Southwest Landscaping Ideas

For those who are new to the southwest United States, the excruciating summer heat in the southwest may make it seem impossible to consider any type of home landscaping.

When many northerners or easterners first move to the southwest, they try planting flowers and plants usually found in a garden from the climate zones of the northern United States only to frown when they are all dead by the beginning of June.

With the difference in heat and humidity and the likelihood of drought conditions by mid to late summer, it isn’t impossible to create bountiful landscaping, but the type of landscaping design needs to be carefully considered in order to create beautiful southwest landscaping.

Southwest Landscaping

A new style of southwest landscaping, called xeriscaping is becoming extremely popular in the southwest. Xeriscaping is simply the use of plants and flowers native to the southwest landscaping or other dry heat areas that only need small amounts of water.

This also means the use of low-level pollen plants to get rid of allergy issues that may be created in the heat of the summer months.

Since xeriscaping focuses on using native plants, there will inevitably be less flowering plants and may at first take away from the notion of what traditional natural landscaping should be for many people.

For many southwest landscaping experts, this means getting rid of grass altogether. For the most part, grass does not grow well in the southwestern United States, and trying to maintain grass can be expensive and can waste excessive amounts of precious water sources.

For southwest landscaping projects where the grass will be removed altogether, it is usually replaced with gravel landscaping, rock landscaping, or stone landscapes, or perhaps, a mixture of all three.

It is possible for native plants such as cacti, ornamental grasses, yucca, succulent plants, hibiscus or a variety of other flowering plants to be added to the soil before landscaping gravel begins.

This will help add to the beauty of the southwest landscaping without too much maintenance by the homeowners.

For other southwest landscaping experts, this can simply mean grouping together garden plants and garden flowers that have similar water requirements to reduce the amount of water waste that goes on.

This way a homeowner may only need to water one area of the lawn each day instead of watering the entire lawn and garden every single day.

Since there are a variety of different succulent plants, or extremely dry tolerant plants, some can go as much as a month in between waterings and will actually be harmed if they are watered more often. This makes them wonderful choices in southwest landscaping designs.

Some of the most popular succulent plants include aloe vera, haworthia correcta, and a variety of different species from the Crassula family, such as Crasulla capitella, crasulla portulacea, and Crasulla tetragona.

Many in the crassula family have beautiful green leaves and can be considered flowering plants for many parts of the year.

These succulents only need to be watered once a month and are a great addition to southwest landscaping.

Another choice to add beauty to southwest landscaping without the worry of dying plants is ornamental grasses.

These grasses add a simple elegance to any garden design and are extremely practical for arid, dry climates. Keep in mind that there are specific ornamental grasses that will do better in southwest landscaping.

You may want to consider using Mexican feather grass, blue oat grass, yellow pampas grass, or purple fountain grass. These choices grow beautifully in any garden bed or alongside a walkway design.