Green Acres

As an amateur gardener, I really have no problem with altering the landscape. And I don't see any reason we can't plant flowering shrubs from China or bulbs from Brazil in our gardens, as long as they don't get out and compete with native species. (Coming from a state overrun by Kudzu, I am intimately aware of how dangerous this can be.) However, as I rode my bike to work this morning amidst the spray of sprinklers, I could not escape the feeling that something is wrong with our attitude to our environment.

The movement among plant biologists here is toward native plants or plants from the Mediterranean, plants adapted to the incredible variation in temperature and rainfall seen in the central valley. At every possible opportunity, they advocate making these choices when landscaping . And I think some people listen. I do see selections of native grasses in some "lawns" and cypress trees between properties. But by and large, I see sprinklers.

Of course, I can understand the desire to have a well-manicured lawn and lush foliage framing one's home. Not everyone likes knee-deep, half-dead stands of native grasses along our front walk, and some of us dislike stands of scrubby blue oak trees surrounded by swathes of hard, dry dirt. We like to feel we sculpt our property, make it our own. We like to feel we are in control of it. We like to feel that it is beautiful... according to our own subjective definition of that term.

But as water supply becomes increasingly problematic and the inevitable pools and squishy places, breeding grounds for West Nile-carrying mosquitoes, present themselves behind shrubs and at the edges of curbs, I begin to think that perhaps we need to wise up. If we don't like the flora and climate here, we should go where we do rather than vainly trying to force nature to conform to our image of home.