When designing your landscape, it is important to keep your goals in mind, as they will guide the development of your plans. Is your goal to grow food? Attract pollinators? Reduce water usage? Have year-round color or create a relaxing outdoor sanctuary? Landscapes once considered to be for recreation only can be expanded beyond adding beauty, to provide cleaner air and water, provide organic food, and support wildlife. Thinking through the outcome you wish to achieve with your landscape in advance will help to determine plant selection, irrigation layout, and maintenance needs. 

A few links are listed below to help you start your planning.  More resources on planning landscapes and irrigation can be found at SaveDavisWater.org under Helpful Links in the green menu on the right side of the page. 

Helpful links:

• UCD Arboretum Climate-Ready Gardening Toolkit  
  • UCD Arboretum: Life After Lawn 
  • UCD Arboretum All Stars 
  • UCD Arboretum Planting Plans  
• UCCE Master Gardener Program of Yolo County 
• River Friendly Landscaping 

• In your plan, consider plant water needs. Hydrozoning, or grouping plants by water usage, ensures that plants receive the appropriate amount of water. 
• If you haven’t already, consider switching your irrigation system to drip irrigation to provide water directly to plants and reduce runoff. 
• Test your irrigation system to make sure it's functioning properly. Problems are not always visible unless the system is running. Look for broken and/or misaligned sprinkler heads (to avoid water on driveways and sidewalks) and leaking pipes. Check drip irrigation for broken and/or missing emitters, breaks in the drip lines, and any other damage.
• Check the batteries in your irrigation controller. Irrigation controllers sometimes revert to factory settings after even a brief power outage. Check the batteries in your controller every 6 months and replace as needed to ensure your controller continues to run properly.
• Consider alternative ways of collecting water for irrigation purposes. Adding a laundry-to-landscape greywater system is an option to use an alternative water supply for your landscaping and reduce your overall potable water use. With a laundry-to-landscape system, water is discharged directly from the washing machine though a discharge hose to outdoor landscapes. 
• Check soil moisture. The soil may look dry on the surface but it can be wet at root level. Use a soil moisture meter or screwdriver to go down a couple of inches into the soil and see if the soil is still moist.
• Add a layer of 4 inches of mulch around your plants to retain moisture, protect against the summer heat and suppress weeds.
• If you have spray heads, make sure they are adjusted to avoid overspray onto walkways or driveways.  If installing new irrigation and spray heads are determined to be the best option to water your landscape, make sure that sprinkler heads are placed at least 24 inches away from any cement or paved surface.
• When selecting plant species for your garden, consider minimizing the use of turf and whenever possible choose low water-use species appropriate for our region. If turf is desired for your landscape, there are lower water use turf options and turf alternatives that can be considered.
• Above all, careful, water-use management is the best tool to use. You can sign-up for AquaHawk, the city’s online water-use portal, to track your water usage and see how much water is used for irrigation. 

Helpful links:

• Saving water outdoors: Water wise landscaping, irrigation, grey water and lawn removal 
• Water Use Portal

Building sustainable soils will help to ensure the continued health of your landscape. 

• Prior to planting, incorporate compost, manures and/or other natural fertilizers into your soil to provide needed nutrients for plant growth.
• Use mulch around your plants to increase soil water retention, to keep soil and plant roots cool and to reduce weeds. 

• Try in-ground composting—burying food scraps in the soil—to add organic matter to the soil in areas where you haven’t planted yet. This is a great way to prepare your veggie garden beds for spring planting!
• Start a compost pile so that you can recycle nutrients and organic matter back into your soil. Remember: Backyard composting can only handle a small amount of food scraps. If you want to compost larger quantities of food scraps, try a food scrap composting system instead of a backyard compost pile.

Helpful links:

• Composting resources
• CalRecycle: Backyard Composting 

Residential landscapes can serve as wildlife corridors and encourage residency of beneficial species. 

