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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | APRIL 2019 23 Landscape Committee Most of us moved to Four Seasons from another place, often with very different growing conditions from those found in the San Gorgonio Pass. If you're like me, you may have found it a bit discouraging that some of your favorite plant species from your old home just don't seem able to adjust to life in Beaumont. Learning through uninformed trial and error can be both frustrating and expensive. So, what can help you to make better decisions when choosing landscape plants for your home? Some big factors that influence plant success include meeting the correct water needs of a given variety, temperature tolerance, daily amount of direct sunlight, soil conditions, availability of the proper nutrients and pH level, available space for growth, and wind exposure. Four Seasons offers some challenging conditions for each of these! Just because a plant is for sale by a local vendor does not necessarily mean that it will thrive in your yard. Most plants come with a label explaining the water needs and the sunlight requirement, but lack detail about the other factors. A knowledgeable vendor or landscape specialist can greatly aid your plant education, as can a variety of online resources. When in doubt, search on your phone or computer to find the scoop on that plant you're considering. Plant success is greatly helped by knowing the climate zone in which you are living. Online resources often reference these when making recommendations for greater success in plant choices. It is important to know that there is more than one commonly used reference for climate zones, and using numbers from one in place of another can doom a plant to failure. The USDA System contains 13 zones and is based on progressively colder winter temperatures. Our zip code falls in USDA Zone 9a. Although commonly used, this system can put some very different areas in the same number zone, such as areas of the Olympic rain forest of Washington sharing a number with areas of the Sonoran Desert! In the West, the climate zones developed for The New Sunset Western Garden Book are widely used because of its inclusion of factors prevalent in the western United States. The Sunset climate zones consider a wide range of factors, including winter low and summer high temperatures, elevation, proximity to and influence from the ocean or mountains, length of the growing season, aridity, humidity, and rainfall. Under the Sunset system, the Pass area falls in Zone 18, "above and below the thermal belts of Southern California's interior valleys." Unlike much of Southern California, the continental air mass is much more influential than the ocean influence in our area. (Contrary to what one frequently hears, we don't live in the desert, which are in Sunset Zones 10-13.) When choosing a plant, the Sunset Guide can be very helpful, but microclimates resulting from shade, wind exposure, or soil and moisture issues can always pose an additional challenge to your most thoughtful landscape plans. The more you know about landscaping, the more fun and success you'll have in your yard! ~ Steve Stoecklein

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