Planting a drought-tolerant front yard with Dymondia ground cove

Now that we have the soil sifted in the front, we planted a soft drought tolerant ground cover, called Dymondia, a native of the Western Cape of South Africa which has a climate similar to our own. The idea is that this front yard will be the space where children and families can sit together and gather in circles.

Due to the pandemic, this project started several months later than we expected, putting us in the summer- pretty much worst season to plant Dymondia. The plant takes off in the springtime and goes more dormant in the summer and fall, so planting it in early spring would have been ideal to go with the flow of growth.

Having turned up the soil right before the summer heat, we didn’t want to leave it exposed to the elements. We wanted to preserve whatever life was present in our current soil, so we turned in several scoops of organic compost, covered with a few inches of a very fine “Garden Humus” mulch mix to prevent weeds and preserve moisture, then planted the Dymondia plugs. We will need to water regularly a few times a week for the next six months. Once it is established it needs pretty much no water, except during periods of extreme heat.

With such a small space, we decided to skip putting more plastic in the earth even in the form of a few sprinklers, and we committed to hand-watering the space for half a year. Fingers crossed.