Desert Crest Press

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% [?]

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% [?]

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% [?]