Natural Perspectives:

There are many reasons why we should conserve water. For starters, we live in a near-desert. Our coastal area receives about 15 inches of rainfall a year, while deserts receive about 10. To supply most of our water needs, we rely on imported water.

Unfortunately, the areas from which we import our water — the Sierras and the Colorado Rockies — are experiencing drought conditions. Changes in weather due to global warming are making the situation worse with earlier springs and moisture falling as rain rather than snow. Snow is preferred because it is retained for many months before running off.

An additional impact is population growth. As the water supply dwindles, the population in areas that use that water is growing. We’re caught in the scissors of rising demand and declining supply.

Making changes in our home landscape can help bring us into water balance. Lawn grass and beds of annual flowers take a lot of water, about 50 inches a year. To get away from that Midwest look and all of the water that it requires, many smart homeowners in Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley are moving toward landscaping with water-thrifty plants, including succulents.

These interesting plants make great borders and look fabulous in containers. When Vic and I first moved to southern California in 1981, we borrowed some gardening tips — and some cuttings — from our next-door neighbors and began gardening with succulents. Nearly 30 years and another house later, those plants are still growing strong.

Succulents are plants that store water in fleshy leaves and stems. They include such plants as aeoniums, agaves, aloes, crassulas (jades), euphorbias, echeverias, kalanchoes, sedums and sempervirens. Some are California natives, while others hail from Mexico, South America, Africa or the Mediterranean. Most succulents get by with very little water. Other benefits include low maintenance, pest resistance and being fire retardant. In addition, they come in a fascinating myriad of shapes and forms, and work great in containers.

All members of the cactus family are succulents, but not all succulents are cactus. For example, agaves are members of the amaryllis family, and aloes are members of the lily family. What makes a cactus a cactus isn’t the lack of leaves, swollen stems or spines. It’s the rounded cushion-like structure called an areole that is found at the base of the spines. I don’t care much for spines, so I stick to spineless varieties of succulents. About the only spiny succulents I have are orchid cactuses. Their spectacular blooms make up for the tiny spines that annoy me only when I’m repotting them.

The entire south side of our house is bordered by drought-tolerant jade plants that Vic and I planted from cuttings from our former neighbors at our old house. Those neighbors gave us a number of other succulents, mainly echeverias and crassulas, that I grow in containers. I only re-pot them about once a decade. I love the blues, grays and oranges of their leaves, their varied and unusual shapes and their gorgeous flowers. Succulents fit my laissez-faire style of gardening very nicely.

I returned from the garden writers conference in North Carolina all fired up to do even more container gardening with succulents. What timing. Home Depot just got in a new shipment of succulents, some nicely potted in creative arrangements. I bought two of their arrangements and several 2-inch pots of succulents to make my own arrangements.

When making up my own containers of succulents, I’ll mix in some species from plants that I already have growing. The nice thing about succulents is that once you have a particular species, you can propagate your own new plants by cuttings. Just cut the stem, let it dry for 24 hours, and stick it in damp potting soil. Keep it moist until established, which will take several weeks. After that, succulents get by with very little additional water. In fact, we only water our jade plants in the ground about two or three times during the dry season. Containers get a bit more water than that, about once or twice a month if I remember. The really nice thing about succulents is that they’re so forgiving of neglect.

I also visited Armstrong Nursery to see what they had in stock and was rewarded with a passel of plants from Native Sons Nursery in Arroyo Grande. Native Sons specialize in California native plants and drought-tolerants. I purchased several pots of low-growing sedums (Sedum hispanicum “purpureum” and Sedum spathulifolium “Cape Blanco”). I plan to use these plants as a ground cover in between the pavers in our backyard. I also got an old favorite of my late mother, called Hen and Chickens, an adorable Echeverium that looks great in rock gardens.

If you can’t find a particular succulent that you’re searching for at the local nursery centers, try the House of Cactus on Beach Boulevard in Stanton. Vic bought me an unusual euphorb there (Staphelia nobilis, or noble star flower) that was a real surprise when it bloomed. The white, five-petaled, star-shaped flowers were as big across as my hand, and covered with dark burgundy stripes. The fact that they smelled like carrion was a less pleasant surprise.

To learn more about gardening with succulents, pick up a copy of Debra Lee Baldwin’s 2007 book “Designing with Succulents.” This book from Timber Press was on Amazon’s top 10 bestselling gardening books for 19 weeks, and was Amazon’s “Editors’ Choice Best of 2007 Gardening Book.” Baldwin has a new book coming out in January titled “Succulent Container Gardens: Design Eye-Catching Displays with 350 Easy-Care Plants.”

I can hardly wait.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at LMurrayPhD@gmail.com.