The Dry Stream Bed

I was having a hard time deciding what to take pictures of today (and it's only Jan 6th!). But the wind was blowing outside, and the grasses looked pretty, so I figured pictures of the dry stream bed would be good!

For a really neat view of what wind can do in a garden, you should go look at David at the desert edge's post on wind as garden element. It made me think about different ways I might be able to incorporate the wind (that's always here!) into my garden, without driving my neighbors nuts with wind chimes!

The dry stream bed occupies the whole south-side of my property. I put in the front garden part of it first, about three (almost four!) years ago now:

Looking towards the back garden



There are three pink Muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris) clumps, spaced along the dry stream bed. They're surrounded by decomposed granite, with local stone making up the stream bed. The larger rocks match the rocks on house. I wish I could say I planned that, but it was a happy accident!

This hasn't been the best year for the pink plumes - they're getting cut back soon.

 In the picture above, you can see two colors of decomposed granite - the soft pink/ground color is the stream bed, and the blue-ish color in the bottom left is a path. These same two colors repeat in the back garden stream bed:

The back garden, looking west

 This part of the stream bed was put in early in 2012, and uses pink Muhly along with Mexican feather grass. It's about 60 feet long, and ends in a stone "pond", where I currently have a big green pot (with nothing in it):

West-most end of dry stream bed

 I have been thinking about what to do with that area, to make it more of a focal point. There is no water to that container, so if I plant it, it would have to be something that could deal with my (at best) neglectful hand watering. I could also turn the container into a water feature. Or (and this is my latest crazy idea) I could replace the container with a small, above-ground pond, to both add a water feature and plants! We'll see what happens...

There is one thing about the two dry stream beds - while they match, they aren't actually "connected" in the sense that water could flow - as seen in this picture, part of the block wall cuts the two stream beds in half. And another note to self project - I'd like to do something to that gate, probably paint or stain it.

All the plants are on drip-emitters, which helps cut down on water use and keeps weeds from growing (win-win!)