Desert Crest Press

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: 76% [?]

Popularity: 64% [?]

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% [?]

Stunning entrance framing from a maturing deep pink Bougainvillea vine.

Climbing plants that flower are perfect for framing gates and arched entrances or windows and doors. Softening any privacy wall is always a welcome addition to your Arizona home landscape. The flowering vines that will thrive here in the Phoenix area climate provide you with a variety of leaf textures and a wonderful selection of bloom colors from brilliant to soft pastels. As with any other new planting, the flowering vine will at first be immature, in a few years time it will merrily create a vibrant presence that enhances your home and lifestyle.

Some flowering vines that do well here in Arizona can also be trained into shrub and tree forms that will work well in other places in your landscape design. To coax the most exciting flower show from any flowering plant for sun, full sun planting placement will be most rewarding. The decadence of color explosion we get from Bougainvillea around Phoenix makes it a very popular addition to any spot in your yard. It is best to begin with the right form of Bougainvillea from the horticultural nursery, unless you want to try your hand at turning the traditional climber into a tree or shrub. Most homeowners prefer to just let their long blooming plants continue to increase in size rather than try to turn it into a new form.

Bougainvillea comes in so many colors that there is always the perfect shade to suit anyone’s taste. For those who prefer subtle colored flowers, there are white, pale pink and bi-colored Bougainvillea plants. We prize this vine for not the flower itself but for the exciting colored parts that appear beneath the miniscule flowers. The beautiful vibrant display we so enjoy from this rather rambunctious climber is not the true flower, but the bracts. The actual blooms of Bougainvillea are tiny and white, appearing in the center of each whirl of showy bracts.

Brighter colors in Bougainvillea offer you tones like pumpkin-yellow, salmon, several deep shades of pink, fuchsia, lavender, purple and a selection of reds. It is tempting to go overboard when choosing the variety of colors to enjoy clambering and cascading over the stone and stucco walls of your Phoenix home and courtyard. In landscape design, it is best to use only 2 colors of bloom and an accent of white or yellow in the plantings. Mixing too many colors in one viewing area tends to muddy the impact or become garish.

In the normally, frost free climate here in Phoenix, AZ these flowering vines will be fully leafed out and evergreen. This is important to know when considering the impact your landscape design will have throughout the year.

Popularity: 57% [?]

The trellis ramada is the pergola shade structure of the Phoenix, AZ landscaped home.

A lot of people, who are new to Phoenix, AZ from other areas of the country, think they need a pergola on their patio or over their courtyard. Shade is really important in the greater Phoenix area where enjoying your outdoor living rooms in warm weather is concerned. In most areas of the US, giving a name to your patio shade structure means you want a gazebo or a pergola.

First of all, if you want a fully roofed shade structure, you are looking for a gazebo suited for the flavor of southwestern desert plains and mountains. Here in Arizona, a fully roofed or solid roofed shade structure is known as

A true ramada has a full roof, as opposed to a slatted roof for shade creation only.

a ramada. This term comes from the Spanish and Mexican influence of our desert architecture. If you are seeking a slatted shade roof, things get a bit more complicated. In the moisture rich regions, a flat, slatted roof shade structure is known as a pergola. If your non-solid roofed shade structure has an arched or peaked roof it is called an arbor. Here in the arid regions of the southwest, the proper name for such an open roofed shade roof is a trellis ramada.

The southwestern version of a pergola is made from more rustic materials than European influenced pergola designs. The original term ‘ramada’ comes from American Spanish and is related to the Spanish word ‘rama’, meaning branch. In historic adobe terms as defined by LAokay, ramada means ‘brush enclosure’. When you learn the rest of the Mesoamerican terminology for this type of shade structure, it is clear why they were once crafted from ‘brush’. No matter what Mesoamerican region you are in, these structures are open air and provide a family gathering place, a focal point of life, where relief from the baking desert sun is made possible.

Depending on what region’s language you refer to, the southwestern pergola or shade roof is known by different terms. In southern Mexico, the natives call these flat, open roofed structures ‘villas’. When you are in the region of Mazatlan, they call them ‘palapas’. There is a distinct difference in the construction materials of the palapa as opposed to villas, armadas or European pergolas. The readily available palm leaves in the region of Mexico around Mazatlan, created the roofing resources for the family shade structure. The palapa is much like a cross between a pergola and gazebo with a twist of the tropics because its fully enclosed roof is thatched in a fashion similar to the prevalent straw thatched roofs in Britain of old.

An Arizona pergola or ramada can provide simple shade for a small entry area or be larger.

As you travel north from southern and central Mexico, drawing closer to the United States, the native term for flat, open-roofed shade structures is ‘trellis ramada’ in most local dialects. The materials of the traditional ramada tend to be more rustic and heavy weight than its European counterpart, as is fitting for adobe architecture. Hand hewn beams set closely together on rugged, even oversized support posts crated of masonry columns in stucco and natural stone are very prevalent in Arizona home landscape design.

No matter what you want to call your shade structure, the modern designs in Phoenix, AZ for courtyard and patio shade can be more refined; like a blend of the pergola and the ramada. Or, they can be very rustic and befitting the desert climate, the natural wild terrain and the adobe style home that has enchanted us for centuries on end as quintessential Arizona architecture.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Stunning xeriscape landscape design front entry - Phoenix, AZ

Many people think that with xeriscaping there is no need for any more water than what may come with the rain. The word ‘xeri’ comes from the Greek word ‘xeric’, meaning “adjective of, pertaining to or adapted to a dry environment”. Adapting is not the same as torture and strife. No ornamental plants, even those suited for our Arizona desert plains climate will thrive and look lovely without any care at all. If they did, the desert would be stunning. Only the wild areas of undeveloped desert are suited for zero-scaping.

Plants used in Arizona xeriscaping do require some irrigation, just not huge amounts like other landscaping methods. All homeowners want a yard that looks at its best and is thriving, this is the desirable result to having the property landscaped. Professional xeriscape landscape design includes trees and shrubs well suited to the harsh climate changes of the Arizona desert. A talented xeriscape landscape designer understands that cacti and succulents are used as a natural compliment to woody landscape plants that adapt to the local conditions.

Just because this is the desert region does not mean you cannot enjoy colorful blooms, there are many, many beautiful flowers that work well in the desert. Among them are vines for scaling the courtyard walls so popular in southwestern home designs. Against stucco or stone structures, the brilliant Bougainvillea or softly yellow Lady Banks Rose is wonderful. Even here in the dry Arizona climate, colorful perennials and annual flowers thrive nicely in xeriscaping. Beautiful blooms in rich purples and reds add depth to the xeriscaped yard, while the desert plants flowering yellow or white will lighten and brighten the space. Lovely ornamental grasses known for low maintenance are also part of the well-designed Phoenix landscape.

Professional xeriscaping is designed to work with Arizona’s climate, saving you money and time when you’re not at war with nature. Many a beautiful planting can be created from the selection of plants that are hardy in the Arizona desert landscape. Skillful placement of natural rock and stone allows the xeriscaped yard a presence at one with the surrounding countryside. Your Phoenix landscape will be enjoyable, less costly to maintain and take up far less of your valuable time with xeriscaping around your home.

Popularity: 30% [?]