Oddly enough, I am presenting Phase IV of a 1970' condo redo tomorrow morning. The thing that you might find interesting is that they are converting a lot of area into lawn to save on maintenance costs. The cost of bark mulch and weeding has been killing them. The maintenance crew cheif loves it more than anybody. Mowing equipment is very fast and just about anyone can do it with good results. Environmentally incorrect? Well, here's the thing. There is high nitrogen in the ground water from septic systems that migrates from miles away toward the coastal ponds in the area. Lawn is a heavy consumer of nitrogen. One way to look at that is to assume that excessive fetilizer will be dumped onto the grass to try to make it greener than green resulting in the excess going into the groundwater and eventually causing algae blooms in the ponds. An alternative is to harness the grass's ability to consume nitrogen by using wells to remove the existing groundwater with its excessive nitrogen from the ground and feeding it to the grass. The water returns to the ground and continues on to the ponds with less nitrogen than it had before because the grass uses it up. I'm sure that it is a very different ecosystem where you are than what we have up here, but it is interesting in terms of regional differences. Think about all of the conditions the various parts of your site are in such as lawn, natural woodlands, perennial beds, younger shrub plantings, treed areas, understory areas, buildings, pavements, surface water or whatever else there is. Ask yourself and others what they really like about where the current landscape. That is how we started with this and another similar condo redo project that I was involved in. That will give you (the collective you) a better understanding of the quality of life issues that are part of what you as a community value. Those quality of life values have to balance out with other values such as cost, environmental consciousness, or others. It can be very easy to make a mistake in applying only your own balance of values and imposing them on your community with only the best of intensions. You stated that one of the problems that is driving up the cost of your maintenance is the mature planting. You also make a strong statement about the unused lawn area in terms of energy, water, emmissions, and money. The assumption is that what lies between these two extremes of conditions is either very little in terms of area, or does not drain your resources. Could converting toward those undescribed conditions keep maintenance costs down without introducing an experimental condition or changing the quality of life that the community enjoys? Look around your area to see what is working on other sites before you become a pioneer. Usually, good ideas catch on and become common place especially if they are economical. If you don't see fabulous swathes of wildflowers as you envision it is much more likely that they are not so easy or not so economical than thought rather than you being the first to consider it. One of the best things you can do for economy, environment, maintenance, and successful landscaping is to put in place what would grow naturally. You need to be more proactive than just getting a list of native plants. You need to know the local conditions very well and recreate what would grow there if we all disappeared and nature reclaimed it. You also have to be very aware of what might try to "reclaim" your plantings. The biggest problem with the wildflower "set it and forget it" seed mixes is Darwinism. Competition. Sometimes it is competition between what comes out of the seed bag, but more likely it is going to be some other crop that is better suited than what was in the mix. Local conditions are going to weaken some plants dominance while enhancing anothers. What will you wind up with? Hopefully, others in your area have found out and it is good, but you should do your best to find out before you commit.

I am on my fourth try for an avocado and I am thinking this one will stick. I have learned so much from this site since I started and my luck with the plants is getting better. The first three I had tried were all Haas. They were all small and never lasted long after planting. We get hot in the summer (110* plus summer, down to about 30* winter) . They would all drop their leaves and never recover. Using my gardenweb knowledge I made my last attempt by changing to a Zutano which can handle the cold and hot a little better. I planted it in a whiskey half barrel to get it started and placed it where it gets a good mix of sun and shade. I planted it in July and it grew 6â in this picture and has since filled out and grew another 18âÂÂ. It will get a nice home in the ground this spring and will hopefully grow to look like ReneeâÂÂs awesome avocado tree some day.

I think it's amazing this thread went on so long with no mention of St Augustine. UC Verde and all the other buffalo and prairie grasses are for full sun. Kikuyu is one of the most invasive imported pest plants short of kudzu. The others mentioned are ground covers that do not repair themselves. Dichondra will die annually from flea beetle. They wipe it out faster than you can diagnose it, but it returns from seed. Fescue, in my opinion should be formally outlawed in CA unless you live west of the 5 in San Diego and Orange counties and west of the 405 in LA. North of the 10 it can be grown on the west slopes of the coastal range, but not in the valleys. St Augustine is a real turf grass, unlike many of the alternates mentioned. It spreads to repair itself under the dog feet, is very shade tolerant, also sun tolerant, and it will crowd out other grasses when mowed at the mower's highest setting. St Aug comes as pieces of sod on a pallet. Cost is about a dollar per piece covering about 2 square feet. It spreads 10 to 15 feet per year in all directions, so if you don't cover the entire area at one time, it will take over and cover for you. St Aug takes as much water as any turf grass if you want it to remain green. If you stop watering it for more than a month, it might die completely, so it differs from other grasses in that regard. But I have revived it from beyond the grave at my my new residence in the Texas Hill Country. St Augustine is considered to be a water hog, but that is pure myth. All grasses need 1 inch of water, once a week, in the hottest heat of summer. This goes for the cool season grasses in the north and the warm season grasses in the south. In Phoenix both bermuda and St Augustine need 1 inch every 4-5 days, but in the rest of the country it only needs it once a week. This time of year in your area you should be watering 1 inch, all at once, every 2-3 weeks. The problem with fescue is it needs water 3x per week in the summer and that dries up your aquifers and lakes. Not sure why you think you have clay, but you likely don't. I don't recall any brick factories in your area, so I'm skeptical. After 12 years of moderating three lawn forums, fewer than 10 writers really had clay. Your soil might have clay like properties, but those can be fixed. Even real clay can be fixed, but you have to have a good soil test along with a good reading of the soil test before you can fix it. 9 times out of 10 people who think they have clay have no clay at all but they do have fine silt and a salt imbalance (calcium, sodium, magnesium, and potassium). You can't know what the problem is without the chemistry test. A secondary issue causing hard soil is allowing the soil to dry completely such that the beneficial microbes in the soil are depleted and unhealthy. That can be fixed by spraying the soil with any clear shampoo at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Follow that with 1/2 to 1 inch of water and let it go for 3 weeks. At the same time feed the soil with an organic fertilizer like alfalfa pellets, corn meal, soybean meal, or even Milorganite. Compost and/or manure won't do the same thing as the fertilizer. The deep moisture creates a perfect environment for the microbes. The organic fertilizer feeds them. Hard soil is easy to fix. The best soil test in the US is from Logan Labs in Ohio. Yes, it's been tested against all the other labs. Get their $25 test and post the results on the Lawn Care forum and you'll get about $250 worth of free advice from people who know specifically what to apply, when, how much, how often, and where to get the stuff. If you want to see some alternate grasses in action, visit Descanso Gardens and the Huntington Library in Pasadena.

Josue, thank you so much for your reply! I called the number you provided for master gardeners of San Diego. They returned my call a couple hours later and I spoke with a wonderful woman named Beverly. She told me to go ahead and plant my native plants, no top soil, no fertilizer. Terrace if I want to but suggested I could use some erosion control sheeting instead if it actually ends up raining in Southern California this year :o) For erosion control, she suggested doing a lot of ground cover mixed in with my larger native plants. I am going to go with a bunch of California meadow sedge (carex pansa) for ground cover. I will try to update this thread with some photos once my project is done. And then maybe some progress photos too.