Dec

6

Southwest Xeriscaping and Desert Landscape Ideas

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The finishing touch to every new home project, house remodel or commercial building is Landscaping.  It’s what makes the building, the exterior, and the overall project beautiful.  Landscaping also should be designed and installed to accent the architectural feel of the building or home.  Landscape Designers and Landscape Architects often provide excellent ideas in residential and small commercial landscaping – such as landscape design, exterior environments, backyards, and residential landscapes.  At the same time, landscape designers should be conscientious of upfront costs, maintenance costs, and long term upkeep. 

My background stems from many years in the Southwest, where upfront costs were negligible, and the yearly operating costs (i.e. water bills, landscape maintenance, etc.) were not a concern.  Hence came the important aspect of water-wise, sustainable xeriscaping for the desert climates.  Water is not available in the southwest areas, so Xeriscaping is very popular for homeowners and landscape companies.  Many new residences are not allowed to have turf, and the local officials entice by offering cash rebates for converting turf areas to xeriscaping.  Xeriscaping has been a very popular method of landscaping, and landscape designers have adapted this style for many of their clients.

Providing many different design styles and ideas is the main goal of our Phoenix landscape contractor.  From Sonoran desert landscapes & Phoenix Landscaping, which include many assortments of Arizona cacti, saguaros, and agaves to Southwestern Xeriscapes that usually include many mid-level desert environments that can’t quite tolerate the hot Arizona summers.  Desert landscaping & Xeriscaping often include many of these following types of plant species:

  1. Traditional Color Plants- These xeriscaping plants are standard, normal landscaping plants that require normal water usage.  Some of these species are known to attract hummingbirds, bloom continuously for months, and have lots of flowers.  Some common species may include: Arizona columbine, Artemisias, asters, columbines, or coreopsis.
  2. Arizona Desert Plants- Many of the species above would not sustain an Phoenix summer, which is the reason for a second list of Arizona xeriscaping plants.  Red Bird of Paradise, Arizona Yellow Bells, Orange Jubilee, Texas Sage, Baja Fairy Duster are all popular favorites among the Phoenix landscape contractors.  Other common plants you may see in hot desert climates may be Mexican honeysuckle, creosote bush, bursage, chuparosa, ruellia, bougainvillea, or cassias.
  3. Xeriscape Grasses- Desert Landscaping designers use grasses for accents or to fill in large areas.Growing over 7′ tall, Pampas grass can provide a serious visual feature or wind block in any desert landscape.  Muhly grass is an excellent choice for accents too.  Some ornamental grasses such as fescue, blue grama, and others can actually fill in large areas and act as a ground cover.
  4. Agaves- There are many unique species of agaves, that range from the tiny agave parryi to the huge 6′ tall agave americana.  Because of slow growth & little upkeep, the Agave is a great solution for xeriscaping in the southwest.
  5. Cacti-  Arizona xeriscaping designers have the great selection of many species of cacti – but most commonly, the Saguaro cactus (native to Arizona).  Saguaros make the perfect statement for any desert sustainable landscape because of it’s ability to look great with NO water usage.  Cacti in desert landscaping will drastically reduce the need for water consumption, and some unique cacti considerations are:  Fish Hook, Golden Barrel, Twisted Cereus and Cholla.
  6. Desert Trees- Desert trees also require less water and less maintenance.  Properly placed trees and large shrubs can provide natural shade for some plants, as well as provide some natural wind break.  Some common xeriscaping trees include the Desert Willow, African sumac, chitalpa, and elm tree.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN YOUR LANDSCAPING PROJECT:

  • Review the regional requirements for xeriscaping species, plant locations and restricted species.  Check your local rules and regulations for high water use plants like turf – it may not be allowed.
  • Find out which landscaping & xeriscaping plants that are good for your specific location.  Some plants will do poorly if not planted in the proper region.
  • Research annual rainfall for your location and this can help you find plants and setup & plan for a adequate sprinkler system.
  • By using groups of plants, you can create mounds of different sizes & colors.  When using small groups of low plants, use large groups of trees and shrubs as accents.
  • By early morning watering, one can bypass excessive evaporation.
  • Practice great irrigation methods – watering daily is not required, you should train your xeriscaping to use less water.
  • Cut wilted flowers & foliage to improve blooms & blooming lengths.
  • If you have sod or turf in your xeriscape, then make sure you irrigate properly and reduce runoff.
  • The contracting of a Phoenix landscape designer is a great investment when considering the best of SW landscaping & Xeriscaping.

 

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Nov

13

Landscape Gardening Contractors Are All Over – Discover How to Select the Right One

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It is vitally important that you do your best to choose the perfect landscaping contractor to work on your yard or project. You don’t want to just do a simple search through your Yellow Pages, because any landscaping contractor can list there and you don’t know how good they are. When paying out the money for a job you need your landscaper to be very good.

It’s fine to search through the Yellow Pages, but you need to make sure that you talk to the company and see their work before you hire them on. You may be able to get them to actually take you to some of their previous projects, this is the best way to see what they can do for your yard. Pictures or another really good way of seeing accomplished work. A really good idea is to ask to see a portfolio of their completed work. These are some really good option is to help you to make a decision on choosing the right landscaping contractor.

