Desert Crest Press

The best look in Scottsdale pool decks will always be natural stone. After all, water and rocks compliment each other so perfectly in nature, and continue to do so even after we’ve cut and shaped them into regular, predictable units. Just look at the finished project here. Even with our taming of this corner, it fits right into the view behind it and offers a great sense of relaxing peacefulness.

The plunge pool as it is known in some circles or as a splash pool to others is the perfect addition to small backyards so many homes have today. It gives you a place to cool off in the warmer months without hogging most of your outdoor living space. With the swimming pool fountains on the natural stone wall behind the pool, this smart looking plunge pool doubles as a water feature and just increases the pleasantness and uses it provides.

This Scottsdale landscaping project uses chiseled Travertine pavers for the pool deck and adjacent patio, giving the entire area great flow. Travertine stone pavers come in a variety of colors from rich deep gold, to the palest walnut cream. The colors available generally come from a particular world region, and even a special quarry. The stone has streaks and swirls of darker versus lighter color as well as being pitted naturally. Some stone cutters that import it to Arizona fill the tunnels and holes that are present in Travertine. Others leave it as it is. These highly desirable pavers are also available in a choice of surfaces, but for pool decks and patios it is best to use tumbled or chiseled selections.

We recommend these gorgeous stone pavers for foot traffic only. Travertine is on the fragile side in the stone world and while it will hold up nicely for driving passenger cars over the surface, heavy delivery trucks can damage these pavers. For paving driveways, its far wiser to go with standard concrete pavers.

As with any type of paver used in Scottsdale landscaping, the pattern they are laid in changes the finished look quite a bit. This home is quite modern, so the streamlined running bond laying pattern is perfect. With a more rustic home style in Scottsdale, pool decks laid in the herringbone pattern lend a great traditional texture to the overall feeling imparted.

Additionally, with stone pavers, pool decks will never need resurfacing or cracks repaired. If the landscaper in Scottsdale you choose for your project lays the base properly or is a skilled stone mason, your pool deck should look great with almost no maintenance for up to a hundred years. That’s what you call an excellent buy!

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Having a beautiful pool in the backyard means ensuring that it’s surroundings are in tune with the pool itself. Even the most impressive swimming pool design, will look less astounding if your Arizona pool landscaping doesn’t accent and play up it’s aesthetic values.

Like any other area of your yard in Scottsdale and Phoenix, pool decks are the largest portion of the elements that frame a swimming pool. While some will opt for pavers as the material used for their pool deck, here in Arizona, you’ll have very little issues with natural stone paving. There are a number of choices suitable for pool decks, each with it’s own special character and mood. You can select native Arizona flagstone as is shown in the image of this particular project, or travertine stone pavers among others.

Pool decks made of natural stone are always beautiful and very upscale, not to mention timeless in appeal. For some, the soft and multi-colored tones of travertine is just the right look. For others, the larger pieces found in irregular shaped flagstone provide a look that is bold and more suited to their taste and style.

Once you decide what your Scottsdale or Phoenix pool deck’s paving material will be, other hard elements used in the pool landscaping design. In this particular backyard, more natural stone has been incorporated to frame the poolside spa, as well as in the creation of waterfalls that double as swimming pool fountains. This is an excellent added asset to the stone paving of the pool deck.

Like the finishing touches on your courtyard design, Arizona pool landscaping is going to need some specially selected plants. Many backyard pools today are surrounded by masonry walls for instant privacy, or decorative fencing. Both of these hard landscape design elements are generally softened with climbing vines, flowering shrubs or architectural character desert plants and low growing ornamental trees.

Most homeowners choose a minimalistic style for the plantings in their pool landscaping. What better way is there to accomplish low maintenance landscaping in a space that is all about total relaxation? Obviously, more plants or fluffier plants will be highly desirable to those with a masonry wall framing their outdoor living spaces in the backyard. For those that have the natural desert landscape just beyond the backyard fence, less plant material is needed to soften the hardscape and add flowering or foliage beauty to their surrounding pool landscaping.

