Desert Crest Press

A lovely display of light blue-purple blooms spring through fall from Desert Ruellia in Phoenix yards.

While form and size is important to consider when selecting the shrubs, trees and perennials for different spots in your yard, color is what most people look for in plants.

There are many choices in yellows, orange and white in flowering desert plants normally used in Phoenix landscape design. Reds and pink hued blooms are also available in good numbers. When it comes to blues and purples that don’t head toward pink, your Arizona plantings will gain better dimension with these flower colors present.

For height that allows a canopy that you can see beneath the small ornamental tree shape of Vitex or Chastetree is lovely. This allows you to plant beneath it next to the patio of leave it clean and sparse as a specimen in the xeriscape design. Chastetree is covered with lilac shaped blooms in April-June and reaches 10-25 feet high and wide in your Arizona landscape design.

Blue Solarum or Blue Potato Plant offers height and lovely blue-purple blooms for spring against a silvered leaf perennial plant. Finding a good spot for this 6 foot wide and 10 foot high plant will be easy for Phoenix landscape design as it offers you good foliage accent in summer and fall.

If you’re hungry for royal blue blooms that will color your Arizona yard from spring through fall, the perennial  Victoria Blue Salvia, also known as Mealy Cup Sage is absolutely wonderful. The green leaves of this desert landscaping plant add good looking texture topped with masses of those beautiful blooms from March-November. For sunny spots in landscape design where consistent color is wanted at 1 foot to 4 foot high.

Another long blooming plant that is really popular for Arizona landscaping is the Mexican Petunia or Desert Ruellia shrub. Here you have a lovely little evergreen shrub that will even fit under windows in a Phoenix landscape design. Maturing to 3 foot high and wide, you have flowers in light blue purple in your desert landscaping from March-November with this plant in your yard. In the heat of the desert sun, the foliage of this particular shrub takes on a metallic blue tone.

You’ll enjoy a vibrant array of blooms from May-June with Chaparral Sage well placed throughout a Phoenix landscape design. In full sun this perennial plant is right at home in the Arizona xeriscape planting. A native plant from the Baja that has nice form even after blooming, it will reach 4 foot high and 6 foot wide.

For enchanting rich purple flowering vines Blue Coral Pea (also known as Lilac Vine) is an excellent plant for Arizona landscape design. It can be used as a scrambling ground cover in part shade or for accenting adobe walls grown on a trellis. This evergreen climber is popular in Phoenix for its delight for its April-May blooms with consistent moisture.

While there are a few other blue-purple blooming plants that will do well in your Arizona landscaping, the blooming is less showy and best enjoyed up close. From a Phoenix landscape designer point of view, the more blued purples lend more impact with reds and pinks than the pinker hued purple blooms will.

Popularity: 48% [?]

The type of sod you choose for Phoenix lawns can affect the cost of landscape maintenance differently.

It would be great if there was a lawn grass called Arizona, because that would make picking out what to install in your grass areas of the yard a breeze. Instead homeowners are faced with choosing between an array of Bermuda, Rye, Palmetto and Paspalum for their lawns in Phoenix. Making the wrong decision means your lawn will not perform to your expectations. Grass is not all the same, different types have different requirements and behaviors.

Choosing sod over seed is best for low maintenance Phoenix lawns. You will need far more water and time to establish a thick carpet of grass in your yard from seed. That is why sod is more expensive, someone has already put all that extra labor and water on this popular method for instant lawns so thick and green. Even though sod is already well established, you will still want to make sure you select the right lawn grass to meet your yard’s conditions and your Arizona landscaping requirements.

No single grass for Phoenix lawns is going to be green 365 days a year; this requires over seeding with the off season grasses. Some turf grass varieties like the new Seashore Paspalum will remain green a month longer than our Hybrid Bermuda sod varieties. Paspalum will also give you the benefit of staying lush and green with less watering and fertilization. This is the one Arizona sod variety that prefers low nitrogen and drier conditions, making it an excellent way to reduce the cost of maintaining your Phoenix landscaping.

Palmetto grass for Phoenix lawns is a hybrid St. Augustine grass that is great for the shady spots in Arizona yards. The blades are much coarser than other grasses that prefer full sun, creating a plush carpet of green in all the places you have difficulty keeping a thriving lawn. Palmetto will go dormant in the cool season and does best in places where only moderate foot traffic takes place.

