Desert Crest Press

The swimming pool is definitely a most important feature in backyard landscaping for anyone living in Arizona. For homeowners around Phoenix, pavers used for the patio and pool decks many times merge into one continuous expanse, due to today’s smaller residential properties space limitations. The result is low maintenance pool landscaping that is mainly comprised of paving stones or natural stone tiling that provides instant flow for family use and more entertainment area.

Naturally, adding softscaping with easy to care for and drought tolerant desert plants is important to the ambiance of Phoenix pool landscaping. Without the lovely texture and greenery, your outdoor living spaces lack the depth and warmth they need. Colorful flowers are also very popular for adding vibrancy and accenting both the planting and the natural stone work or pavers used for the hardscaping.

Pool decks with natural stone paving are beautiful, but it is important to make sure the stone type selected will not be slippery when wet. For this reason, travertine stone tiles are often seen in pool deck design around Phoenix and Scottsdale. Unlike Arizona flagstone, the surface of travertine tiling is smooth and flat, along with not being slippery when wet due to its somewhat porous composition. Additionally, for pool decks, this stone is light and heat reflective allowing for far more comfort in walking around in your bare feet in the heat of summer.

Pool landscaping for many homeowners in the Scottsdale and Phoenix areas also includes swimming pool fountains and waterfalls. Blending Phoenix pavers for pool decks with natural stone wall fountains in a complimenting blend or even contrasting range of hues can create some stunning outdoor living spaces. Like all other backyard landscaping features, swimming pool fountains can be custom designed to suit your vision of what will be awesome. The addition of running water adds more than just visual aesthetics too. It helps to cool the air, supplies energized ions that are naturally soothing and relaxing, along with increasing the available moisture in the air around your pool.

The days of utilitarian plain concrete pool decks is definitely over. Desert Crest now designs and installs pool landscaping that features either Phoenix pavers or natural stone paving all around this area of Arizona. We see more and more homeowners requesting swimming pool fountains or waterfalls with added drama from lighting. This makes the most of including the pool in your overall backyard landscaping and outdoor living patio, especially when you place a shady ramada or pergola in a prominent spot.

Popularity: 41% [?]

Striking contrast and relaxed welcome of natural stone walkways through lush lawns of landscape designs in Carefree.

Showing off the lush lawns in your Carefree landscape design can be done so well with a visually dominating, irregular natural stone walkway. Making use of different sizes and shapes of Arizona stone lends a more relaxed welcome to the approach of your home.

Arizona flagstone in both natural and cut stone selections gives paths and walkways in Carefree a unique surface that leads to a matching patio or courtyard pavement. Depending on the cut of the stone you and your Carefree landscape designer decide upon, creating free-form and perhaps geometric designs adds warm character to any walk or path in your yard.

Widely spaced stone walkways, through lush green grass or xeriscape stone mulch, creates a lovely rustic look that is a wonderful perfect complement to your adobe Arizona home. Professional landscapers in Carefree, can easily install natural stone walkways that leads through a variety of different steppable plants like rugged ground creepers that bloom, thick turf grass or desert landscaping stone as seen here in two very different landscape designs around lovely Carefree homes.

Both irregular and snap cut flagstone can be laid in a tightly fit arrangement as well, producing a clean edged, more formal walkway, pool decks or patio designs. There are many different styles and colors of Arizona stone available. This gives you a large array of home landscaping options and applications for incorporating natural stone. When it comes to courtyard flooring and patio designs, stone is quite popular for paving to create different looks in outdoor living rooms.

Casual and rustic flagstone paths are great for easier walking in desert landscaping stone mulch.

Carefree landscape designers use either straight or curved flagstone walkway designs. Curved designs look far more natural and are very pleasing to the eye. Meandering and flowing natural stone walkways around flowerbeds, trees or landscape plantings for your yard and garden design in Carefree, can add great beauty to professional landscape design. If you want to get a visual idea of what a curving natural stone walkway may look like, place garden hoses along your selected walkway path to simulate the outer edges.

There are a number of installation options for stone walkways, including mortared stone on a concrete base, or dry laid and placed in sand over crushed limestone like paving stones are installed. Flagstone installed with mortar will be more expensive, but also practically maintenance free. However, you will not be able to have wide set flagstones with thick Arizona lawns or ground cover plants growing between the stones laid in mortar. Dry-based natural stone walkways require periodic weed-pulling maintenance when the stone isn’t set into lush green grass. Professional Carefree landscapers will make sure that the flagstone walkway is correctly installed and downright beautiful.