The landscaping contractor is going to be the one to help you come up with the design of your entire yard and possibly all the work in your front and back yards as well.You want your landscaping contractor to be creative and full to brimming with all kinds of fantastic ideas. Make sure to schedule a meeting with the landscaping contractor before you hire them on so they can give you some ideas of what they have in mind. He or she, or the whole team should come over and go over your yard with you. With this many minds collaborating together you should be able to come up with some incredible ideas to make your yard look fantastic.

Landscaping contractors and full of ideas to help you to do this. They can use slopes and hills or they can use color and texture. Your landscaping contractor, is going to have lots of his own ideas that will make your lawn and yard stand out, but you need to make sure that his ideas fit into what you would like to see in your own landscape. You do not want to get stuck with a yard that looks like crap do you? With that in mind you can understand the importance of verifying the caliber of work that your chosen contractor performs.

Don’t ever hurry yourself when you’re selecting a contractor to do your landscaping, as you might end up with something that you don’t really want. It’s your money and your time it’s on the line for this project, and you’re the one that has to live with it, so make sure that you do everything right and don’t make any quick judgments.

 

Read more backyard ideas

Jul

4

Using Perennials, Such As The Simple Yarrow, in Landscape Gardening

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A surprising number of people now totally appreciate that a gorgeous well maintained garden can add an incredibly large amount of extra monetary value to their home. Further to this, a well designed yard can greatly add to the amount of useable space for yourself and your family. For these reasons, and a few more besides, landscape gardening has, over time, increased to become an extremely popular hobby. High on the list for most gardeners is a gorgeous yearly display of colorful and diverse blooms.

While many garden designers opt to add color by using annuals, the remainder decide that using  perennial garden fowers is the better solution.  Annual flowers are those flowers which {grow, flower and die|germinate, develop, bloom and die} in only the one year whereas perennial plants will continue to flower year after year. Obviously there are plus points and minus points for both annuals and perennial garden plants and landscaping is all about choosing the the most suitable blend of the two.

A large number of people have heart warming memories of long gone days spent in a grandfather’s garden enjoying the gorgeous aromas of many old fashioned popular perennial garden fowers. Unfortunately it can be rather problematic for even the most keen gardener (including some experienced professionals) to emulate gardens of the past because many of the varieties (of species) are no longer available. You will be happy to hear that many of the older cultivars have been superseded by strains which are more able to withstand disease, so you can often find suitable replacements which have hardly any (other) difference to the old fashioned plant.

Traditional Perennial Plants

One of the most popular perennial plants used in garden landscaping today is the Achillea which first appeared in American gardens in colonial days when it was brought over from Europe. Achillea is a very old fashioned plant used since the times of the Greek hero Achilles (from whom the plant gains it’s name) who used it to treat his soldiers. Achillea can halt bleeding and works amazingly well at healing wounds.

Achillea ptarmica

Achillea ptarmica has really pretty flat groups of small blooms that look rather like daisies. Achillea  come with flower heads in a variety of colors ranging from various shades of pinks, yellows and whites. Achillea millefolium are considered by most gardeners to be considerably easy perennial flowers to grow. They are so simple to propagate because they are considerably invasive plants which can be seen growing on the poorest of soil. If you want to witness success with Achillea millefolium you only need to avoid cultivating in boggy or poorly drained soil. The plants are fantastic at withstanding drought conditions. Achillea ptarmica and Achillea millefolium are two of the most often chosen varieties but there are many others available.

For all types of gardening provisions including sprinklers and watering equipment, hedge and string trimmers, lawnmowers and more visit http://store.landscapinginfo4u.com/

May

15

About Backyard Landscaping Ideas

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It is not always the easiest task to come up with an original and bright new landscaping idea and in fact, many people fail to come up with anything but the most mundane ideas. One can gain ideas from internet and also some help can give him fruitful landscaping concepts.

Use Online Resources

There are numerous online resources that when tapped will provide you with plenty of food for thought in regard to some bright and exciting landscaping ideas. You can check out the number of websites which contain full of information about landscaping and help you in making the most original and unique backyard or front yard.

You will of course be required to set your mind to work and to give consideration to different aspects of landscaping before you can come up with a suitable landscaping idea. To modify the spaces around your home it is necessary to walk through your property. It is important to inspect the drainage and have knowledge about the gradients and other levels around your property site.

With this technique it becomes easier to identify a good landscaping ideas that will address the various important issues that you have just observed. There is in fact nothing quite as disheartening as coming up with a landscaping idea only to find that it cannot be completed because you failed to learn about some important facet or the other that was related to your property. Before putting your idea of landscaping into process it is essential that you exhaustively and thoroughly go around your property and find out everything that there is to know about your property to assure complete satisfaction.

You should also be aware of the fundamentals to proper landscaping and so you need to read a few books on the subject which in fact should also help provide you with inspiration to come up with some better landscaping ideas. It is also necessary to consider how best to integrate landscaping for your front and back yards so that you can create a more uniform look and so your landscaping ideas should be such that they promote harmony and which should not require that you will need to overspend.

Backyard landscaping ideas should not be neglected because it help you in creating the ideal backyard and a better looking home. Things such as curb appeal need to be addressed as it can help create a more perfect home and backyard.