Thanks for finding that, kaylasdad99. It sounds as if Morning Edition mis-stated the situation. Xeriscaping makes more sense. Still, I see nothing wrong with keeping the yard in its natural state.
I could never live in any place that mandated to me what my yard should be like. Which is why i’m glad that the city I live in doesnt have yard maintenance laws (well, they WILL give you a warning if you have dead dry grass that is a fire hazard, but that’s understandable).
My yard is a mix of natives, subtropicals, and temperate plants. I’ve gotten compliments on it, even though it does not look like most yards do (it has a dry creek bed that I built running through it). It uses far less water than a lawn would, and I barely have to spend a lot of time weeding (and what does pop up is easy to remove), and maintaining it. I deplore lawns (at least on my property i would) and always like it when I see houses with more natural looking yards.
Also, it just makes much more sense to have a drought tolerant yard than a lawn at least in this part of California.
Johnny L.A., you said:
But what, precisely, constitutes a “natural state?” I think we may safely exclude “whatever the builders left around the house when they were finished, including Caterpillar tracks, dried-up (or drying up) puddles, and half-empty drywall buckets.” That would just be litter. If “natural state” means just desert sand, I think the city would have a compelling and valid interest in not allowing sand dunes to shift around town. Putting in native drought-tolerant plants and stones strikes me as creating a xeriscape.
The region is not known for sand dunes, which IIRC require special conditions to exist. What I meant by “natural state” was the terrein you would see if there wasn’t a house there. Plants native to the area are joshua trees (“You know you’ve been in the Antelope Valley too long when you consider joshua trees to be actual trees.”), sparse grasses, tumbleweeds (Russian thistle?) and some small green plants that grow low to the ground like a puddle. Oh, and the California poppy, of course.
There is a tumbleweed problem. Well, maybe not a “problem”; just an inconvenience. It’s usually windy up there and 40 and 50 mph winds are not uncommon. Tumbleweeds pile up against fences and walls and are a fire hazard. City ordinances forbidding tumbleweeds growing in the yard won’t help. It’s a big desert and the dead weeds will roll in from miles away.
But when they are alive, they seem to be rooted very firmly. They’d have to be because of their large cross section, light weight, and the ever-present wind.
Ah, Palmdale, where you used to get back onto the freeway after having to get off at Avenue I and drive through Lancaster. Mind you, the freeway starts at Avenue A (roughly) which is out in the middle of nowhere, an excellent place to start a freeway.
Having established that the actual ordinance doesn’t require a lawn but just landscaping, the debate here now is framed as follows:
Should a city mandate some form of landscaping?
On the one hand, smaller divisions (neighborhood associations, small cities that are created solely to act as super-neighborhood associations, etc.) routinely will impose restrictions designed to upgrade property values by requiring that a lot be kept in a sightly fashion. However, Palmdale isn’t exactly a small city, there are certainly poorer sections of the city, and forcing an entire city to try and spiff up sounds a bit much.
Another analogous situation would be cities forcing property owners to repair dwellings, but that is usually to make the habitation livable, rather than to make it less unsightly. And those places that are cited for how they look look REALLY bad, which doesn’t equate to simple unlandscaped desert (I grew up in the Mojave desert, so I know).
I think I’d just move out of town and find a nice place over in Quartz Hill area instead…
Well, the city of Palmdale does have cost mitigation programs, designed to benefit property owners who would be exposed to financial hardship through their attempts to comply, and, in point of fact, the City Council also increased these subsidies in a later meeting.
Enhancing or maintaining property values could be considered a valid interest to be pursued by the city government. One presumes that higher property values lead to higher property tax assessments, thus, higher revenues, and therefore, a greater ability to pay for city services. This is apart from the selfish interests of the individual property owners. Please note that I am using the word selfish in a purely economic sense, and not pejoratively.
