A lot goes into creating a landscape plan, and it helps to have some expert help. Local landscape architect George Radnovich, FASLA, created this design for those opting for a low maintenance yard. You can follow his design right down to each individual plant or customize it to fit your own yard. This is the fourth landscape plan we’ve featured in 505Outside, and we’ll be sharing one more plan in the next issue.
While there is no such thing as a totally maintenance-free landscape, this Loungescape comes as close as possible in Albuquerque. The key to this approach is to mimic the natural environment with the look and feel of New Mexico grasslands and piñon-juniper forests.
Instead of a traditional lawn, native grasses offer a more natural look, accented by a soaptree yucca and desert willows for color and dappled shade. Water-thrifty cacti are used for interest, color and a contrast of textures. Finely crushed gravel (aka crusher fines) is used as a walking path to the rear of the house.
For ease of maintenance, there is a concrete formal edge between the walking path and the foundation plantings next to the house. Rainwater is harvested from the roof and other impermeable surfaces, then directed to plants via canales, weep holes and a short retaining wall. Short evergreen trees such as mountain mahogany provide year-long interest. Three-leaf sumac was added for fall color, cherry sage for summer color and sand sage and fringed sage for winter foliage. Big sage was purposely placed along the eastern side of the house to lessen the exposure to the harsh, hot western sun, which would make the plants more water-thirsty. Lastly, spots of color are added throughout the landscape for interest.
A lot goes into creating a landscape plan, and it helps to have some expert help. Landscape architects specialize in designing outdoor spaces. Today, we’re sharing a plan particularly suited to our climate by New Mexico landscape designer David Cristiani. You can follow this design right down to each individual plant or customize it to fit your own yard. We’ll be sharing two more landscape plans in future issues of 505Outside.
Many plants from higher elevations or moister areas struggle when subjected to the long, torrid summers common in Albuquerque. The plants in this landscape are intended to thrive on heat, limited irrigation and minimal care — while exploding the popular myth that cacti and succulents look stark and don’t belong near our homes.
The Hotscape design embraces the environmental and visual qualities of Albuquerque’s high Southwestern desert location. Two areas of compacted crusher fines serve as a combined pathway, informal sitting area and a channel to harvest water from the occasional storm. A low berm provides visual interest, keeping the plants that cannot tolerate much extra moisture dry.
Modeled after the strikingly attractive and often evergreen plant communities native to the edges of Albuquerque, this design provides a great deal of visual interest throughout the year. The open, irregular canopies of Chinese pistache and screwbean mesquite provide filtered shade in summer and warming sunshine in the winter — an effect suggesting a desert arroyo. Fourwing saltbush screens the view to the street, and the dark, compact turpentine bush adds a pleasant fragrance with yellow fall flowers. The last, crucial ingredient to this design is the generous use of native desert accent plants, including the bold, blue-green forms of sotol, desert prickly pear and banana yucca. These local signature plants are accented further with small masses of seasonal color from low perennials and groundcovers, attracting both hummingbirds and passing neighbors!
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Creating a landscape plan is a complicated endeavor. Luckily for home gardeners, landscape architects specialize in designing outdoor spaces. Today, we’re sharing a unique plan by New Mexico landscape designer David Cristiani to give you some inspiration and ideas for designing your own yard. We’ll be sharing three more landscape plans in future issues of 505Outside.
Green spaces and water conservation need not conflict, nor does an oasis require the use of high-water-use and high-maintenance turf grass at the exclusion of native plants and succulents. This typical front yard area contains mostly evergreen plantings and an inviting entry experience to welcome guest and owner alike, no matter the season. A low wall and climbing evergreen vines combine to provide additional screening and intimacy for sitting out on the front porch and also extend the architecture into the plantings. While designed for a smaller front area, the plantings can be increased in scale and number to fill a larger property.
The sculptural and leafy forms of an evergreen escarpment live oak grouping provide a canopy to the plantings below, which offer seasonal interest using native and adapted species. Native bear grass provides a soft yet bold texture, as do the spiky flower stalks of red hesperaloe, or red yucca. The loose forms of colorful desert globemallow provide masses of pink-toned flowers throughout much of the growing season. Germander and trailing rosemary generously fill in the ground surfaces with dark green color, fragrance and seasonal flowers. Durable materials prevail, while the plant spacing provides both screening from adjacent neighbors and ample room to access both sides of the home.
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A lot goes into designing a landscape; hence, there’s an entire profession called landscape architecture devoted to designing outdoor spaces. We won’t be able to make you a landscape architect today, but we’re sharing a unique landscape plan designed by New Mexico landscape designer Judith Phillips to get you inspired with ideas for designing your own yard. We’ll be sharing five more landscape plans in future issues of 505Outside.
Plant for wildlife and you will host a never-ending garden party. Wildscapes should have tiers of canopy to provide shelter and food for a wide variety of wildlife, including birds, hummingbirds, bees and butterflies. Tall trees provide shade and shelter. Dense thickets of middle-height shrubs provide spaces for roosting and nesting and also give the landscape a sense of enclosure. Open areas with low-growing groundcovers provide areas for nesting and foraging, and the colorful flowers and berries appeal to people as well as winged visitors. A mix of evergreen plants for cover, brilliant flowers for nectar and pollen, and fruits and seeds ripening through the seasons will keep your wildlife friends fat and happy. In this wildscape, the gayfeather, dwarf goldenrod, leadplant, yarrow, rue, grasses and dwarf butterfly bush are lures for butterflies. Hummingbirds are drawn to plants with nectar-rich tubular flowers, such as desert willow, penstemons, cherry sage, coral honeysuckle and red yucca. Local songbirds and quail will be attracted by New Mexico olive, sumacs, creosote bush, desert mule’s ear, coneflowers, shadscale, gayfeather and algerita.
