I've planted things year-round, but I do agree with you that in general, fall is the best season to plant. Not only for the water issues you mentioned, but it gives the root systems time to establish before the plants have to put their energy into blooming and/or leafing.

Here is a link that might be useful: loribees garden blog

We get terrible terrible Santa Ana winds in this area. It's kind of a gamble between spring vs. fall planting. The fall seems to work better except the years when the winds are really really bad and winter rain was poor. This fall just past we had far less wind events than usual, and steady winter rain, so planting was great.

Overall I would say fall has been superior, except those years of exceptionally bad Santa Anas/drought.

Thank you.

Hoov, your post causes me to lean towards Spring planting in this case. If the work is done in Fall and she gets some bad winds at that time, she will be very worried and anxious about the brand-new plants -- something she does not need. Given the choice, I think she'd rather pay the $ for extra irrigation than deal with the winds.

I have to agree with Hoovb on this. Normally I'd say Fall, but Glendale has to deal with some potentially wicked Santa Anas that come blasting through the canyons. Where I am in Vista, we're somewhat protected, and don't get super high Santa Ana winds quite as badly as up in the Glendale/Pasadena area, or even south of us in the Poway area. I would opt for as early in the Spring as possible. It's a juggling act - avoiding odd late cold dips (we had a night that made it down to 29 degrees last week which was an anomoly) and the hot, dry, damaging Santa Anas in the Fall.

Patty S.

I would go with fall any year. It is windy here alot in the Santa Clarita valley during summer and the 100+ temps no amount of water is enough. I know from living in Glendale it's almost as bad. The nights are much cooler in Oct-Nov and the soil is getting cooler also instead of heating up and using more water.

The contractor in this economy of course wants the work so of course is going to advise do it now...

Do you know what kind of landscaping is being installed? Nothing is drought tolerant until it's established, of course, but choosing spring vs. fall might be easier if you know what is being planted.