The ceanothus and the salvia need no water at all during the summer (after, say, the first season or two). I think the juncus probably needs some and it won't hurt the mimulus. Westelle is right that the fall is the best time to plant, as the rains will do most of the watering for you the first year--there's nothing wrong with planting in the spring, it's just a pain because it puts a lot more burden on you the first year. The reason drip irrigation isn't good for (some!) natives is that it keeps the root zone moist, which encourages the growth of fungi and microbes and the plant then succumbs to disease. For these natives it's not so much the drip that's the problem, it's just that they're adapted to fast-draining slopes in summer-dry climates and they don't want any summer water at all. But natives that are accustomed to more moisture (like the juncus) probably won't mind drip irrigation (or overhead or however you do it). I can't explain why westelle needs to water hers except maybe to say that some ceanothus grow natively on the coast and they probably are not used to the extra dryness they're getting in Fresno. So if you live in the Central Valley you might do well to do as she does--although I would just soak them rather than use drip emitters, and I'd make sure the drainage is really good where they are.

I absolutely do intend to buy a sump pump. I tried to buy one today, in fact, but the store was out of the model I wanted. I will probably buy one this weekend at a different store. Dicot, unfortunately gravity doesn't work in my favor. Everything in the whole neighborhood is located higher than my drainage ditch, which is why I've never been able to get the drainage ditch to actually drain. The sump pump should take care of that, though! Al, could you recommend a website with instructions for installing a more permanent drainage solution? I would be more than happy to spend $50 on it; I'm just not confident of my ability to install it successfully. Flora, my spreadsheet also shows which plants have died in my garden, so that I can stop planting them. I have been adding more and more clustered field sedge, because it seems to do well and I like it. I also added a second golden currant earlier this year, for the same reasons. But I also like to experiment with new plants when my research suggests they should work. Even if the plants die, I'll probably learn something about them that I can use when we eventually buy a place and I start a whole new garden. Kris, I have been adding coarse woodchip mulch, steer manure, and homemade compost about 8 to 12 times per year since August 2008. The soil just swallows it right up at the next rainstorm. It does have some lasting effect - when I dig down in the lowest-lying areas of the yard (along the fence shown in the left 2/3 of my photos), the top four or five inches of soil have large woodchips all through them, even though the top surface just looks like mud. The foreground of my photos shows the slightly higher portion of the yard, though, and nothing I've added has seemed to have much effect there. I think a lot of the mulch and compost just washes down to the lower spots. I probably should dig more of it in. Thank you, everyone, for your suggestions - especially the suggestion of a sump pump!

This freeze has separated the hardy from the tender of the Southern Hemisphere stuff as well. I'm looking mostly at my container stock that didn't make it into the greenhouse, whose damage to their upper parts is still instructive regardless of the state of the root system. My best Callistemon by far is C. viridiflorus (that's the real C. viridiflorus, not the Youngblood Nursery mislabeled one showing up in Seattle area retail nurseries lately).... easily hardier than others including 'Woodlanders Hardy'. Corokias are all pretty much tender.... none really did that great but C. cotoneaster was the best. Cassinia x Ozothamnus is impressively hardy, as is Brachyglottis monroi, Olearia x haastii and O. paniculata. Pittosporum colensoi is my best NZ Pittosporum. Araucaria angustifolia (100+ of them) has burned leaf tips but growing points are still fine. Astelia... forget it, dead. Eucalyptus are mostly dead but I'm really impressed with a couple forms of E. rubida and E. camphora which I'm surprised to see unharmed. I'll do a full report later but I want to wait just a little bit longer so that my information will be as accurate as possible. The lowest temperature here was 13F, which was reached in both the morning and the evening of the coldest day. I'm planning a better organized eucalyptus test garden to trial some of the best provenances of the hardiest species. With good documentation this time and a more limited, deliberate selection of plants, I hope it will prove to be an instructive test. I'll probably skip E. scoparia; I just don't think it is that hardy although it continues to persist in Olympia. I hope I can get this project underway this year.

This thread began as a means to discuss the issue of Sunset zones. The secondary motive was for me to try to explore the notion that elevation is a factor to RMG but not the only factor. Over the course of looking at climate data, I discovered that annual precipitation and the time of its occurrence may be a defining feature for the RMG region. Aridity cannot be the only determinate or wed all be over in the Southwest Gardening forum. Previous and somewhat naively, I had thought that these evergreen mountains here and there indicated that there were areas with rather high rainfall amounts - what hadn't quite sunk in was that while that is true, these areas were all at elevations where gardening becomes impossible. I began wondering if a particular native plant species was representative of the broad RMG region. I'm no expert on native plants so this was a fun exercise even if it doesn't appear to be absolutely successful (perhaps, an impossibility). It seemed to me that the Arrowleaf Balsamroot was most broadly representative. I'm hoping that other gardeners are giving this some thought and will comment. By way of encouragement, my question now is - what the heck is this plant whose image is used here on GardenWeb to represent Rocky Mountain Gardening: Steve