Designed by Judith Phillips, author of Plants for Natural Gardens
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A lot goes into designing a landscape, hence there’s an entire profession called landscape architecture devoted to designing outdoor spaces. We won’t be able to make you a landscape architect today, but we’re sharing a unique landscape plan designed by landscape architects to get you inspired with ideas for designing your own yard. We’ll be sharing five more landscape plans in future issues of the 505Outside.
This Coolscape Landscape Plan is designed to provide an attractive streetside landscape as well as a comfortable, private area that is usable even in the winter. The privacy is achieved with a low wall (which should match or complement the house) and a grove of small trees, such as New Mexico olives or chaste trees. The placement of the trees effectively adds to the privacy and provides a backdrop along the edge of the brick patio. All the trees create lots of shade, adding to the coolness of the yard.
The courtyard patio was placed to provide some sun even on an east exposure. Beneath the trees, a groundcover of ornamental oregano grows in the sunnier spots and Kinnikinnick, in those most shady. For the best use of rainwater, the brick patio should be slanted to drain away from the house and into the surrounding planting beds. The edge of the patio on the north side of the yard ends in a bed of fine crushed gravel to create a path to the rear yard. Plants that do best on the cold north exposure of homes, such as Karl Forester ornamental grass and Indian hawthorn, are used to cope with the lack of sun, which in turn makes them more drought tolerant. Likewise, Arizona rosewood is used along the south exposure to capture as much warmth and sun as possible. Lastly, an ornamental clump buffalo grass in combination with a smaller specimen of the red yucca called Brake Light is planted along the front easternmost portion of the yard where it will be the most drought tolerant.
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Author: George Radnovich, FASLA Owner of Sites Southwest orchestrates an elegant, simple mixture of ornamental plants and features for north-facing xeriscapes. Have a question about the article? AskAnExpert@abcwua.org
It’s been a rough few months in the 505. We’re having a challenging gardening season, to say the least. Dry. Hot. Intense. The unraveling of our climate has been on full display.
Whether you’re choosing more adaptive plants and creating habitat or beginning your gardening journey, no doubt you’ve lost plants this summer — or worried about it. I’ve been calling it the Summer of Feeling Like a Not So Great Gardener.
Just to put this in perspective, I’ve been gardening for over 30 years and I’ve struggled and learned a lot this summer. Learning to steward land in a way that’s in alignment with our changing climate is not easy. But it’s crucial.
In the midst of these challenges, you might be experiencing more emotions than you’re used to — anxiety, for example? Frustration, perhaps. Confusion about where to start. Sadness at all the loss and devastation. Feeling alone. Lack of confidence. Overwhelm. Anger. Dread.
So, what’s a gardener to do? It’s easy to think our emotions are totally separate from the scorching heat. We’re used to compartmentalizing — experiencing emotions and deep spiritual questions in one part of our life and tackling complex external issues, like choosing climate-ready trees to plant, in another part of our life. No matter how well we’re dealing with these emotions, they’re bound to creep into our external gardening. What if, instead of shutting ourselves down in order to accomplish the daunting task of adapting our urban forest to the changes before us, we actually bring our emotional and spiritual selves into the garden? This is precisely the zone where deep and meaningful climate resilience awaits us — in the cultivation of our Home Gardens with our Inner Gardens. We grow an ability to weather storms, to adapt as things unravel — in both our inner and outer landscapes.
For example, let’s look at overwhelm, which is so common these days and to which we gardeners are not immune. We might be asking, “Am I doing enough? Am I making the right changes and adaptations? Which do I do first — spread mulch or create ways to passively harvest the rain?” We might be worrying about how much water we’re using or that we’re not using enough. There are so many decisions to make, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
Here’s what I recommend for dealing with overwhelm:
Notice: Take a deep breath and recognize, “Ahh, this is overwhelm. That’s all it is. It’s happening in my inner garden, inside my heart.” That’s the first step. Pause. Notice it. Take a breath with it. The inner garden is what is happening in our consciousness — which primarily lives at the level of our heart (not our brain). There’s a lot of fertile ground to work with in there.
Just be: Next, take 15 minutes and just go outside and sit in the garden. Find a place to just be. Don’t plan or make any lists, just sit and breathe. Don’t skip this step, it’s the most important one. Listen to the sounds, feel the soil, notice the smells. What insights come through?
Create: Then, find a special place in the garden and create something to help remind you of what insights came up. It can be very simple, just something that speaks to you — a gathering of stones, an arrangement of leaves, a circle of flower petals. When we take the time to tend what’s growing within our inner garden, we have more inner space to effectively handle what’s happening in our outer garden. This is resilience.
Reconnect: The next time you’re doing a garden task — like weeding — briefly pause and reconnect with your inner garden in your heart. Set a simple intention to help shift the pattern of overwhelm, such as “This garden belongs to all who live here, human and non-human. May my activities today bring benefit to all the beings here.” And then carry on weeding, but with this intention.
An intention like this can shift our state of mind away from overwhelm and into a place of gratitude and caring. From this place, we’ll make better gardening decisions. We might notice that the birds need more water and fill an old Frisbee with water and put a rock in it. We might start giving ourselves the space to be imperfect in our gardening. We might begin to see ourselves more as a caretaker of the space and less as the “owner” — ”our” garden becomes “the” garden.
The inner garden and the home garden have a profound and interdependent relationship. As we tend both of them together, we cultivate a deeper resilience in both gardens. This adaptation and flexibility then ripple from our own hearts out into the world, so in need of our tending and care.
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