The hybrid Bermuda grass sods developed for the Arizona climate are fine leaved and bred to do away with many common problems traditional bermuda grasses have. For people in Arizona with allergies, you’ll be delighted to know our hybrid Bermuda varieties for your lawn are pollen-free. For a well behaved lawns in Phoenix less prone to invading your landscape plantings the solution is a hybrid Bermuda such as Tifgreen, Tifway or EZ-Turf sod.

Cool season grasses for lawns in Phoenix give you a choice of Tall Fescue and Perennial Rye. Some people get the idea that overseeding for winter color using the cheaper Annual Rye is saving them money on lawn maintenance. This isn’t true. Perennial Rye comes back year after year and you will have to replace the Annual Rye in your Arizona lawns each and every year. Sometimes keeping more green in your pocket is best done over the course of time and not instantaneously.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Building outdoor kitchens is part of patio design that is as unique as you are.

If there is one thing that people living in Arizona can benefit from all year long, it’s having a patio design that has room for building outdoor kitchens. For some homeowners, custom built barbeques need only be simple outdoor kitchen gas grill islands. For those who enjoy whipping up a gourmet dinner in the great outdoors regularly, an outdoor kitchen barbecue means having everything handy … including the kitchen sink.

Appliances and accessories for today’s outdoor kitchen include stainless steel inserts of all kinds to outfit a complete patio kitchen. Planning your outdoor dining area adjacent to the stone outdoor grill is perfect for the Phoenix lifestyle. Weatherproof outdoor kitchen appliances include covered cook tops, refrigerators, freezers and wine coolers to create patio design kitchens just right for outdoor chefs. You can select from different sizes of outdoor kitchen gas grills and also add a smoker to your cooking station. For the wonderful flavor of wood fired pizza and artisan breads, you can enjoy old world cuisine baked in your own outdoor pizza and bread oven.

Beautifully compliment Phoenix home styles with natural stone barbeques custom built the artisan way.

Stone topped outdoor kitchen gas grill islands can be crafted from natural stone, pavers for garden walls and stucco to create the perfect complement to your home and patio design. Storage cabinets can be added for storage beneath all custom built barbeques. Many Phoenix patio designs attach a bar that can double as serving space too.

The perfect Phoenix outdoor living room enhancements are patio designs that include an outdoor kitchen, stainless steel inserts and storage doors are an instant hit. Situating your stone outdoor grill and kitchen beneath the cooling shade of a rustic trellis ramada will provide welcome relief from the Arizona sun.

Patio design can feature natural stone flagging or pavers for patio for long lasting beauty and utility in our mild climate.Working with an experienced landscape designer will make building an outdoor kitchen much easier and the finished project far more professional looking and enjoyable to use. You’ll be able to add landscape lighting and extend the use of your new outdoor living room any time of day or night you choose to.

Popularity: 86% [?]

Beautiful to behold, the Ghost Gum Eucalyptus tree is great for Phoenix xeriscape design landscaping.

There are two different types of Eucalyptus that do great in Phoenix landscaping. Pay no attention to the varieties grown around old Arizona homes, they have given these lovely, evergreen trees a bad reputation from brittle wood and a messy habit. Actually there are hundreds of types of Eucalyptus, so do yourself a favor and take a good look at excellent selections for landscaping in Phoenix without the mess.

The best Eucalyptus for your xeriscape landscaping will be continually full of pretty leaves and mature rapidly to create welcome shade. These wise choices tolerate drought well, but grow more rapidly to cast shade with regular deep, wide watering to encourage rapid root development. The best way to ensure fast growing shade in your Phoenix landscaping is with the use of drip irrigation from an automatic sprinkler system.

Unlike those shady characters found in old neighborhoods around Phoenix, these three Eucalyptus trees do not get so huge they become a problem. All of the following types of evergreen shade trees are lovely in their own unique way and small enough to be just right for home landscaping in desert areas. None of these are brittle wood trees, making them great for windbreaks to shelter your home from high winds.

Red Cap Gum (Eucalyptus eruthrocorys) has long, narrow foliage that is dark green and glossy, along with a nice upright natural shaping. Blooming from fall through spring, the rich red flower buds are very showy on their own, but then burst open to display clusters of brilliant yellow flowers. A great tree that is moderate to fast growing for full sun that will be right at home in the lawn areas of your Phoenix landscaping even fully mature at 25’ high and wide. You’ll also enjoy the wonderful color and texture of the bark on the Red Cap Eucalyptus Tree which is tan and white becoming interesting due to its peeling habit. No brittle qualities at all from this little shade tree that loves the full sun of Arizona.

Coolibah Tree (Eucalyptus microtheca) has handsome blue-green leaves that are long and narrow. Due to its fast growth habit and evergreen hardiness in the Phoenix climate, it is a popular addition to desert landscaping. Not only does the Coolibah tolerate that Arizona sun at full blast, it will also do just fine under the strain of reflective heat. Blooming fall through spring in your Phoenix landscaping, the white flowers are not as decorative as those on the Red Cap Gum. A multi-trunked shade tree offers your yard a beautiful shape and readily adapts to our Arizona soils. This particular Eucalyptus will give you spreading shade at 30 – 40‘ high and wide.

The beautiful, slightly weeping silhouette of the Ghost Gum (Eucalyptus papuana) is sensational looking on the powdery white trunk. Your desert landscaping in Phoenix will find wonderful accent from all parts of this gorgeous tree. The light green leaves are large and contrast just right against that ghostly trunk. You won’t have messy droppings to cleanup from the Ghost Eucalyptus, it is such a wind tolerant and great candidate for desert xeriscape it is the preferred tree for city streets and highways in Arizona. Rugged and oh so lovely, the Ghost Gum is evergreen with white flowers from fall through spring, maturing to 40’ high by 20’ wide.

Popularity: 74% [?]

Popularity: 62% [?]

There are some very lovely plants that will deal with light to moderate shade in your Phoenix landscaping.

In fact, many plants that will take full sun will be more productive at flowering and even bearing fruit if they have some shady protection from the blistering afternoon summer sun here in Arizona.

The most attractive vines for foliage and blooming will be those that prefer light to medium shade. When it comes to true Xeriscape plants that vine and do well in the shade you will want to use flowering Trumpet Vine (Campsis radicans). Depending on the selection, Trumpet Vine can bloom in soft melon to vibrant flaming red accented orange. Just as in most regions of the country, Phoenix landscaping plants that like a shadier situation do require consistent moisture.

Don’t despair, this is easily provided without you needing to remember to keep them moist with automatic drip irrigation. For moister soil and vibrant orange blooms in light shade, Cape Jasmine (Tecoma capensis) is a rambling vine that looks gorgeous cascading over walls. It is also useful for screening and will tolerate the sun so is a great candidate for creating shade and privacy beneath your patio ramada shade structure. Cape Jasmine is somewhat drought tolerant, once established in your Arizona landscaping.

Some of the most handsome flowering vines for your Phoenix courtyard walls or other shaded areas give you the choice of some really wonderful blooms and even lovely scents. For purples and lavender colored blooming, take a look at Purple Vine Lilac (Hardenbergia violacea). In bloom showy sprays of light grape hued flowers add an excellent showiness to the evergreen foliage. This particular vine does well in shade and tolerates drier conditions than many climbing plants well suited for shade plantings in your Arizona yard.

Beautiful shade landscapes in Phoenix ... visit our website.

For part shade landscape design in Phoenix, the vibrant yellow blooming Cat Claw Vine (Macfadyena unguis-cati) will create quite a show rambling along and spilling over courtyard walls or trellises. While drought tolerant, you will be far more please with the lush, shiny evergreen foliage with the addition of drip irrigation. There are other plants that can be successfully grown in light shade for climbing walls in Arizona landscaping, but the rest of them are not as hardy as these selections are.

Popularity: 88% [?]

Stunning desert lanscape design in Phoenix means having drip irrigation for robust, healthy plants.

Low maintenance xeriscape landscaping costs many homeowners in greater Phoenix far more money than it should to maintain a beautiful yard. Your plants need more than just the right soil conditions. Here in the arid climate of Arizona, landscaping needs assistance to get the necessary amount of moisture to be lush and flourish. The rock and stones in your desert landscaping are the only part of your landscape design that doesn’t require a balanced diet of the right nutrients and a small, but steady amount of water.

Plants, like people, require some source of hydration. How well do you perform if you are dying of thirst? While many plants that adapt well to the growing conditions in Arizona, to do well and be low maintenance as well as remain of ornamental quality, you must supply them with low amounts of water. Many homeowners do not water regularly or over water their desert landscaping. Both too much water and not enough water are going to raise the expense amount you are investing into your Phoenix landscaping. Over watering not only raises your water bill and wastes our precious resource of fresh water; many xeriscape plants become weakened and prone to disease or even death from too much moisture. This is especially true if your soil conditions were not amended from Arizona clay to provide better drainage.

Unlike having a lush green lawn, xeriscape landscaping plantings do not need sprinkler heads to provide overhead water. Unless you have live turf in your yard, this is the most wasteful and inappropriate way to provide irrigation to Phoenix landscaping, as well as all other areas of the country. Sprinkler systems are meant to be assistance to rain. A large portion of the water applied from spray or mist heads is lost to evaporation and surface run off. Drip irrigation is far more effective in reducing your water bill and subsequently the cost of maintaining your landscaping.

The combination of properly amended soil that allows both good moisture retention while providing adequate drainage and drip irrigation that periodically waters the root zones of each member of your desert landscaping is the perfect situation. Desert landscaping or xeriscape, doesn’t mean it needs no water at all unless the rain provides it. Automatic drip irrigation when properly engineered and set to run uses very little water, yet keeps your landscape absolutely at it’s best at all times. Having a professional installed drip irrigation put in your yard by a licensed Phoenix landscaper can be the smartest landscape investment you will make. It will save you a great deal of time, frustration and money over many years of landscape maintenance.

The next step in saving money on landscape maintenance for your Phoenix home, involves providing the right nutrients for the best plant vigor. In the next post from Desert Crest Press, you’ll learn all about Step #4 in reducing your landscape expenses, the easy way.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Low maintenance beauty in Arizona landscapes and gardens starts with plant health.

All plants have certain requirements, that if met allows the shrubs, trees, flowering vines and lawn grasses to be of the very best health and vigor. When your Phoenix landscaping and garden plants are at their best, not only are they more beautiful and lush, but you will save money on maintaining your Arizona yard.

If plants could communicate verbally, you would have a far easier time understanding what they need. Since they can’t converse, most people fail to understand what their actual requirements are. The truth is that stressed out plants and those suffering from malnutrition are a large part of unnecessary landscape maintenance expenses.

You can actually save money by making sure that you have allowed your Arizona landscaping the ability to remain in picture perfect health. Just as a sickly person needs medicine or increased health care to remain alive, a plant in a state of reduced vigor will have far more requirements than one that is in good health.

Just because you have desert landscaping or xeriscape in your yard, doesn’t mean you can just stick in a few cacti and ornamental grasses and nature will take care of them just fine. There are three things that beautiful landscaping must have in order to be low maintenance and save you money.

• Proper soil conditions.
• Adequate moisture.
• A well balanced diet of nutrients.

Even when you have a professional landscape design done, if the soil conditions aren’t right where you install any plant known to do well in Arizona, it isn’t going to reward you with beauty. Sandy soil and clay soil exist in different areas; you can have varying soil conditions all over your yard in Phoenix. Xeriscape design will only thrive in a spot that is sandy, you must amend the soil to retain moisture for the plants you will place there. If you want desert plants to look lovely where there is clay soil, the soil must be amended to promote drainage. The same is true when you have tropical landscaping in your yard.

You will waste a great deal of money on water when you desert landscaping planted in sandy soil and keep it looking good. Planting desert plants in clay will most likely cause you to have to replace plants after some heavy rains or from watering more often trying to battle the sandy spots that are drying out too fast. Plants that adapt well to Phoenix climate conditions need good drainage, or the roots will begin to rot.

Poor soil conditions weaken plant’s immune systems making them susceptible to disease and even pest infestation. Low maintenance landscaping plants are far less costly to care for when the soil conditions your plant them in present the opportunity to maintain good health and pest or disease resistance. This reduces the amount of treatments for plant problems in all areas of the country, even here in the desert region of Arizona.

It is important that even drought tolerant plants not become stressed due to excessive, continual dryness. The next step in saving money on Phoenix landscape maintenance involves moisture and irrigation. In the next post here from Desert Crest, you’ll learn all about Step #3 in reducing your landscape expenses, the easy way.

Popularity: 41% [?]

Plants in robust health are a large part of the beauty of any Arizona landscaping.

There are some very simple things that many Arizona homeowners don’t realize will reduce the amount of money needed to keep their Phoenix landscaping lush and beautiful, if done properly. It is a proven fact that plants installed in your yard can increase your annual yard maintenance costs; they can also decrease that expense. The key is to understand three basic things about plants available to homeowners in the greater Phoenix area.

One really important thing to know is that just because a plant is for sale at a garden center in your area, does not necessarily mean it will thrive in your yard. Big box store garden centers, like Home Depot and Wal-Mart, are interested in only one thing … moving merchandise in mass quantities. A strategy that is fine if you are buying flower pots, trellises and hoses. When it comes to living things, you are far better off purchasing plants for your Arizona landscaping from a small area nursery center or a licensed landscape contractor. These people are invested in the community in ways no big box store ever will be, they care about what happens after you pay for that plant.

Big box stores loose nothing if it dies, the nursery that put the plant on their shelves does. You loose your gas to and from the Wal-Mart or Home Depot for two round trips, the time and energy you invested in planting the wrong plant in your yard, the water you used trying to keep it from croaking on you and the labor expended digging it back up and lugging it back to the big box store with your receipt to demand your money back. You saved nothing buying at big discount stores, it probably cost you more in gas, vehicle wear and labor than it was all worth.

You will have far less frustration and way more beauty growing in your yard if you purchase your plants from locally owned greenhouses, garden center nurseries or have them professionally installed by licensed Phoenix landscapers. The longer you play around trying to get things growing well in your xeriscape or tropical landscaping, the longer it will take for your home to be surrounded by beautiful plants that increase your real estate’s value and curb appeal.

The next step in saving money on landscape maintenance in Phoenix area has to do with your property itself. In the next post here at Desert Crest Press, you’ll learn all about Step #2 in reducing your landscape expenses, the easy way.

Popularity: 51% [?]

Relief from the sun by day, gourmet grilling barbeque and the element fire to warm the night.

The vast canopy of the unfettered Arizona sky is the most fabulous ceiling your life could have. Intensely blue by day and a star studded black velvet expanse by night, the uncluttered space leaves you with a sense of wonder. Forming the overhead view, the sky is a large part of the invitation your landscape design and patio provides.

Clean stone paving, both of the mortared and dry laid variety are both very well suited to the mild desert climate. Natural stone flagging can be stunning, but at times can be too costly of a material for large lifestyle patio flooring. Due to this fact, many people reserve natural stone flagging for their secluded courtyard areas. The more affordable cost per square foot of paver stones is most popular for patio designs today. The versatile variable sizes, shapes and wonderful color assortment that paver stones are now available in gives your patio landscape design the look and feel of cut stone paving.

Living in Phoenix affords you all season use of your patio living room. This makes adding the lifestyle enhancements of built in stone barbeques and an outdoor fireplace highly desirable. To best compliment the house architecture of the southwest, outdoor fireplace designs are best constructed from natural stone, desert hued brick or the perfect adobe partner known as the beehive. The rounded, traditional beehive fireplace is sometimes referred to as a kiva and is found in many of the older homes from Arizona history.

The element of fire provides us with increased ambiance beneath the starlit sky along with warmth on a chilly desert evening. For adding ambiance to an intimate evening for two to creating a memorable focal point of childhood events like roasting hotdogs on a stick and roasting marshmallows, you just can’t beat an outdoor fireplace on your patio. Many a gathering of friends in the Arizona backyard naturally gravitates to camaraderie shared in front of the dancing flames sharing a glass of wine and delicious food fresh grilled in the outdoor kitchen’s built in barbeques.

Simple outdoor kitchen areas on the Arizona lifestyle patio will be a gas grill built into a stone and stucco BBQ island. The smooth stone surface of built in barbeques provide at least a food preparation and serving counter. With homeowners nationwide embracing the outdoor living room landscape design, full outdoor kitchen features are available for convenience and food safety. An extended built in barbeques island can house an outdoor refrigerator, wine cooler, freezer and patio dishes and cooking utensils storage cabinets as well. The most popular feature for built in barbeques structures is having the design include bar space as well that accommodates patio bar stools for guests and the chef.

Just as when you are planning a new home or in the process of locating just the right pieces of furniture to fit your indoor rooms and allow traffic flow, space planning is also important with patio landscape design. You will want a less hectic air on your Arizona lifestyle patio, so planning traffic aisle space that doesn’t cause congestion and interruption for each activity area is important to your level of enjoyment on the patio.

The same can be said of placing your outdoor fireplace. You will want to be sure there is safe passage around adjacent seating areas and that the line of view of the dancing flames can be enjoyed from most spots on the patio as well as fireside. The more activities your patio will accommodate, the more valuable this key landscape design feature will provide to your family and your home’s real estate price points. A well-planned patio design will offer good flow from inside and out, along with beauty and space for larger gatherings to take place beneath the Phoenix, AZ sky.

Popularity: 66% [?]