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Carrie Dubberley www.carriedubberley.com |
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Xeriscape, May 2007
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Though the different textures and hues of native plants excite Carrie Dubberley, of Dubberley Landscape Design, it is the bees, butterflies, lizards, and hummingbirds that make her garden explode with life. A plant fanatic and self-proclaimed tree hugger, Dubberley is also a mother who craves a low-maintenance landscape, and xeriscaping fits her demands.
“I lived in the Colorado mountains for five years. I saw how beautiful natural landscapes could be. The wildflowers attracted birds and butterflies. It was more alive and useful. I don’t design anything but xeriscapes. I will do a traditional landscape but with xeriscape plants,” Dubberley said.
  Dubberley’s diverse garden is practical. Salvia greggii boasts hot-pink flowers nine months out of the year, birds eat the purple berries from the coralberry shrub, and Dubberley uses garden-grown thyme for cooking and crafts. Even the alley behind her house is filled with colorful plants, like the Mexican oregano, which offer pink and purple flowers. Perhaps the best quality of her garden is the sense of wonder it evokes. It is hard not to exclaim over an 18-foot flower stalk from a Sotol (cactus), the giant white flowers of an evening blooming Datura, or a Spring Obedient Plant that stays in the position in which you fold it. Even seasoned gardeners’ ears can be taken by surprise by the popping of Ruellia seed pods. According to Dubberley, one year all of the seed pods were popping at once, and the sound was so intense that she thought it was raining.
Dubberley’s favorite xeriscape plant is rosemary. She says the plant improves memory, feeds the birds with its blue flowers, comes in upright and ground cover varieties, is a great seasoning, is fun to use in decorations, and, of course, it survives on little water. Ginny Less, Frisco resident and Dubberley Landscape Designs client, loves the rosemary plants that flank her entryway. She says nearly every plant that was planted last year is still thriving today. Less chose xeriscape landscaping because she wanted plants that required very little of her time. “I went all native last year, and it is a good thing because other plants never would have made it through the sprinkling ban. With native plants you hardly have to do anything. They are low- to no-maintenance, and they look great,” Less said. According to Dubberley, 60 percent of our water goes to irrigation or landscaping, and 50 percent of it runs straight down the drain. She recommends running an irrigation system two times in a row for eight minutes to allow the water to soak into the clay soil. Dubberley says the City of Frisco has an ordinance requiring model homes to have rain water harvests (rain gardens). She feels sure that once people see the beauty of these gardens they will want to have their own. “We can all make rain gardens, indentations where water is allowed to soak into the ground within 24 hours. You hook them up to a downspout. Rain gardens allow 30-50 percent more water to get into the ground,” Dubberley said.
From the Plano Profile, April 2007 by Harrow Darrow |