[hijack] As to the issue of neighborhood associations. I consider anyone who voluntarily subjects himself to CC&R’s that are more restrictive than absolutely necessary for public safety is an idiot. a word that I am using pejoratively 
. [/hijack]
We used to have grass on our front lawn. Many, many years ago, when we actually had the time to care for it. Then the weeds came in and it all died. The whole front was choked with weeds for months. (The back was too; we eventually had it paved over.) Eventually, through a lot of spraying and pulling (if you don’t get a lot of rain where you live, I heartily recommend Roundup; it really does work miracles), I got them all out, leaving a patch of bare earth. We’ve discussed the idea of planting grass for about three years, but none of us has bothered to take any action, so it’s still bare earth.
We not the real outdoorsy type, so this isn’t exactly a huge problem for us.
And in any case we, and just about every other household in Hawaii, would raise 25 degress of hell should some ordinance ever come down forcing us to maintain some kind of lawn. Sure, it would be lovely to have a perfectly manicured canopy of grass, but some of us aren’t quite up to it, and so long as it doesn’t hurt anybody (last time I checked, bare earth isn’t a fire hazard), there’s no sense instituting a law requiring it.
Huh…it’s unbelievable what some people will put up with.
I believe Avenue A is the Kern County line (south of Ave. A is Los Hideous County). Actually, the Antelope Valley Freeway (CA 14) runs from the Newhall Pass north of the San Fernando Valley all the way to Mojave. In Mojave you can turn east toward Barstow or west toward Tehachepi, Bakersfield (“Gateway to Fresno” and former home of Hee Haw) and to I-5. Or you can go north toward the Seirras (395?).
Has anyone figured out why, when it rains, water flows out of the storm drains on Ave. I?
When I lived in the Antelope Valley most people maintained landscaping, but others didn’t. Never was an issue. After I left they put up signs saying you couldn’t park on this side or that side of the street because of street sweeping. People had to conceal their trash cans. You couldn’t work on your car at the curb. I understand that people want their living place to look nice, but how did it look when they moved in? It’s like those people who build or buy a house next to an airport and then complain that there’s an airport there. You knew what you were getting into when you moved there. I see CC&Rs and city ordinances as things that stifle individuality. They force people to be the same “for the sake of the community”. But if everyone in a community is the same, where’s the diversity? While a certain degree of Socialism is a good thing (medicine, fire departments, etc.) I think that when Socialism steps on the way people want to live their lives, it might be going a bit far.
There are some compelling public interests in mandating some sort of landscaping, so I’d say that the city has a role here.
Lawns aren’t just ornamental. They are a surface covering that aids in drainage, is relatively clean, is short enough to prevent vermin and dangerous animals from nesting (I imagine there are snakes in that area - if the entire city became full of rock gardens, you might find a serious health problem developing with snakes and such.)
Drainage is probably a major concern. If you grade your lot properly then put a lawn on it, it will maintain its grade even if a lot of water flows off of it, and it will absorb water from a minor rain. If you have bare dirt, a heavy rain could wind up cutting a channel in the dirt right into your neighbors yard, causing a nice flow of water into his basement.
Soil erosion and cleancliness could be another reason. I’ve lived beside a dirt field, and it’s not much fun when the wind comes up. Our house used to wind up with a layer of fine grit inside it after a serious windstorm.
Then there is the property value aspect. I do want some protection from having a neighbor move in and create a pig sty that costs me thousands of dollars in lost property value. I think the city has some role in protecting the values of resident’s housing.
I’m a Libertarian, but I’ll tolerate a lot more regulation from a city than from a state or country, simply because I have more options if I don’t like the regulation. Where I live, we have zoning laws which specify the type of garage door you can have (it must have windows in it), how wide the eaves are on the house, what type of roofing material you can use, what type of fence you can put up, what type of siding you can put on your house, what color it is, etc. And I don’t see a whole lot wrong with that.
Hmmm they must have completed more freeway since I lived in the area, but I know that it definitely doesn’t get all the way to Mojave (and it is Tehachapi 
). But I think you’re right about the county line and as I think about it, I seem to recall that had something to do with why it started there at the time. 
