Can you explain the whole dry creek thing to me?

In my last post, I whined mightily about the amount of time I'm spending removing redwood twigs, leaves, and other debris from the paths and dry creek beds in my garden. One of the comments to that post asked why one would want to have a dry creek bed in the middle of a housing development, and I had to say: Good question.

The answer comes in several parts.

1. Aesthetics

The gray stones are a wonderful background to the fresh green grasses. 

When planning the garden, it's much easier to have a varied surface to plan around. Here's the plan I made for the Great Front Garden Remodel. 

Having the dry creek bed -- which came with the house -- really helped me with the structure of the front garden. I planted a California Fescue (F on the plan) and Penstemon (P on the plan) along the creek bed, and it's worked well. Here a view of the rows of grasses on the left, and right (plus a bonus Triteleia bloom, first of the season, in the foreground on the left).

The back garden came with a sweet little bridge over a dry creek bed -- you can't have a bridge over nothing, and it's fun to look out on the path and the bridge from the house. 

In a garden, the human eye is pleased to see more than just plants, and I prefer a dry creek bed to more concrete. For the mediterranean mounds, the designer surrounded one mound with a dry creek bed, and left the other without. 

A path that uses smaller pebbles and leftover flagstone dissects the area where the bridge creek meets the mound creek. And again, we've used the creek in the design. This time grasses in the creek, Iris along the side. 

2. Benefits to Plants

Many California natives love perfect drainage. I have clay soil. This is a problem, but the dry creek bed really helps. In the front, the creek bed has been around for a few decades and sinks a bit each year. The result is not perfect drainage, but much better drainage than a flat surface. 

The small California redbud in front probably survives because it has the creekbed drainage. Same with the penstemon and the woolly blue curls, which are notoriously difficult to grow in a garden environment. 

3. Managing Runoff

By nature, creek beds are well suited for managing runoff. Interestingly, where you live seems to critically affect how you want to manage runoff. In this article in Fine Gardening, the dry creekbed is used for erosion control and directs the water off the property and into the drain. That's likely quite appropriate for areas where it rains a lot.

Here in California, and especially so close to the Bay, we want to keep water on the property but away from the house. The dry creek bed collects runoff and allows the water to penetrate the soil instead of going into the drain and disappearing into the Bay. Buena Luna landscaping has a nice example of such a dry creek bed here.  My dry creek beds are actually not currently hooked up to the gutters, but we're hoping to have that done this summer. And the front creek is deep enough to catch water where it is.

Maybe that was a longer explanation that expected. But I was happy to spend some time thinking about my dry creek beds, and how they enhance the beauty and sustainability of a garden. 

Oh, and by the way, the lizards love to live among the rocks and sun themselves... mulch just doesn't do it for them.