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It would be a great deal easier to put together a great Arizona landscape design for around the pool if all plants adored the added heat and light your pool puts in their environment. The water is perfect for you to cool off in, but beneath the desert sun, the mirroring aspect of the water and the extra warmth of the soil the pool decking creates makes things a little too harsh for some of our preferred plant choices. When deciding what you should use in your Scottsdale pool landscaping, be sure to use specimens that will take the heat and still be beautiful.

In today’s smaller properties, that backyard swimming pool takes up a great deal of space. Naturally it is a focal point on it’s own, but these outdoor living elements are always more attractive with plantings that make the area even a bigger focal point. The best pool landscaping in Scottsdale or Phoenix areas will always be low on maintenance and high in color. For most homeowners this means lots of great blooming action offset by good textures and shapes.

With smaller backyards, the bed spaces around the pool deck will no doubt be minimal too. For the best possible outcome, it is best to choose plants that not only deal with the conditions and the chlorinated water, but also won’t outgrow the space you have to offer them. Additionally, it is wise to avoid spiny plants so close to the poolside, along with those that do a lot of shedding. After all, you want to spend more time enjoying the backyard and your pool than cleaning up after your landscaping.

Here are two excellent candidates for plantings around the pool in Arizona landscape design that are beautiful, long blooming and won’t shrink at the extra heat and light known to be a problem in this area of a residential yard. Superb Penstemon, shown in full bloom in the photo above, will give you wonderful spring color for weeks on end. This native of our region requires very little maintenance and will remain an evergreen plant with periodic watering during the summer months. Hummingbirds love Penstemon, bringing even more color and interest to your private oasis than flowers could possibly offer.

In front of the Penstemon is Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) that offers great texture and shape year around. Once the Penstemon is finished blooming when summer arrives, the Yucca will start flowering. The whispy bloom stems of offer you both architecture and color that is simply wonderful.

Both these plants are great xeriscaping landscaping candidates, but will indeed perform better with the right light watering routine. They prefer well draining soils, so be sure to amend properly if you have clay in the planting area for best focal point results and carefree pool landscaping.

Image courtesy of nestmaker. CC by 2.0

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There are lots of reasons that to residents of Anthem, pool landscaping is important. No matter where you may live, a pool isn’t something that is easily hidden in the backyard, at least not without erecting a wall around it. So it makes perfect sense that many people want the patio design and pool deck’s paving to flow and connect, along with pool landscaping that merges with the rest of the backyard. In today’s smaller properties, the pool can occupy a huge portion of your available space, as well as being clearly visible from the rooms inside the house.

Water features and rocks are a wonderful partner of the pool, after all one finds many exposed rocks in places that the flow or water has washed them free of the soil. Here we’ve added waterfalls with a few select plants framing this space between the stone paving patio and spa. One thing that really makes this so natural looking is that the pool itself isn’t that traditional blue. This one looks a lot like stone, giving the water a far less contrived appearance and a color one would likely find in a natural pool somewhere in the wild.

The pool landscaping here is quite simple and very low maintenance, yet very striking. Prostrate Rosemary gracefully weeps to the water’s edge and is lovely at all times, but exquisite when in bloom. In the foreground is Desert Spoon (Dasylirion wheeleri) and is echoed in the pool landscaping at the right side of the spa. Yucca of all types is lovely in bloom, but one of my favorites is the wispy Red Yucca you see here at the front of this bed along the waterfalls. Between blooming seasons, it looks like an evergreen grass but is simply gorgeous at full color such as the day this photo was taken.

Every project we do with pool decks is unique to the owner of the home and the layout of the backyard area. Some are quite simple and others more involved, but they all include Arizona pool landscaping designed to accent and nicely occupy available planting space with plants that add color and interest.  A good share of them make use of swimming pool fountains or waterfalls, which is a great way to add the soothing sound of water to outdoor living space using only the water already in the pool.

