{"id":64419,"date":"2019-04-25T10:57:14","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T16:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/expert-discusses-water-wise-landscaping\/"},"modified":"2019-04-25T16:57:14","modified_gmt":"2019-04-25T16:57:14","slug":"expert-discusses-water-wise-landscaping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/expert-discusses-water-wise-landscaping\/","title":{"rendered":"Expert discusses water-wise landscaping"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The city of Cortez is pushing water conservation through its \u201cWater is Our Future\u201d campaign. A visual representation of the average resident\u2019s daily water usage is up at City Hall.<\/span>Erika Alvero\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

As part of the city\u2019s \u201cWater is Our Future\u201d campaign, Cortez recently hosted a horticulturist from the Denver Botanic Gardens who discussed how the city could incorporate water-wise plants and strategies into landscaping.<\/p>\n

Specialist Annie Barrow gave presentations to the community and City Council on Monday and Tuesday. She focused on how the city could use appropriate drought-resistant plants to beautify Cortez, educate the public, and possibly even boost tourism with the addition of unique or unusual plants.<\/p>\n

Water conservation is a necessity, she said, noting both environmental dangers posed by climate change and drought, along with state water conservation legislation.<\/p>\n

However, aesthetics are also important to any city and its economy; they attract prospective residents, businesses and tourists.<\/p>\n

She emphasized that she was proposing \u201cxeriscaping,\u201d not \u201czeroscaping\u201d \u2013 while zeroscaping implies a landscape lacking in plants, xeriscaping focuses on using plants that require little or no irrigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople just think OK, it\u2019s all or nothing,\u201d Barrow told councilors and staff on Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m either going to put rocks in and give up, or you\u2019re going to have to have lawn and turf and trees. We have a lot of options in between that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cortez has a semi-arid or steppe climate, similar to Mongolia, Patagonia and South Africa, Barrow said.<\/p>\n

So the city could focus its efforts not only on selecting appropriate regionally native plants, but also on incorporating more \u201cexotic\u201d plants into the landscape. Regionally native plants are beneficial because they would require minimal maintenance and water usage, in addition to attracting and supporting native bees and pollinators, she said.<\/p>\n

But using plants from distant locales with similar climates could be a water-conscious way to give Cortez a \u201cunique flavor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s important that you really think about what\u2019s your palette, and what are your favorite plants,\u201d Barrow said.<\/p>\n

ealvero@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Horticulture: Xeriscaping isn\u2019t \u2018zeroscaping\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,318,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-64419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-cortez-municipal-government","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64419"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=64419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}