• Consider pollinator plants that help support native bees, butterflies and birds. Native flowers like California poppy, California fuchsia, and narrow leaf milkweed are great choices.  
• Install bat and/or barn owl boxes as bats can help to keep insects under control and barn owls help to control rodent populations.
• Create a “bee drinking station” so bees can drink water without drowning on hot days. Collect small stones or pebbles and place them in a shallow bowl. Fill the bowl partially with water, making sure that the pebbles are only partially covered with water. Place the bowl in a shaded area of your yard where you have seen bees, and make sure to refill it as needed.  
• Keep pet cats indoors. Cats will capture and kill wildlife that are attracted to your yard.
  

Helpful links:

• Urban Wildlife Program
• Audubon At Home: Attracting Birds and Wildlife
• California Native Plant Society: Gardening with Native Plants
• UCD Arboretum Pollinator Gardening 

• When choosing plants, consider how much work you want to put into maintaining your landscape and the amount of yard trimmings different landscapes might generate. 
• To minimize maintenance work, select plants that grow more slowly and don’t require frequent pruning. 
• Be sure to choose the right plant for the space available. Placing a large plant in a small area results in more frequent pruning. 
• Consider “leafing” your plant trimmings onsite as an alternative to mulch. 
• Don’t mow too low. Only remove 1/3 of the grass blade height. Instead of bagging grass clippings, try using the mulch feature on your mower. Mulch mowers chop grass into tiny pieces that fall between the blades of grass and are recycled back into the soil.
• Try composting yard trimmings on site in a backyard compost pile. 

Helpful links:

• UCD Arboretum: Life After Lawn
• UCD Arboretum All Stars 

• When choosing plants, consider how much work you want to put into maintaining your landscape and the amount of yard trimmings different landscapes might generate. 
• To minimize maintenance work, select plants that grow more slowly and don’t require frequent pruning. 
• Be sure to choose the right plant for the space available. Placing a large plant in a small area results in more frequent pruning. 
• Consider “leafing” your plant trimmings onsite as an alternative to mulch. 
• Don’t mow too low. Only remove 1/3 of the grass blade height. Instead of bagging grass clippings, try using the mulch feature on your mower. Mulch mowers chop grass into tiny pieces that fall between the blades of grass and are recycled back into the soil.
• Try composting yard trimmings on site in a backyard compost pile. 

Helpful links:

• UCD Arboretum: Life After Lawn
• UCD Arboretum All Stars 

Integrated Pest Management is a is a broad-based approach to managing pests that combines biological, cultural, physical, and chemical tools to minimize health, environmental, and financial risks. 

• Use mechanical and physical controls for weeds when possible.  Applying wood chip mulch, using cardboard sheet mulching, digging out weeds by the roots and soil solarization are all effective ways to manage and control weeds without using toxic chemicals.
• Any chemical used in yards and gardens can be washed off directly into streams and rivers. It is best to use less toxic pesticides or other means of controlling unwanted pests, rather than harmful pesticides.  Our Water Our World has fact sheets on finding non-toxic and less-toxic solutions for managing pests in and around the home. Visit our pesticides and stormwater webpage for more information on how pesticides end up in waterways and how to protect waterways.
• Select pest resistant varieties when possible. You can “pest proof” your garden to some degree by selecting plants that are more resistant to certain pests and diseases, limiting the amount of chemicals needed to manage pests later down the road.
• Work alongside nature by using biological control methods to handle pests.  Take advantage of a pest’s natural enemies—predators, parasites, pathogens and competitors—to control pests and their damage. 
• Not all bugs are bad. Our landscapes are home to a variety of tiny creatures, most of them are not harmful to our homes and gardens. Insects like lacewings, lady bugs and mantids are helpful, preying on plant-eating bugs that can destroy your garden. Before killing a bug, make sure that it’s not a helpful partner in your garden. 
• Learn to identify harmful bugs. There are some bugs that are not good for your garden. Make sure you can identify these correctly so you can find the best solution to manage them in your garden.
  
  If you are having structural challenges with pests (rats, mice, etc.) and are considering hiring a professional, please see the information on our pesticide and stormwater webpage on hiring pest control professionals to ensure that less toxic options are used. 

Helpful links:

• Managing Weeds (PDF)
• City of Davis IPM Program 
• UC Integrated Pest Management
• Our Water Our World