Balboa Park chooses waterwise landscaping

Balboa Park just north of downtown San Diego is one of the largest urban cultural city parks in the nation with over 1,200 acres. For comparison, Central Park in New York City has 843 acres. It also dates from 1835, making it one of the oldest urban parks.

The Trust for Public Land says that Balboa Park is the third most-visited urban park in the United States, behind Central Park and Chicago's Lincoln Park.

Much of Balboa Park is still rugged, undeveloped land and is good for hiking and exploring.

The more developed areas of the park, which includes the San Diego Zoo and the buildings from the 1915 Panama-California Exposition and and the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition.

Many of those developed areas were landscaped with grass and other plants that require regular watering, and while grass and such plants are beautiful, they really are inappropriate for a desert environment like San Diego. Remember that it's water that defines a desert, not temperature, although many deserts are also hot.

Recently, the San Diego City Parks Director announced that the yard at the 80-year-old Fire Alarm Building in Balboa Park has been converted from a traditional lawn into a drought-friendly landscape using redwood mulch, pathways of decomposed granite from a San Diego quarry, manzanita, sea dahlia, firecracker shrubs, Douglas iris, penstemon firebird, Cleveland sage, Little Sur shrubs, and Engelmann oaks.

The total cost of the materials was $1,700, but once established, the new landscaping will save 90,000 gallons of water a year, an annual cost savings of about $350.

 

 

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