It's Spring planting time, but most gardeners want to know which plants best suit Tulare and Kings Counties. Home gardeners will have more success when choosing plants for their yards if they consider the climate, amount of available water, amount of shade, and location within the state of California. Not every plant is well-suited for the San Joaquin Valley.
If you are adding a plant and are already set up with a sprinkler system, you will want to choose a plant with water needs similar to those of plants already in that sprinkler zone. Arranging plants with similar water needs within one sprinkler zone or irrigation line is called hydrozoning. Hydrozoning helps conserve water by making your irrigation more efficient, and it helps plants get the amount of water they need to flourish. You would not want to give a water-loving hydrangea the same amount of water that you give a drought-tolerant salvia, for example.
Here is where you can use a great online tool that UC Davis has developed. It can help the home gardener select appropriate plants for the landscape. It can be used whether you are planning a brand new landscape or just adding or replacing plants to your existing landscape. It is called "Water Use Classifications of Landscape Species" or WUCOLS. WUCOLS is an online database maintained by the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Based on the field experience of landscape horticulturists, WUCOLS provides information on the water needs of more than 3000 plants used in horticulture in California.
WUCOLS divides California into six different regions. Tulare County is in the Central Valley region. Within each region, plants are put into categories according to their water needs: high, moderate, low, and very low. (Those terms are defined on the website.) Wucols further divides plants into growth habits such as trees, shrubs, ground cover, etc.
HOW TO USE WUCOLS:
- Start at the homepage: WUCOLS Home Page
- Find the yellow menu on the right-hand side.
- Choose "Plant Search Database."
- On the next page, you will select your city by region from a drop-down box on the left side of the page. Or, you can select your city from a map. Most of Tulare & Kings County cities are in Region 2, Central Valley.
Now, you can either search for a plant that you are curious about or search a list of plants that have similar water needs. You can also select different plant types to search for, such as CA native, shrub, tree, etc.
For example, if I am interested in adding a camellia to my garden, I will type camellia in the plant name area, and three plants come up. There, I see that there are three species of camellias, and the water needs are moderate. It is a shrub. Or I could type in "water needs low," choose shrubs for the plant type, and get a list of plants that fit that description. If I planted a camellia with one of these low-water needs plants, the camellia would not get enough water. It would most likely suffer drought stress and die without additional watering. But if I want a shrub that needs little water, I now have a whole list to choose from.
WUCOLS is an effective tool for developing a water-efficient irrigation plan. It takes some of the guesswork out of selecting plants for an area and matching their water needs. This is a tool that will take some of the guesswork out of plant selection and water needs. Using this tool should make your spring plant selections easy, breezy, and water-efficient! Happy Planting!