As to snakes, you don’t get snakes near lots of people, at least, not the dangerous ones of the desert. Rattlesnakes are smart that way. And as for rain, Sam, we’re talking about the desert here, hardly an erosion problem (from water). But the sand blowing can make a difference (you always end up replacing windshields). Though my folks never had to replace any windows in 25 years of living with a sandy desertscape behind our house…
Ahhh, I love the desert.
California 14 as a freeway goes does go from the Newhall Pass all the way to Mojave.
Once you get to Mojave, you can continue a much smaller CA-14 until you hit US 395 around Homestead. Or you can go east to Tehachapi on CA-58.
The Antelope Valley Freeway is a traffic nightmare for those who commute all the way into Los Angeles from the distant lands of Lancaster and Palmdale. And when it snows up in the Antelope Valley, you can pretty much forget about getting to that area. Sometimes I think Caltrans only has 1 snowplow for all of Los Angeles County.
I think the confusion may be that RT 14 is a “freeway” freeway until past Rosamond, then turns into a “highway” not far south of Mojave.
I commuted from Lancaster to LAX for two years starting in 1985. That was before people realized how cheap housing was up there. I didn’t hit traffic until I was in the Valley, around Nordhoff on the 405.
Aside from the basic kinds of municipal regulations designed to keep you from piling up junk/used cars etc. in your yard, I’m leery of the busybody “everybody conform and make nice” kinds of rules.
Lawns are OK, but they consume a hell of a lot of water, require heavy chemical use to look their best and deplete petroleum resources. When some poor sap eliminates his lawn to put in a “natural” garden or meadow, all too often the city or overzealous neighbors go after him with weed ordinances or deed restrictions. One homeowner in this area with the stated goal of restoring native woodland conditions on her plot was taken to court by several neighbors who were in a pout because grasses taller than several inches were present; I was glad to see that she has just won her court battle, expensive and time-consuming as it undoubtedly was.
The North American Rock Garden Society would have a field day with this allegation, once members stopped rolling on the floor with laughter.
The vermin/snakes argument is sometimes used against natural gardens, though it is not backed up by solid evidence. Given a choice between living next to someone with such a garden, or adjacent to Mr. Lawn Fanatic with his Chemlawn service and weedwhacker/leafblower/Cub Cadet mower armada, I’d take the former any day.
Urgh… :mad:
…I can’t believe I fork money over to the government so they can create such insanely inappropriate and just plain stupid laws like this.
Also, whatever happened to our “free country”? We’re required to do this, we’re required to do that…I can see requiring certain things for safety/health/security reasons, but this is just totally off the wall.
As opposed to now when the traffic starts backing up in Acton.
Regarding the OP, as long as the city of Palmdale doesn’t require everyone to put in a big lush, heavy water consuming lawn, I don’t see what the problem is. The city has an interest in making itself look nice.
But then again, I rent an apartment because I hate yardwork.
In a state like California, this is a problem, because more often than not, drainage means runoff into storm drains. In rainier climes, this may be desireable, but in a place that depends upon winter rain for water supplies throughout the year, it’s a necessity to capture as much water as possible (However, in some municipalities, storm drains drain into basins called “percolation lots”, which is what’s behind my yard, which allows the aquifers to be replenished)
And is a monoculture which results in far more problems than is worth. Lawns also require large amounts of pesticides and herbicides to keep them pest free. They also require large amounts of nitrogenous fertilizer, which is often a problem for groundwater supplies.
As someone who lives less than 1/4th of a mile from Maritime Chapparal (i live near one of the largest remaining preserves of it in the world), i can tell you snakes dont really venture into areas where people live. I’ve never in the 22 years of living here seen a rattler in town (or heard of someone coming across one). I have seen one out in the rural and back country areas. Vermin also tend to avoid gardens, even natural type gardens because of too much human activity (however gophers arent deterred, but they really arent more of a nuisance).
