Owen Yost

This area’s typical weather is starting. We’ve re­ceived just a few drops more than our normally meager rainfall. Most weather experts predict that our spring will turn into our customary bone-bleaching summer. (It has for the past couple of hundred years.)

Unless your utility costs mean nothing to you, there are methods you can use to yield a colorful, maintainable landscape, even during our 100-degree days. After years of seeing firsthand what makes it through August, I’ve arrived at these guidelines for preparing your landscape to get through a North Texas summer.

Avoid over-maintaining

Leave your yard alone during the heat. During my 20 years as a landscape architect around here, and more as a homeowner, I’ve seen that landscapes do much better if they’re just left to grow how they want.

Look on a North Texas summer not as a bad thing, but as an experiment. Use it to see what makes it to mid-Sep­tem­ber and what doesn’t. Re­mem­ber what you learn from your experiments and you’ll be better prepared for the following summer, and all the Texas summers after that.

Minimize your lawn area

A manicured lawn is a real ego-builder. It also takes a huge amount of work. You know, sweating profusely while you mow, trim, fertilize, weed and kill bugs. Then there’s the expense. Entire industries have sprung up just to take care of your lawn and exhaust your checkbook. Yet, on any given weekend, you can spot scores of exhausted, sweaty homeowners out working on their lawns.

I’d advise people to simply let part of the lawn grow naturally until late September’s cooler weather. Choose about half of your current lawn for the usual mowing, watering, etc., and let the rest become taller.

If you can’t resist the urge to cut a lawn, let the clippings stay on the grass, acting as mulch and providing a tiny bit of shade for the grass roots. Doing so saves about one fertilization per year. And whatever you do, stay away from artificial chemicals and soil additives — they make plants thirstier.

Mulch just about everything

Simply put, a top layer of mulch cools the soil and holds in moisture, so you need to water less. It also keeps out all but the most determined weeds. Mulch can be just ground-up bark chips, shredded leaves or composted grass clippings or other yard waste.

Use native plants

Native plants grew up in this type of summer (their ancestors did, anyway) and with our poor soil. They’re used to it. Once a native Texas plant is established, it needs little or no extra water. Birds and butterflies are attracted to native plants more readily than exotics.

Most native plants aren’t hard to find. In fact, nine of the 12 trees recommended for Denton by Keep Denton Beautiful are native trees available in most nurseries. On the other hand, things like hybrid roses, French lilacs, gardenias and azaleas are from elsewhere in the world (where water isn’t a problem) and will have a tough time here.

Use ‘hardscape’

This is “landscape-speak,” mean­ing anything in the landscape that’s relatively immobile and that’s not supposed to be alive. Examples: a driveway, a deck, a fence, a wall or a patio.

Divide the yard into zones

There’s the active zone with a few potted plants and maybe some outdoor chairs on a patio. Probably there’s a garden zone with flower beds and other tender areas. And there’s the ubiquitous lawn zone.

You get the idea! So you can do yard maintenance in short, targeted spurts, maybe even letting some tasks slide for a week or two.

OWEN YOST is a landscape architect emeritus from the Denton area, and co-owner of Denton’s Wild Bird Center store. He is a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), Native Plant Society of Texas, Keep Denton Beautiful, National Wildlife Federation and the Audubon Society. Reach him by e-mail at yost87@charter.net .