Estate Living Magazine Connection - Issue 43 July 2019 | Seite 45

C O M M U N I T Y
Which, since succulents generally form the backbone of any
xeriscaped garden, explains why the system works best in the
drier parts of the country: the Northern Cape and parts of the
Western Cape, the Eastern Cape and North West Province.
XERISHAPING
Crushed gravel, quartz river sand, and even bark chips make
excellent mulch, which is useful for shading the soil from the heat of
the sun, and for preventing evaporation (bearing in mind that your
ultimate aim isn’t to go water-free altogether, but rather to design for
water efficiency). Be careful with the bark chips, too: spread them
judiciously so that they don’t retain too much moisture around the
more water-averse plants – like those American cactuses.
Many xeriscaped gardens rely on rocks, gravel, paving, and
other hard elements to define shape and spaces.
Many xeriscapes rely for their design success on well-placed
arrangements of rocks. As a rule of thumb, local rocks usually
work best, probably as a result of the ‘borrowed landscape’
principle: the idea of marrying your garden to its surroundings
through visual links with existing features outside the boundaries
of the garden. Some landscapers have suggested that rocks
I
HARD LANDSCAPING
Gravel and sand are also useful design elements if you’re
planning a Zen-style garden – which, by the way, can be
exceptionally well adapted to xeriscaping.
One way to ensure that your succulents won’t wallow in the wet
when it does rain is to shape your planting areas into mounds, and
perhaps direct the water run-off into your gravelled pathways,
and from there away via the property’s natural drainage.
Shaping and contouring is useful, too, for providing visual relief
and interesting contours in level, otherwise featureless spaces.
But be aware, especially if you’re going to import the soils for
mounding, that you need to choose your soils carefully. No
compost! No rich, loamy topsoil!
L I V I N G