All good things start with a solid plan. Developing a landscape plan saves you not only time and money but also makes it more likely you’ll end up with a beautiful yard. A few generous local landscape architects donated their time and put together some design templates for a typical front yard for our 505Outside subscribers. This month, we’re sharing a mountain-inspired landscape.
The example landscape template below is for a north or east facing yard and creates the effect of a Rocky Mountain forest while using heat and drought tolerant plants that grow well in town. Take a look and get inspired to recreate this in your own yard.
It might be too early to start planting your 2025 garden but it’s never to early to start planning your yard. We’ve grabbed some of our favorite plants for you to test out in 2025. Take a look below.
This fast-growing shade tree should not be confused with the notoriously invasive Siberian elm. Lacebark elm is a medium sized tree with a round to oval crown and interesting lacy bark in tan, grey and cinnamon colors. It is an excellent drought tolerant species for use in windbreaks. It can grow as much as 3 feet a year. It is adaptable to most soil conditions.
Type: Deciduous
Exposure: Full sun
Water Use: Medium
Mature Size: 40’ x 40’
Mock orange, Philadelphus lewisii Cheyenne:
This deciduous native shrub sports white blooms from spring to summer. A mass of flowers emits a delightful fragrance reminiscent of orange blossoms with a hint of pineapple. It’s a great habitat and pollinator shrub that works well in perennial beds, providing interest and privacy if needed.
Type: Deciduous
Exposure: Sun/shade
Water Use: Medium
Mature Size: 10’ x 10’
Woolly butterfly bush, Buddleja marrubiifolia:
This rounded, grey green evergreen shrub provides year-round interest. Orange flowers are prevalent year-round with their showiest times in the spring and summer. Woolly butterfly bush is native from southwest Texas into New Mexico, where it can be found in canyons, arroyos and on slopes at elevations from 1,800 to 3,800 feet. It’s heat tolerant and likes well drained soils.
This is one of the best, most durable species in the Agastache family. It has nectar-rich orange flowers that attract hummingbirds for many months. The plant has a licorice minty scent. It’s also low water use and very drought resistant.
Type: Deciduous
Exposure: Full sun
Water Use: Low
Mature Size: 2’ x 2’
Sandpaper verbena, Verbena rigida:
This flowering plant grows well in extreme heat. It has rough, dark green leaves that feel like sandpaper and vivid purple flowers in the spring and summer. If this plant starts to look ragged, cut it back to the ground and fresh growth will sprout from underground stems. Even in very cold winters, this plant bounces back from these rhizomes. It is nice mixed with the yellows of prairie zinnia or Angelita daisy.
The jujube is just one of those trees that is extra! Extra fruitful, extra nutritious, extra hardy, extra beautiful. This medium sized tree comes in 400 varieties, many of which are being cultivated and taking root in Albuquerque.
The jujube tree, often called Chinese date, has been cultivated for thousands of years around the world, in Albuquerque for nearly 60 years and in the panhandle of Texas since 1875. Its small abundant fruits are high in fiber, vitamin C, potassium, antioxidants and phenolic compounds and have been used to support nervous system, cardiac and digestive health. Medicinally, it is used as a tonic sweetener in many supportive Chinese herbal remedies.
The fruit can be eaten raw, dried or cooked. Fresh from the tree, when they’re mature and a luscious mahogany brown, they have a crunchy refreshing taste, like a cross between an apple and a date. As they dry, they become sweeter and chewy. Dried, they are delicious in oatmeal, cookies, trail mix or anywhere you would use dried fruit. They make an excellent chai — just boil dried pieces with other ingredients, letting the earthy sweet flavor complement ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, pepper and other traditional chai ingredients. You also can find recipes from Korea, China, Vietnam, India, Italy and many Persian cultures that incorporate the jujube for both sweet and savory dishes.
The fruit is very easy to dry and, in fact, many that you miss harvesting will dry right on the tree. However, we do recommend bringing them inside to dry and cutting the pits out before drying so they are easier to eat and enjoy down the road. If you have a dehydrator, that will speed the process, but they will also dry if you place them on cookie sheets in a spare room, on top of a shed in the sun or even in a car and let our New Mexico dry air work its magic. Jujubes don’t bruise and spoil quickly like other stone fruits, so windfalls and bird-pecked fruits don’t make a mess and are still usable.
We love edible landscapes, so we’re naturally drawn to these fabulous trees. But even if you aren’t looking for food, the jujube is a wonderfully hardy tree for Albuquerque. This tough specimen hails from the buckthorn family, Rhamnaceae, and will grow in USDA hardiness zones 6-11, which is an extraordinary range for any tree! At the moment, Albuquerque is generally zone 7, but as we face climate disruption, landscapers and planners are encouraging planting with an eye to zone 8 or 9 so our shade and habitat trees can withstand increasing heat. Jujubes are deeply rooted and can tolerate drought and saline and alkaline soils. Once established they can survive with small amounts of water, though a strategic watering schedule will increase your yield. Because they’re so drought tolerant, we don’t recommend planting a veggie garden under them or they’ll drink up all the water intended for your zucchini. They do well in full sun or light shade. They can handle sustained days and weeks of 100 degree plus heat, 23 below zero in winter and anything in between. They must have a frost to produce fruit, which isn’t a problem here. Jujubes do sucker quite a bit from their roots, and this rootstock, if allowed to sprout, produces very small, almost inedible fruits that are mostly pit. So, we do suggest being vigilant in cutting down the root sprouts as they appear.
