Water-Wise Garden
Since 2003, Stanford's Water-Wise Demonstration Garden has showcased alternatives to thirsty residential landscapes.
Grounds Services staff designed the Garden and continue to maintain and update it. The original plant material was donated by Boething Treeland Farms, San Marcos Growers and Valley Crest Tree Company, while the irrigation system was donated by Rainbird Corporation. The project was sponsored by Water Resources & Civil Infrastructure.
In 2024, a renovation took place to include a pollinator garden with an insect hotel.
Visit
The Garden is on Raimundo Way, in the heart of the Faculty/Staff Housing area.
Garden Sections
The Garden features four sections:
Click the links above to jump to each section, or learn about the addition of the insect hotel or more about water-wise gardening
Lawn Alternatives Section
You can see several lawn alternatives at the north corner of the garden. A dense planting of yarrow (Achillea millefolium) becomes a flowery meadow in summer, while the plants themselves stay green year-round. This tough California native can tolerate heat and drought well, though it doesn’t fare well under heavy foot traffic. The low water use grass planted in front of the yarrow lawn is commonly known as eyelash grass (Bouteloua gracilis). Children and adults delight at the flower heads that resemble eyelashes as they appear in summer. Nearby, groundcover manzanita (Arctostaphylos edmundsii 'Carmel Sur') forms a green carpet, though this too is not meant for foot traffic.
Useful as either accent plants or lawn substitutes, ornamental grasses can be viewed en masse at the north end of the yarrow bed. You may recognize deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens) from several campus parking lots, such as the Stockfarm Road lot and the Museum Way parking. One of the toughest and easiest bunchgrasses to grow, deer grass can take either little or much water, full sun or part shade. The large gray bunchgrass nearby is blue oat grass (Helictotrichon sempervirens). This plant thrives in full sun with little water and is also a reliable choice to encourage soft movement in a garden. A third grass, California fescue (Festuca californica) is better suited to dry shady sites, as found in the wild under native oaks.
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Mediterranean Section
The Mediterranean Garden is located under two mature Eucalyptus trees and features plants from Australia, New Zealand and the Mediterranean region. Low-growing Australian fuchsia (Correa alba) and New Zealand flax (Phormium 'Jack Spratt') are flanked by a curving row of Australian rosemary (Westringea fruticosa 'Wynyabbie Gem'), which features small light lavender flowers for much of the year. Two groundcovers that can be successfully used under eucalyptus are myoporum (Myoporum parvifolium) and hardenbergia (Hardenbergia violacea). The latter is often trained as a vine up a trellis but is shown here in another form. Grevillea 'Red Hooks' is a fast-growing specimen from Australia with red showy toothbrush-like flowers that bloom throughout the year. It requires little to no water once established, tolerates various light conditions from full sun to full shade, and is a pollinator haven!
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California Natives Section
The California Garden was planted under an existing coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia). These iconic trees thrive in coastal environments with no summer rain and can be killed by summer watering, so care must be taken when planting in their vicinity.
Several low groundcovers are featured: prostrate black sage (Salvia mellifera 'Terra Seca'), California fuchsia (Epilobium 'Everett's Choice'), and Carmel Creeper (Ceanothus griseus horizontalis 'Yankee Point'). Another sage, Salvia clevelandii 'Winifred Gilman', is a mounding shrub growing up to five feet tall, and is covered with bluish purple flowers in late spring. Salvia clevelandii 'Alan Chickering' planted nearby, is visually similar but grows with a taller, more open form and blooms paler blue flowers in the summer. A tough shrub commonly planted on campus as a 3-4 foot green hedge is Howard McMinn manzanita (Arctostaphylos densiflora 'Howard McMinn'). This plant flowers in February and can take little or much water, heavy soil, and looks best with no pruning. Other featured California natives are California rose (Rosa californica), Island bush snapdragon (Galvezia speciosa), and a new hybrid manzanita, Arctostaphylos 'John Dourley'.
Several trees native to California are also planted in the west half of the garden. Western redbud (Cercis occidentalis), is a deciduous shrub from the Sierra foothills and the coast range further north. In fall, its heart-shaped leaves turn brilliant orange before falling off to reveal its beautiful structure. In spring, the branches are coated with magenta pea-shaped flowers for which it is named. This small tree can be used as a single trunk specimen or as a multi-trunk shrub - both forms are present in the garden. Another large shrub or small tree with pretty spring flowers is the Ray Hartman California lilac (Ceanothus 'Ray Hartman'). The intense blue of its flowers pairs nicely with magenta redbud blooms. California lilac is an evergreen plant with glossy green leaves that produce a resinous odor in summer. It is quite drought-tolerant once established, though this cultivar is also tolerant of some summer water, making it a good choice to add to an existing garden.
