Sustainability is a good idea gone bad. It is so often used as a marketing gimmick by those who actually have the least to gain from it. Really, landscapers and gardeners would not have much business if landscapes really were sustainable and able to function without their help. The best landscapes probably compromise between being as sustainable as possible with a few more conventional but less sustainable features to make them functional.

For example, lawn happens to be among the least sustainable of landscape features. It needs ridiculous volumes of water and continual maintenance, typically with gasoline powered mowers. Many lawns are gluttons of fertilizer. Yet, almost all landscapes have lawn of some sort. Lawns are certainly justifiable for children and dogs.

The trick is to use lawn like rugs for the landscape instead of like wall to wall carpeting. If possible, it should not be an all purpose ground cover for whatever area is not landscaped with something else. It should cover only areas that will get used as lawn.

Bedding annuals are likewise far from sustainable. They need too much water and work, and get replaced seasonally. Even those that sometimes naturalize where a bit of water is available, like sweet alyssum, godetia and nasturtium, really do not perform quite like more pampered bedding plants do.

The best way to see sustainability in action is not in the pretty pictures in the brochures of landscape companies with something to sell, but in the worst of landscapes. Plants that survive in abandoned landscapes where lawns and bedding plants have died off are obviously more sustainable.

Bottlebrush, oleander and various junipers and yuccas may be stigmatized as ‘gas station’ plants, but earned that stigma by being so resilient and sustainable. The many types of cotoneaster, manzanita, wild lilac and rockrose are also worth investigating, (although wild lilac and rockrose do not live as long as the other shrubbery does.) Redwood, California laurel, strawberry tree, incense cedar and many types of eucalyptus, oak , cypress and acacia are among the more sustainable of trees.