Popularity: 51% [?]

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: 51% [?]

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% [?]

Focal point natural stone walls with adobe coping blend beautifully in this Arizona landscape design.

The easiest way to traverse grade changes is exactly the way most builders treat them, sloped rather than steps. Homeowners in Arizona will find that there are some problems with keep landscape stone and the soil where it belongs on the fast, cheap and easy way to deal with inclines or declines in property grading. Adding character and low maintenance beauty to your Phoenix landscaping calls from retaining walls and steps.

Home improvements like this require you to work with a mason first and a Phoenix landscaper to renovate your planting areas and lawns after the hardscape is completed. It makes a great deal more sense to hire a masonry contractor that is just as talented in landscaping as they are working with adobe and stone. You will have a lot less hassle dealing with one company as opposed to two and your landscape construction will be completed far faster.

Coordinating natural stone used in retaining walls with smoother, more uniform pavers for the sidewalk and steps can create some very high class, beautiful landscape design features. Not only that your Phoenix desert landscaping

Understated elegance and exceptional use of color. A semi-private Phoenix courtyard landscape design that is clean and very well coordinated.

ground cover stone won’t be rolling out onto the neighborhood sidewalk. The entire appearance of your Arizona home will be much more clean and maintained if your xeriscape stone isn’t spilled out onto the sidewalk, creating a hazard for people strolling by.

Leveling sloped ground in larger areas on your Phoenix property, your will gain a lot more useful space for outdoor living rooms. This front courtyard provides stunning use of natural stone walls and pillars in the perfect color to create just the right amount of décor drama with this Arizona home.

Wide steps leading into the semi-private shaded courtyard provide a grand, sweeping welcome to all visitors. Night time safety and added attractiveness is provided by the outdoor lighting blocks in the paving stones steps. The most wonderfully effective landscape contractors in Phoenix have an excellent eye for color. This is extremely important to having your Arizona landscaping turn out beautifully.

The finished effect here is understated elegance that makes excellent use of the dark trunked mature tree at the back of the front courtyard as a dramatic focal point and welcoming shade in just the right location. The masonry stone walls, xericaping rock and the paving stones sidewalk and steps all blend so beautifully. Add the well placed desert plants and you have a professional landscape design anyone in Phoenix would be proud to call home.

Popularity: 97% [?]

Colorful and low maintenace natural cut stone sidewalks are perfect for Phoenix adobe homes.

While it is important to have good overall curb appeal, the feeling of welcome and beauty should increase the closer a visitor draws to your door. The art of approach in Phoenix landscape design is far more than having the right selection and placement of plants. Consider your front yard, or any part of your landscape, as you would a room inside your home. The closer you get to the front door, you should imagine people entering an outdoor foyer by following the sidewalk.

An artistically designed outdoor foyer doesn’t begin at the front door; it should present a direct route to the entry in a most pleasant way. You have a ceiling formed by the sky, walls created by your house and plantings along with flooring. Outdoor flooring can be stone cover so popular in xeriscape, lawn and mulched bed cover, but also includes the pavement type used for Phoenix sidewalks. In the public area of your front yard and outdoor foyer, it is the sidewalk that makes the most important flooring.

Phoenix sidewalks can be constructed with your choice of paving materials, though cut natural stone sidewalks are

Budget wise exposed aggregate sidewalks offer good landscape design texture.

far more preferable to Arizona flagstone. Plain old poured concrete is utilitarian and very unimaginative. The better choice for your sidewalk approach to the front door would be a more creative method of aggregate finishing for better textural interest, pavers or cut stone paving.

Many times, the art of approach is left unfinished in Phoenix landscape design with nothing to soften the hardscape element of sidewalks. Plant textures, the softness of their greenery and even tasteful use of sculptural pieces create more appeal to welcoming guests to your home. From the curb, paying attention to these details will easily direct new visitors immediately to the front door. Pheonix sidewalks aren’t highways; selecting the materials used in this part of your landscaping should be treated with as much care in as you would the colors in the area rug just inside the front door.

