Hey Chuck B! Palm Springs is a fantasy – ESPECIALLY the hotel gardens! I’m SO grateful for your shout out, and I’m super happy that you enjoyed your time at the Parker. I LOVE those gardens! THANK YOU!!!

Gen darling! Yes, water is SUCH an issue for us – I can see that with the kind of rainfall you get, you must feel water rich! And you should!
Please – JAB AWAY! I TOTALLY don’t mind being called on accounts, in fact, I relish it! I continue to learn and grow, mostly via conversations with friends and colleagues who have different experiences. I can see that for you, lawn must be a reasonable thing to have, and in a climate like yours, why not? Food takes the kind of supplemental water your lawn doesn’t, and it IS a use of water – but I think it is one of the best uses of it. Growing food gives us something our lawn spaces don’t – it is a practice that nourishes us in a direct way, so when prioritizing how to use valuable space in our gardens and valuable water, some things have to go (in my opinion). It isn’t ALL lawns that I am against, it’s just the FRONT lawn, really – back yard lawns do make sense to me, especially when a family with kids is in question. Then I can see a lawn being useful as a play space – but I think it should be only as much as reasonably needed. In the FRONT yard, lawns are usually just their as a default – to look neat, to visually tie one yard to another … it is mostly a pass-thru space. I think utilizing that space to do something that gives us something REAL back for the resources we expend makes sense.
As for drought tolerant food – I have a front yard agave/cactus garden, and I grow tons of herbs – sage, basil, marjoram, oregano, thyme – these tough guys are totally xeric!
As far as “The Edible Front Yard” goes – it is, frankly, a design primer. I do get into sustainable practices, but there is SO MUCH ground to cover that I don’t get into low water food gardening in enormous depth – but if the book does well, that is DEFINITELY something I’d love to expand on! This is a tremendously important issue, and you are right – DEFINITELY deserves a blog post (or FIVE)
Thanks for this fantastic question, Gen – it is important to be held to a standard, and I trust that you guys will do that to me! (because again, that is what it is ALL about – learning, growing, and sharing!) XOXO!!!

Now, this isn’t meant as any kind of jab, so I hope you’ll give me your honest take. Here in my area, I don’t actually water my lawn. It just sorta stays green most of the year and then goes dormant in summer. It means more weeds in my lawn, but I just whack it and it’s fine. But my food gardening – well, I water that a heck of a lot!

Do you have any tips for making my veggie garden low-water? It’s obvious you care about this a lot and I’m guessing you’ve found some ways of dealing with the low-water issue even while growing food. For me, food’s higher-water than lawn and I feel like I must be being less efficient than the farmers who grow it for me otherwise.

Your book probably deals with this, I should probably just be patient. But any tips you have would be fantastic. I’d love to read a blog post about it if you ever felt inspired.

But note that I was NOT scratching my head at the glorious Parker Palm Springs, where we stayed. I took tons of pictures. Check it out: http://back40feet.blogspot.com/2010/10/parker-palm-springs.html

SuMo