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The desert lifestyle is most definitely enhanced with a swimming pool in our outdoor living spaces. The incorporation of patios that spill over into the pool area has many owners of older pools eager to replace their bland concrete pool decks. Phoenix and Scottsdale pool landscaping today will incorporate  the warm, earthy look of natural stone tiles or Phoenix pavers.

The pool in this photo isn’t a new installation. It is the after picture of a Phoenix pool deck remodeling. Before we began work in this client’s yard, the pool landscaping was not at all warm or welcoming. At the time that this swimming pool was built, the deck design was high style for that era and quite at home in anyone’s view as to what a smart looking backyard landscape should contain.

With the innovation of Phoenix pavers and readily available supplies of stone tile pavers like travertine, pool decks and outdoor living spaces have altered dramatically. Looking at the difference between then and now, it isn’t hard to wonder what was found so attractive in huge expanses of monotone concrete. This choice of decking material is definitely an improvement over bare soil and weeds. However, it still leaves much to be desired, even when adding contrast with colorful brick trim as was done here.

Along with the introduction of paver pool decks, came a wider scope of Phoenix landscape design. Most people would prefer to have pool landscaping that adds color and interest to this part of the yard too. This makes perfect sense with our patio designs evolving into outdoor living spaces and it being a natural thing to merge the pool deck with the patio.

In a small backyard space such as this one pictured here, sometimes it is best that not many plants be used. This isn’t just because of the lack of area to plant. The chlorine concentration in pool water can damage landscaping plants if there is a great deal of constant saturation of their root zones occurring. Something that homeowners with boisterous children making waves and splash over at play in the pool should keep in mind as they plan their Phoenix landscape design surrounding the water’s edge.

The change between the original pool deck and this new paver pool deck is incredible really. It wouldn’t be stretching the truth one bit to say that this clients outdoor living space was swiftly transformed from cold and drab to warm and stunning. All it took was a pool deck remodel using ultra versatile Phoenix pavers. Without a doubt, Phoenix pool decks have come a long way in recent years. It’s hard to imagine a look like this as going out of style.

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The best looking swimming pool landscaping will include plants for softening all the pavers or travertine and tile work. All over Phoenix, Scottsdale and Glendale adding a water feature is becoming increasingly popular. Some people opt for swimming pool fountains. These can be great for ambiance set in pillars along the edge of the pool and give you so many options for styling and materials used in designing them.

As is seen in the pool and spa design in this image, Glendale swimming pool fountains don’t have to look like a fountain at all. We also see a lot of interest around the area for combining Arizona waterfalls to pool landscaping. Natural rocks and rushing water have always complimented each other so nicely.

The finished effect in this pool landscaping design is striking visually and relaxing at the same time. The smooth texture of tile and light texture of stucco look great by themselves in pool design. Adding landscape boulders, some great looking plants and tumbling water… and you have a destination getaway just waiting for you to enjoy it.

While it wouldn’t look at all natural to create a high waterfall on level ground, some height and length of run can accomplish great sound and a realistic setting. This particular pool landscaping design has great contrast between the light color of the pool coping and spa, the pavers pool deck and patio, and the echo of the paver tone in the rocks that form this Arizona waterfall .

Here the swimming pool water is recirculated through the falls and the rocks seem to spill right into the water, as they would in nature. While there is length to the this pool water feature, it doesn’t take up important patio space, because it is worked into the niche behind the spa and curves around to the pool’s edge. Basically, this waterfall design connects a short, rock strewn stream to the falls. The entire length is also running on an incline that disappears into the pool at water level.

The most economical method of adding Arizona waterfalls to your Phoenix, Glendale or Scottsdale area yard is by having it installed to work in conjunction with your pool water. Swimming pool fountains naturally make use of this same water source when adding them to pool landscaping. When designed well, these backyard living water features offer both sound and sight beauty.

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