Paver sidewalks are less costly than natural stone sidewalks, yet each holds great value in enriching the effect of your landscape design. The coloring in the overall look of a finished paving stone installation will be more subtle than the more variable tones of cut natural stone tiles. Some Phoenix homeowners will prefer their front sidewalk to be more in the background than natural stone walks would be. For some Arizona homes, paver sidewalks may not be the right accent to the house’s architecture.

Studying photos of the different paving styles in actual finished projects is the best way to know you have the right look in sidewalks to compliment your Arizona home. Framing Phoenix sidewalks adds focal points of interest and beauty to enhance the overall view and experience that welcomes and entices all who approach the door.

Popularity: 47% [?]

Natural beauty in patio designs using Arizona flagstone and stucco elements.

Not everyone wants pavers for the surface of their sidewalks or courtyard and patio floors. Here in Arizona, the climate is perfect for long lasting flagstone paving. Complementing our adobe architecture is easily done with stucco as part of your outdoor living and patio designs. Combining both stucco and Arizona flagstone in your courtyard and patio design is an excellent enhancement to your home and lifestyle.

The elements of Phoenix landscape design that work well with stucco construction are items like your ramada pillars, patio seat walls, courtyard walls or outdoor fireplace and barbeques. The stucco can be made to match the color used in the walls of your adobe home or to accent it by echoing the colors in the Arizona flagstone paving. With barbeque islands, the counter top is formed with a capping of either smoothly honed natural stone tile or ceramic. Deciding with of the selections of built in barbeques capping works best will depend on your patio design and taste.

From beehives to barbeques, stucco and stone are perfect partners in Phoenix landscape design.

Using Arizona flagstone in your Phoenix landscape design blends so beautifully with the surrounding countryside blend of the available buff, oak, rose, Sedona red and gold tones that are found in the rock formations here can make patio designs very unique. Flagstone paving can be installed all on one level or in stepped designs for multi level patios that add wonderful dimension to outdoor living area designs. This also allows flagstone to lend itself quite nicely to impressive sidewalks and courtyard flooring that flows.

Stucco is a material that can be applied to many different shapes far easier than crafting them out of natural stone and brick. Using stucco in your Phoenix landscape design makes it very simple to have curved walls and seats, round pillars or square all according to the look you desire when the installation project is finished.

Applying light and dark values of Arizona flagstone colors can create some very beautiful effects in all the elements of your Phoenix patio designs. Working with our native stone also makes it possible to include more than just flagstone cuts of the same colored rock. Incorporating boulders as accents in the landscape design or walls of your home’s structure and stucco is a great way to pull everything together using different forms and textures.

Popularity: 100% [?]

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% [?]

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% [?]

Handsome in rugged stone, this outdoor fireplace is at home in desert scenery.

The four main elements of life are important features of home as we reconnect with the natural world. The element of fire is magical and omnipotent. It can provide warmth and light in the cold dark night and the benefit of hot food, yet it can also be damaging and devastating if not minded with care. One of the beauties of living in Arizona is being able to get enjoyment from your patio and outdoor living rooms all year long. When the desert sun sinks in the cooler months of the year, a chill descends on Phoenix. With the addition of an outdoor fireplace to your outdoor living spaces provides warmth.

The added attraction of dancing flames draws people of all ages together, just as it has done through the history of mankind. Where there is contained fire, we instinctively know that food, shelter and camaraderie will also be found. A fire feature is great for boosting curb appeal and real estate value. It should be constructed using materials that will compliment your home’s architecture and patio paving materials. The outdoor fireplace is a highly sought after lifestyle amenity in homes from coast to coast. Many people in the greater Phoenix area have discovered just how wonderful the addition of fire is to their backyard getaway spaces.

Brick, stone and stucco are all well suited to the Arizona patio outdoor fireplace. They make handsome features when custom designed and engineered to go with your home’s styling and exterior colors. Patio fireplaces are many times located in close proximity to hot tubs or spas to be able to enjoy the colorful flames while soaking away the day’s worries.

There are several styles of outdoor fireplaces commonly seen on patios

Patio fireplaces in Phoenix are perfectly suited for the beehive or kiva style.

in the Phoenix area. The beehive is unique to the southwest culture, a design that has been in use here for hundreds of years. Many historic adobe homes have beehive fireplaces inside the house, so adding them to your desert landscaping patio creates an authentic looking home setting. Each person’s taste is unique and we design and build each of our customer’s patio fireplaces to fit their individual lifestyle.

Popularity: 45% [?]