Jujubes make a beautiful addition to any landscape. They have an elegant zig zag branch growth pattern and bright green, shiny oval leaves that can even withstand severe hail. They can be trained to a traditional tree structure or allowed to be a little wild and shrubby. They provide cool shade and habitat for birds, pollinators and other wildlife. Speaking of wildlife, one of us has a friend whose small dog Kipper grabs himself a couple from the ground during ripening season, carrying them happily to his bed to snack on … he’s not wildlife, but that little dog seems to love a jujube even above his biscuit treats. These trees benefit from cross pollination so plant yourself two of these beauties!
Planting trees not only gives you the riches of your tree, but it is also a love letter to the future. As gardeners who are tending land and each other in the midst of climate chaos, we have the opportunity to cultivate healing, repair and hope. With every tree we plant, we can try to leave our small patch of earth a little better than how we found it — cooled with shade, brightened with birdsong and providing nutritious food via a resilient, prized and giving tree. The next time you’re sitting in your garden, allow yourself to dream of a future where someone is harvesting jujubes and appreciating the ancestors who cultivated and left these sweet trees for them.
Learn more about specific types of gardening here:
Author: Corva Rose is an arborist and founder of Tree School, and can be reached through treeschoolNM.com, Jennifer Gardner has been gardening in Albuquerque for 30 years, with an emphasis on residential scale food planting. Have a question about the article? AskAnExpert@abcwua.org
Passive rainwater harvesting is a great way to optimize your landscape while minimizing water use. So you may ask, “What are active and passive rainwater harvesting?”
Active rainwater harvesting involves collecting rainwater runoff from roofs and other impermeable surfaces into containers such as rain barrels or cisterns for later use. These containers can vary from small (50 gallons or less) to very large (thousands of gallons). The saved water can be distributed with a hose or drip system for use in the garden.
Passive rainwater harvesting channels water from roofs, patios or driveways directly into the landscape via swales (channels) into basins (depressions in the landscape) or into French drains where the water will be stored in the soil for use by the plants. For every 1,000 square feet of hard surface, 1 inch of rain will produce about 600 gallons of water, so it’s easy to see how active systems will produce overflow and why it’s always recommended to send that overflow into a passive rainwater harvesting system. This will lessen the amount of potable water you will need for your landscape while improving plant health.
So, what plants should you choose for your passive rainwater harvesting garden? First you need to realize there will be three different zones with different amounts of water available to the plants.
1. The High Ground Zone is the area around the outside perimeter of your basin or swale where there will be limited amounts of extra water available to the plants. This will be your most xeric (low water use) zone. Plants for this area could include:
Desert willow (Chilopsis linearis)
Grasses such as sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) or sand dropseed (Sporobolus crytandrus)
Desert four o’clock (Mirabilis multiflora) or blackfoot daisy (Melampodium leucanthum)
Sideoats Grama
2. The Transition Zone is partway up the sides of the swale or basin. Plants growing here will get some extra moisture but will not be at the low points of the basin or swale.
Escarpment live oak (Quercus fusiformus)
Grasses such as blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) or little bluestem (Schizachryium scoparium)
Salvias such as autumn sage (Salvia greggii), Mexican blue sage (Salvia chamaedryoides) or Mexican red sage (Salvia darcyii), or dwarf goldenrod (Solidago sp.)
Escarpment Live OakLittle BluestemSalvia darcyii
3. The Inundation Zone will be the wettest area during large rain events. Only plants that can tolerate periods of standing water will work here. The basins can be enhanced with soil sponges to increase storage capacity and soil quality.
Netleaf hackberry (Celtis reticulata)
New Mexico olive (Forestiera neomexicana) or fernbush (Chamebatiaria milefolium)
Grasses such as giant sacaton (Sporobolus wrightii) or Indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans)
Horsetail milkweed (Asclepius) or creeping germander (Teucrium chaemadrys)
Always make sure the sun or shade exposure needs of the plant match your site and remember that you will need to water these plants at least until established.
The word Mediterranean may bring to mind rows of lavender in southern France, an Italian villa or maybe a Spanish courtyard or Greek olive orchard. These areas around the Mediterranean Sea all share unique plants and garden design methods that are part of their allure in movies, marketing and as tourist destinations. Luckily for residents of the Albuquerque area, the mediterranean climate is similar enough to that of our high desert home that many mediterranean plants can be successfully grown here. (Note: There are other coastal areas of the world that are climatically so similar to the area around the Mediterranean Sea that they are also known as having mediterranean climates. These areas include parts of South Africa, Australia, Chile and California. A capital “M” is used for the Mediterranean place in the world, while a lowercase “m” refers to the climate that includes all five regions.)