The pyramidal conifers that form the western border of the garden are Incense Cedars (Calocedrus decurrens), native to the mountains of California, southern Oregon, western Nevada and northern Baja California. They are heat and drought-tolerant once established, though they appreciate a deep drink once a month in summer.
The silver-grey foliaged plant is lavender cotton (Santolina chamaecyparissus). This Mediterranean native is planted primarily for its leaf color, though in summer it is covered with tiny yellow buttons of flowers.
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Pollinator Garden Section
The pollinator section of the Water-Wise garden was added in 2024 in a collaboration between Grounds Services and a group of graduate students affiliated with Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability and Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. As with the other sections in the Water-Wise garden, this pollinator garden’s goal is to demonstrate a beautiful and ecologically friendly alternative to high water use landscapes.
This pollinator garden houses only plants native to California, which support a wide variety of pollinators including butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. The insect hotel in the garden serves as a home for many of these pollinators, particularly the bees. As with the other plants in the Water-wise garden, each of these plants can tolerate low water conditions in full sun. They also provide habitat for native pollinators, who serve a critical role in maintaining ecosystem function but are increasingly endangered through habitat loss, development activities, and introduction of invasive species.
The plants selected for the garden were selected to ensure that there would be blooms year-round to support pollinators. The Sunset manzanita (Arctostaphylos 'Sunset') provides blooms throughout the winter for many pollinators. The Penstemon BOP Margarita (Penstemon heterophyllus) and wooly sunflower (Eriophyllum lanatum) produce their respectively purple and yellow blooms starting in the spring, and throughout the summer and into the fall. The Island Pink Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium 'Island Pink'), Black Sage (Salvia mellifera), and California fuschia (Epilobium canum) provide nourishment for bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and even flies. You’ll also note the presence of Showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa), famously a favorite of the Monarch butterfly. Mixed wildflowers, including the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica), are sprinkled throughout the garden to provide more pollen and nectar diversity to the pollinators!
Pollinator gardens provide a beautiful bloom-filled alternative to lawns that reduce costs associated with watering and maintenance, and also help to restore critical habitat for pollinators. Most pollinators, except for migratory species, necessitate year-round sources of pollen or nectar, so it is important to ensure that these plants are blooming at any given time of year.
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Insect Hotel
The insect hotel provides a place for pollinating insects to hibernate through the winter season, ensuring that there are enough pollinators and beneficial insects ready to emerge in the spring. It has sustainable donated parts from PlaceMakers, a business centered around the circular economy, and the interior is filled with natural sustainable housings using invasive and indigenous nesting materials for the insects.
What Insects You Might See
Here is a short list of the 20 most common insects that might inhabit the insect hotel.
- Western honey bee 11. California sister
- Monarch butterfly 12. Flame skimmer
- Seven-spotted ladybug 13. Multicolored asian lady beetle
- Anise swallowtail 14. The striped shore crab
- Cabbage white 15. Fiery skipper
- California Gall Wasp 16. Black-tailed bumble bee
- Convergent lady beetle 17. Western tiger swallowtail
- Painted lady 18. California lady beetle
- Vivid dancer 19. Winter Ant
- Common Pill-Bug 20. European paper wasp
Water-Wise Gardening
All the planting beds at the Water-Wise Garden are mulched with a layer of wood-chips that serves several functions. The chips suppress weeds, insulate the soil from intense heat, hold moisture in the soil, and break down slowly to release organic matter into the soil. A second kind of wood chip is used along the pathways.
The plants were planted from the smallest container size available, because small plants establish quicker and often surpass plants from larger containers within a year's time. The rootball of each plant was wrapped in chicken wire to protect it from ground squirrels and gophers.
A water meter is located at the center of the garden for visitors to monitor water use throughout the year. Each planting bed has a separate irrigation valve and is irrigated with drip irrigation. See our irrigation system specifications
Visit the garden regularly to see how the plants change over time and discover plants you might like to use in your garden. Water conservation is becoming increasingly important in California landscapes, and this Water-Wise Garden is a good source of information to help you lower your landscape water use.
For more water-saving ideas, see our conservation tips page:
