Desert Crest Press

The strongest pavement known to man, yet paving stones are beautiful and add market value to your Arizona home.

No maintenance is what every homeowner wants to hear. That is just one of the smart landscape design improvements that pavers provide any home in Phoenix. You will love the look of your timelessly gorgeous new driveway, patio or pool deck. The only pavement in the world that can look so good and remain solid for up to 100 years. You certainly can’t say that about poured concrete!

Paving stones are four times stronger than bland old concrete surfaces. There are city streets, lanes and courtyard all over Europe built from this incredibly long lasting, and strong paving system that are almost 100 years old and still in great shape. Driveway pavers will never fade or need resurfacing baking for decades on end beneath the Arizona sun.

Due to their stunning good looks and excellent reputation for never needing repair or refinishing, paver stones installed for any use in your Phoenix landscaping will instantly increase your property’s curb appeal and market value. Unlike clay pavers, paving stones will never flake and erode with passing time. Tough as nails and long on looks, it is almost impossible to destroy pavers. Compared to the cost of maintaining all other heavy duty type of paving, paving stones are the least costly per square foot. All that resealing and resurfacing adds up over the span of years and decades.

Pavers in Phoenix,will always be best investment  for your home. The special mortarless installation procedure locks the entire surface of paving stones driveways, patios and pool decks securely in place. There is never a chance of cracking, sinking, heaving, separating or shifting due to the interlocking joint sand and compaction used to install them. It’s pretty surprising that something this beautiful could be so utilitarian in strength, but that’s exactly what you get from this special paving material.

You will love the colors of paving stones available to match the Southwestern style and color of your Arizona home. Due to the versatile patterns that pavers can be laid in, they make it possible to enjoy unique textures and high interest. Adding them to your Phoenix landscape design provides a welcoming driveway, sidewalk to greet visitors. For courtyard flooring and in your outdoor living rooms, they remain low maintenance in sun or shade and in every climate. Professionally installed paving stones are a smart investment for any home or commercial property today.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Relaxing is easy with earth, water, air and fire elements worked into your outdoor living patio escape in Phoenix.

Sometimes the house with impediments in the landscape can be the perfect property to create a highly unusual setting. A private resort like the garden of earthly delights, tucked away just outside your Phoenix home in the form of the most fantastic backyard getaway. Patio designs need not be huge to create the most wonderful outdoor rooms. Some of the greatest backyard landscape designs are found in a series of cozy area experiences.

To truly allow you to relax and unwind, you will want your backyard escape landscape design in Phoenix to be extremely low maintenance, yet include the softening effect and contrast of beautiful plants. This adds the element of earth, a basic essential for balance in the human psyche.

Water in itself presented in the swimming pool is a definite requirement to enjoying the desert summer hours outdoors. Adding the cascading water of tumbling waterfalls to Phoenix patios and landscape design introduces the essential element of serotonin, raw and freely available in the now electrically charged air. You can only enjoy sizeable waterfalls when your Arizona property provides the terrain to make a natural looking water feature that blends with the rugged landscape.

This particular backyard escape patio design places the availability of serotonin from the waterfalls in close proximity to the soothing hot tub, the outdoor kitchen beneath a gorgeous and rough hewn ramada and also the swimming pool.

By day or under the Arizona stars, all of the basic essentials of life await these Phoenix homeowners right outside their backdoor. Their landscape designer in Phoenix has given them earth, water, air and fire. Not just in their outdoor bbq design, but with an outdoor fireplace in the beehive design tucked in right next to the waterfalls.

The area of the patio design may be small, but the ambience of earthly delights is huge in this particular difficult site situation. Aromatic plants placed close to the outdoor kitchen and outdoor fireplace space provides aroma therapy throughout the warm season. Their purple blooms made more intense with the addition of the vivid masonry wall at the other side of the patio. Set amid tumbling rocks and notched into the hillside, the innovations of this Phoenix landscape design create the perfect intimate place to absorb the serotonin from the waterfalls along with the essential of the four elements. The effect is a jewel of an oasis, hidden away in the arid Arizona landscape, the perfect place to escape and restore peace of mind.

Popularity: 70% [?]

You could be living on a beautiful new pool deck this summer with pool deck remodel designs in Phoenix.

It won’t be long and the temperature will start creeping up again here in the Phoenix area. Now is a good time to start planning your improvements for outdoor living and landscaping. Designs for backyard outdoor rooms should take in the fact that your swimming pool is a major focal point. Here in the valley, pools get a lot of regular use in the summer. Why spend all those hours living on a bland pool deck when it could become a stunning extension of your patio or a standalone work of outdoor living room art. In the fabric of your Phoenix lifestyle, the pool is more of your outdoor bathing room.

The Arizona climate allows us to enjoy a wide choice of paving materials to remodel pool decks. Pavers and Arizona flagstone will both create a beautiful new look for pool decks. Depending on your personal taste and existing pool deck remodeling vision, you also have the option of cut stone tiles and outdoor tiles as the paving material for a fresh new swimming pool surround. When the landscape design calls for making the pool deck an extension of outdoor living patios, naturally you will want to select one fluid style of flooring.

There is no question of the incredible real estate value gained in putting a fresh and up to date face on pool decks. Renovation of backyard landscaping is becoming more important in enhancing a home and a lifestyle in Phoenix. Landscapers who are skilled at all types of paving methods, both mortared and unmortared will allow you to chose from the widest range of pavers and tiles possible. This will allow your swimming pool deck remodel to beautifully coordinate with your home, privacy wall and anything else you want to flow in the overall outdoor living area plans.

Adding waterfalls and fountains to the swimming pool is highly popular with Phoenix homeowners today. Working several prominent placements for water features around pool decks can add great excitement to any swimming pool and patio design. You don’t necessarily need a new swimming pool to add great beauty to this huge element in backyard landscaping. Design talent and artistic skill can easily work with your old, outdated looking pool deck and transform it into something fabulous.

Popularity: 52% [?]

Landscaping design commonly features small waterfalls around Phoenix patio designs and swimming pools. This water features application makes an incredible difference in the whole feeling of your Arizona backyard. Outdoor living rooms are always more relaxing and inviting when you add cascading water. What is less commonly and very attractive is the addition of water features streams to desert landscaping design.

This particular Phoenix homeowner had a steep, unsightly cut away hillside detracting from their outdoor living room scenery. The landscape designer found the perfect place to install very natural looking waterfalls and stream feature completely altering the entire effect of this Arizona backyard. The use of streams in Phoenix landscaping adds much value in allowing the water feature to wind along from one prominent enjoyment spot to another.

The use of a stone lined channel is a wonderful use of the historical Southwestern way of delivering water from its source to a home or village. This design theme is very fitting use in complimenting Phoenix architecture and lifestyle patios. The boulder strewn streams bordered by a jumbled rock and lush plants leading away from waterfalls found in landscape designs around less arid regions of the country would look very alien here in the desert. This aqueduct design style for streams around Phoenix patios and adobe homes is the perfect architectural compliment.

The sound of babbling water adds much cheer to the outdoor living lifestyle in the Arizona desert. Landscaping in Phoenix can take on so much more depth and provide extended benefits with waterfalls and the unexpected streams in the landscape design. The right landscape designer for creating an aqueduct stream and waterfalls water feature to compliment your home and lifestyle must also be an accomplished mason to be able to build a flawless water channel border as sleek as the adobe on your home.

A very realistic setting this particular Phoenix landscape design has created taking all advantages of the steep slope and its ruble rich exterior surface. Unlike trying to create natural looking waterfalls on flat ground in the desert, landscaping issues like this carved away hill can sometimes be turned into the cloud with a beautiful silver lining. Finding this type of treatment solution requires a very creative and innovative landscape designer. Which is what landscaping design and installation is meant to be, creating beauty by working with nature and existing land forms rather than recreating the entire world one yard at a time.

Popularity: 62% [?]

Get instant relief from the Phoenix sun with custom pole ramadas on your patio, pool or courtyard.

The Pueblo people, like their neighbors from Mexico also made great use of the ramada structure. Their summer shelter was many times a pole ramada to take advantage of any air movement. The original construction of the pole ramada were made from sapling trunks tightly fitted together and lashed into place with vines or brush woven to form a crude sort of rope. Pole ramadas are right at home in your Phoenix landscaping and patio designs. They have always been a great style to use with adobe architecture. This authentic Arizona ramadas design will be lower priced than other styles more commonly seen in The Valley.

Some people call pole ramadas vigas latillas, but this isn’t quite right. The structural building style for this shade shelter is the most authentic ramada to Southwest United States regions. While they do have vigas or posts and the roof is topped with strip poles in their most natural state, they are not quite ‘lattilas’. It is possible to have a true lattilas roof on your patio ramada, but this design would require more labor and more lumber to build. To accomplish instant shade in your outdoor living area in Phoenix, you will be wise to stick with the true pole ramadas design. Of course, one built today will not have the traditional vines holding the roof poles in place.

You'll enjoy almost solid shade with the well constructed pole ramada over your outdoor living room in Phoenix.

Lattilas are actually short sawn poles of equal length that are used beneath the flat topped roofs of the authentic period adobe home. The lattilas are tightly fitted together between roof vigas and were originally design to stop most of the dirt from the mud roof from sifting down to dust the inside of the home. Modern builders of homes in Pheonix and the rest of the southwest still use the peeled Ponderosa Pine latillas roof. When working on a slim budget to add relief from the sun to your patio or courtyard, pole ramadas are a much better choice. These ramadas will be easier to build and require fewer materials, both of which keep the cost of construction lower than other types of ramadas for shade.

Having custom designed and built pole ramadas allows you to get the perfect shape and size to cool off the patio. There are many different ways to apply these simple and natural looking ramadas to your patio designs and pool areas. A long narrow swimming pool could easily have a shaded end by erecting a pole ramada for enjoying the water out of direct sun. Corner pole ramadas built in an el or triangular shape are also possible when you have one custom built to suit your personal needs on your Phoenix property. The simple style will beautifully compliment your Arizona home, without question.

Popularity: 66% [?]

Firepits and landscape lighting adds a whole new look to Phoenix patio designs and outdoor living rooms.

Outdoor lighting for backyard patio designs is a lot more relaxing today than it once was. Illuminating the dark night with the glow from your firepit and well placed landscape lighting puts an entirely different view on your backyard. Harsh floodlight and spot light night lighting in the landscape with the innovations of low voltage lighting extends the use of your Phoenix patio a great deal.

Custom built firepits of three dimensional pavers and beautiful Arizona stone offer the benefit of warmth and illumination in one feature. Your firepit can be square, rectangular or round depending on the space available in your backyard patio design. Round gas firepits are very popular with Arizona homeowners.

When your firepit is custom designed you have many options to match the structure to different elements in your Phoenix landscaping. Some Arizona homeowners prefer to match the paving stones or flagstone of their patio designs, others choose to make their firepits an accent instead. Mixing flagstone coping with the right combination of wall stones can create a wonderful effect and a one of a kind design to firepits on your backyard patio.

Being able to have so many choices in the finished look of outdoor living room firepits is best accomplished by

Firepits add so much to patio designs but the addition of night lighting give your backyard new depth and beauty.

selecting Phoenix landscapers who are skilled at both pavers and masonry stone construction. This is also the best way to insure that that your new firepit will remain beautiful and functional for many years to come.

Soft, mood setting landscape lighting is an excellent addition to outdoor living rooms. Uplighting trees and down lighting paths or the edge of patio areas will be a valuable curb appeal investment. Enjoying the mild climate here in Arizona brings everyone to spend a great deal of time outdoors. Backyard patio designs that feature outdoor lighting in all the right places will enhance your home in so many ways.

Entertaining friends or relaxing in Phoenix is always much more welcoming and warm with dancing flames and low voltage night lighting. Your landscape plantings and gardens will add great depth and interest to your backyard living room setting outlined and accented in a bath of light. Many people feel much more secure with an illuminated outdoor living area than one that has many shadowed spaces. Whether you add landscape lighting as a valuable safety feature or just to light up you patio and pool in the night, it will provide you and your family with more enjoyment of home.

Custom firepits, like outdoor fireplaces, become a popular focal point in any Phoenix area yard. It’s an excellent way to spend quality time with children, roasting marshmallows and hot dogs over the open flames. Company will always gravitate toward the ambiance that firepits add to the patio too. When the kids are asleep and the neighbors have retreated, adding a little romance shared with a glass of wine next to the fire is a wonderful way to end day.

Popularity: 73% [?]

Depth, color and many layers of interest are found in this gorgeous xeriscape landscape design in Phoenix.

If you know enough about desert plants and those that will thrive in the drastic climate of Arizona, it does make selecting the right ones to create a low maintenance landscape a lot easier. Anyone can research which xeriscape plants require the least water to make them easy to grow around a home in Phoenix. Yet, not everyone can take those same desert plants and arrange them to become a work of art. Phoenix landscaping is far more than picking the easiest plants you can find. Beautifully landscaped properties will always be the work of an artistic person who is also a landscape designer.

The process of laying out the planting plan of a xeriscaped yard is just the frosting, the final touches that make your Phoenix landscape design become something attractive, let alone stunning. Every perennial flower, ornamental grass, succulent or cactus, shrub, tree and vine is an important player in a well orchestrated ebb and flow of any xeriscape design. Pulling the entire scene together also leans heavily on precisely placing the hardscape elements of pavements, stone or stucco walls, fountains, statuary and even landscape boulders.

The brightest plant on the right of the walk, Blue Agave looks even bluer with all the yellow around it.

To really have a fabulous desert landscaping display, form and line is just as important as color, texture and form. The well skilled and talented Phoenix landscape designer will be able to visualize the scene that is developing as each new item is placed on the paper that becomes a map to building a wonderful yard. Everything has a place and a color in this fine example of a lovely desert landscape. Yellows, blue and purple, earth tones and finally different shades of green are mixed and placed just right for flow and mass, accent and background. To add even more depth each area has a singular accent plant that arrests more attention than the others.

There are no vibrant flowers beyond the soft Yellow Bells along the walk. Not that this particular Phoenix xeriscape design won’t have a variety of brightly colored blooms, because in other parts of the year it will. The thing is that any landscape design that is done well, will have this much contrast and depth to it whether something is in flower at the moment or not. This is what separates a mediocre Phoenix landscape designer from the best. It doesn’t matter whether you live in the desert of Arizona or the verdant rolling valleys around the Mississippi. Landscape design is the most intricate form of art that requires more skill, knowledge and talent than most people assume. Unless of course, you don’t mind that your Phoenix landscaping isn’t anything special.

Popularity: 83% [?]

Glorious tropical beauty almost year around for Phoenix landscape design.

Enjoying the brilliant color of flowering plants in your yard is possible most of the year in this area of Arizona. The massive blooms of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis are a treat that continues to produce fresh blooms constantly during warm and hot weather.

More commonly known as Tropical Hibiscus, including this into shrub or tree in the design for your Phoenix yard or garden will add a lot of interest. Don’t worry about our occasional frost in winter harming Hibiscus, they are perfectly hardy in Phoenix landscaping.

The dark green foliage of Tropical Hibiscus is usually large, but always dark green and glossy. As a texture in your Phoenix landscape design, that stands out well against many of our ornamental plants.

Available in a wide range of bloom colors, you will be able to add the lushness of huge Hibiscus flowers to your Phoenix landscaping. The plant is offered in both a tree form and a bush form. The best choice is the tree form for conserving space in small yards. This allows you to enjoy lower growing plants around the beauty of this small landscape tree while keeping a more open feeling to your Phoenix landscape design. Placing this marvelous long flowering plant where you can enjoy it daily from the patio and out the window is highly recommended.

Hibscus for Phoenix landscaping will mature to about 15 feet tall. You can shear the shrub form of the large plants into a hedge shape, but the blooms are formed at the tips of the branches. Shearing at the wrong time of year will mean a loss of flowering. It is best to select a place in your yard that it can grow unhampered into its natural glory.

The soil will need to be amended with moisture holding materials for best results growing Hibisus in your yard or outdoor living room. You need good drainage and ample compost for best vigor. Summer heat will be no issue at all, even in afternoon sun with good moisture practices. In dry conditions, Phoenix landscaping use of Hibiscus is best in the shade. This will result in very few blooms, so an after soon placement will give the most color and beauty when using the Tropical Hibiscus in Phoenix landscape design.

Watering in summer is needed more often than in the winter when the Hibiscus will be almost dormant. Too much water applied in winter can cause problems for this plant in your Phoenix landscaping. To get the irrigation adjust right you can consult with your landscaper or water it with the grass in summer and your citrus plants in winter. The blooms may only last a day, but you will have stunning color from lush tropical beauty in Phoenix as new ones constantly appear. A spring through fall source of fabulous color for your Phoenix landscape design.

Popularity: 52% [?]