If I had a yard...

Though most Americans aspire to home ownership (too many Americans, perhaps), many Koreans are quite content to have apartment ownership. Though I would like to cash out with my apartment—when the KRW (Korean won) is not in the crapper—and then buy a house with a plot of land for my future hypothetical kids to run around, I do get the idea behind the virtues of living in a high-rise.

I do own a plot of land in Central Seoul, seven p'yǒng [평, 坪; pyeong, ] of unspecified land somewhere in my apartment complex, but I don't garden, tend, water, or care for it in anyway, other than to not litter on it. Busy Koreans, many required to stay at work or the hagwon until quite late and until recently having only a one-day weekend, welcomed the lack of a yard that needed to be tended.

But if I had a yard (and this was the purpose behind this post), I would seriously consider this Italian/Mediterranean-style gravel garden. Orange County and the rest of Southern California are drying up. The population of both is double what it was when I was a kid, and I don't think people are drinking/consuming only half as much water. OCers have resorted to drinking their sewage wastewater.

Lush green lawns may be a thing of the past. But if people are finding water-stingy plants and yards and gardens that nevertheless have aesthetic appeal, it's a win-win situation. I've seen beautiful yards that employed the shrubs found in the SoCal hillsides and coastal plains. Despite the number of transplanted North Star State residents in the Golden State, California is not Minnesota.

UPDATE (March 21, 2009):

In honor of World Water Day, Korea Beat has translated an interesting article (with an interesting discussion that follows) that talks about the water scarcity problems that Seoul and the rest of Korea are beginning to face.