If a wild garden is maintained, then you often have far less problems with pests. My garden is a kind of wild type garden. I’ve not found vermin, snakes, or even pest problems. I’ve seen people with yard struggle to keep them green and lush here, and most people tend to give up and let their lawns go brown. I rarely fertilize, and i never spray for pests. Weeding is simple and easy not back breaking labor. The most maintenance is some light pruning to keep the bushes open, as well as spreading mulch which helps maintain soil moisture.
True, but most patches of bare dirt (here) tend to turn into weed patches unless the homeowner takes measures to prevent that. I’ve seen yards which were cleared of weeds turn into fields of annual grasses in a couple of years when the owners stopped caring and gave up on the yard. A simple solution is the addition of mulch. I have it covering a low berm in my yard that only has a few bushes and it’s never eroded at all (except where i’ve been lazy and let it go thin).
My problem with that is it limits the style of house you can have, and what colors it can be painted (some of those laws would probably outlaw buildings such as victorians, which traditionally had several colors…and usually pretty bright too).
The main concern here is how a yard can look. I like seeing yards landscaped acording to the owner’s taste. If they let their yard go to hell because they are too lazy so be it. I would raise hell if my neighbors suddenly told me I couldn’t have my Giant Feather grasses with their 7 foot high flowering stems (which would alarm some people…they dominate the yard when they bloom), or if I couldnt have the native bush lupines ans ceanothus that I do have.
I’m not arguing for lawns per se, but for some sort of landscaping that retains the same features. There is a good reason for a city to demand that homeowners maintain their lots in such a way as to not harbor pests, that drain properly according to the city draining plan, that will maintain its draining properties even in downpours (ESPECIALLY then), and which maintains some sort of aesthetic appeal. Around here, a lot of people replace their front lawns with rock gardens, which consist of small rocks (larger than gravel, but not much) usually bleached white, with the odd boulder and low shrub here and there. As long as this meets the basic requirements, fine.
But I would argue that those ‘natural’ yards that basically look like a patch of weeds and tall grass have GOT to go. Not only are they ugly, but they can and do harbor a lot of pest animals. The last house we owned backed on to a wild field, and it was a pain in the butt. In the summer, it would become positively choked with mosquitos. Some parts of it were marshy, and were a natural breeding ground for the evil beasts. Mice and Gophers were abundant.
As for housing rules dictating the color of the house, etc., those are almost always set by local zoning boards, before construction starts on a new subdivision. This means anyone who builds there accepts those rules. No one is caught off-guard, and there are no after-the-fact mandates that cost people a lot of money and which they had no control over.
Usually, these rules are made to create a specific look for a neighborhood and to maintain it over time. This meets the needs of new homeowners, who benefit from some assurance that they money they invest in their house will not be destroyed by some clown building a Bavarian castle next door. Some divisions try to maintain a certain ‘look’ - for example, a new lakeside community here in Edmonton mandates that all new houses built there must have dormers and certain treatments to the windows and siding, in order to make the community look like a Maine village. If that’s what people like, they’ll build there. If they don’t, they won’t.
Far from restricting freedom, these laws enhance it by providing choices to consumers.
When I speak of a “natural” yard, I dont mean a patch of weedy grasses that is left unmaintained. What i speak of is a garden that has a natural look, but is maintained. What do I mean by maintained? Meaning, the shrubs are prunned to keep them compact (but NOT to shape them). Lower branches are trimmed to keep mice from using them as a shelter. Trees are prunned to keep them from breaking, and to open up the interior to keep the center from dying. Tall grasses are cut back once they begin to look ratty and the flower stalks turn brown. Dead things are taken out and disposed of. I dont mean letting a yard run to its own devices.
My yard has a “natural” look. By this I mean that I dont prune the shrubs into unnatural shapes. There’s no symmetry, the plants are allowed to grow as they naturally do, but I use pruning to keep them under control. I dont just let it run wild.