Xeriscaping or Zero-scaping?

 Xeriscaping is a low-water user landscaping practice in the desert Southwest.  Typically gravel or rock is used as the major groundcover, with desert-adapted plants interspersed.  Herbicides are generally used to control unsightly weeds in the gravel areas. 

Zero-scaping is when landowners skip all of the landscaping and just use herbicides to maintain dirt lots.  Unsurprisingly, the result is often phenomenally ugly.  However, this technique is extremely popular.  Why?

Herbicide-maintained zero-scaping.  The property is listed on one of the popular home-rental websites, so it has to look "presentable"!

Property line contrast.  The owner on the right has elected to let their grass grow tall, creating habitat for wildflowers and pollinators.  They usually mow it once or twice a year.

Close-up of herbicide area.  Not what I would call "presentable".

Another property owner trying to make their yard look nice.  The lush growth on the right shows what they are fighting against.

Some zero-scaping is counter-productive.  Here coir logs were used to try to control erosion.  The slope may even have been seeded.  But the over-zealous (or under-caring) landscaping company tasked with controlling weeds on the property has been very thorough in killing everything.  The result is continuing erosion into the waterway.

 

Are Pollinators Necessary for Food Production?

Pollinator enthusiasts claim that "1 in 3 bites of food are dependent on pollinators", but the reality is that many crops have been bred to self-pollinate.  For example, soybeans produce bean-like flowers, and many wild beans do require insect pollinators, but soybean flowers never open; they self-pollinate.  

In the wild, 70-90% of flowering plant species (angiosperms) do require an animal (usually an insect, bird, or mammal) to move pollen from one flower to another. Source. Only a few species have evolved to become self-reliant or to rely on wind.  But in human agriculture, we've selected for species that "breed true", which often means selecting for self-pollination. 

Many flowering agricultural crops would appear to need pollinators, but don't.  Or at most the pollination is optional: it doesn't hurt for insects to visit the flowers, and sometimes they help to fertilize and hence set more fruit, but they aren't strictly needed.  Although about three-quarters of crops benefit in some way from animal pollination, only about 10 % depend fully on pollinators to produce the seeds or fruits we consume, and they collectively account for only 2 % of global agricultural production. Source.

I created this table to show the AZ crops that require pollinators.

Data from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/pollinator-dependence

More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees