard, you should look into Xeriscaping.  Many Western cities have program where you can get some cash for doing this since it helps the community so much through conservation.

Xeriscaping may also be called water-conserving landscaping, drought-tolerant landscaping, zeroscaping, and smart scaping, but we think Xeriscaping is the most fun.

Xeriscape is a registered trademark of Denver Water.  I hope that they don’t get sore at us for talking about their intellectual property and all.  They should let more people use it anyway since it’s so fun.  Find out more at their site.  Here is a more in-depth, how-to-ish page on Xeriscaping from Texas A&M.

Oh yeah, go here and look at our water-saving showerheads. They’re neato.