Albuquerque has hot and increasingly dry summers, just like the Mediterranean. This means that plants from both places do best with deep watering to reach their deep, drought-adapted roots and a good layer of organic mulch to keep moisture in the soil. Most mediterranean plants prefer full sun, although a few can tolerate some shade. Mediterranean places tend to have soils with good drainage, so make sure to keep mediterranean plants away from any areas with clay or caliche.
There are, however, a few very important differences between Albuquerque and mediterranean climates. The most significant of these differences is temperature: As coastal areas, mediterranean climates don’t get very cold. It is rare to have snow or anything other than a light freeze. Many mediterranean plants are not cold hardy enough to grow in the high desert. Others may require a protected area in a courtyard or along a south-facing wall for extra warmth. The mediterranean plants that are more cold hardy and generally do well here can still be killed by the combination of freezing temperatures and wet soil. So, as temperatures drop in the fall, stop watering your mediterranean plants and don’t start again until the chance of frost has passed in spring.
While selecting mediterranean plants for your landscape, you can also incorporate a few simple Mediterranean garden design strategies. The starting point for any Mediterranean garden is evergreen trees and shrubs. Think olive trees, Italian cypress and statuesque pines. However, since olive trees are not cold hardy in Albuquerque, instead try an escarpment live oak. Their glossy dark green leaves are a great substitute for an olive, and they are an important species for pollinators. Although Italian cypress can grow in Albuquerque (and was planted profusely in the 1970s), it is not particularly well-adapted here. A better choice is an upright juniper cultivar, such as Keteleeri. And while a Mediterranean stone pine or Aleppo pine would do well in a protected courtyard, Afghan pine is another option with better cold hardiness. Arizona rosewood, turpentine bush and manzanita hybrids are a few evergreen shrubs that will give your landscape a Mediterranean flavor.
Next, include some plants with light silvery-blue leaves to contrast with the evergreens suggested above. Silvery-blue foliage is a plant adaptation to intense solar radiation, so many mediterranean and locally native plants share this quality. Mediterranean natives with this striking color include lavender, gopher spurge and grey lavender cotton (which actually has yellow flowers), while silver-leafed native plants include sand sage, germander sage and chamisa. There are also many locally native plants with silvery leaves that provide contrasting shape as well as color: Agaves, desert spoon, blue Nolina and yuccas all can accent your landscape beautifully. Of course, these locally native plants will be easier to grow and will provide better pollinator habitat than mediterranean imports.
Edible plants and herbs have always been another important part of Mediterranean gardens. Rosemary, lavender, oregano, thyme, chives and culinary sage all hail from the Mediterranean and do well in Albuquerque. Mediterranean fruit trees, such as fig, pomegranate and apricot can flourish but do require a little extra water. This water need can be met by roof runoff if you plant them in a well-drained rainwater harvesting basin or swale. Fruits and herbs all provide flowers in addition to food. However, if you’re looking for an extra splash of color, red hot poker, moonshine yarrow and Bowle’s mauve are all mediterranean options.
Whatever mediterranean plants you choose, just remember to keep their roots dry when it’s cold out, make sure the soil drains well and give them a nice layer of wood mulch. They will repay you with a beautiful and low water use landscape for years to come.
Mediterranean plant options
Shade tree: Japanese pagoda
Evergreen trees: Keteleeri juniper, escarpment live oak
Small flowering trees: Vitex, crape myrtle
Large plants (5-8′ tall/wide): Fernbush, blue Nolina, evergreen sumac
Medium plants (3-5′ tall/wide): Rosemary, large agave (americana, ovata, havardiana), lavender, red hot poker, pink muhly grass
In celebration of five years of bringing you 505Outside, we’d like to share our most popular articles from the website. 505Outside is your resource for beautiful, desert friendly landscapes. Desert friendly landscapes are resilient, sustainable, enjoyable and inspiring.
The articles below are the ones our community keeps coming back to year after year, month after month.
The Dirt on Albuquerque Weeds There are two times a year in the greater Albuquerque area when weeds can get out of hand. This happens typically in early spring after a wet winter and after a monsoon season in late summer. The first thing to do is to identify the plant and decide whether it is actually a weed. This article reviews the most common weeds in town.
Basics about Turf Grasses in New Mexico Many homeowners would like a turf grass lawn, but might feel irresponsible watering a lawn in the arid Southwest. The key to choosing a turf grass is to determine the one most suited to the specific needs of your landscape. This article discusses four different grass types.
Use Drip Irrigation for Trees and Shrubs Drip irrigation is the recommended method of delivering water to shrubs, trees and all other plants that are not considered turf grasses. This article discusses the rules of thumb for irrigating trees and shrubs.
Basics of Fruit Tree Pruning All trees require some amount of pruning, especially when young, in order to set up good structure. Fruit trees have a few special considerations related to our intense sunlight, specific pests, and where on the tree the fruit is produced. This article covers the basics.
Three Ways to Water Established Trees. Trees are incredibly valuable and provide a wide array of benefits, from increasing home values to improving mental health. It’s more important now than ever to take care of your existing trees. This article outlines three strateties for watering your mature established trees.
