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Maintaining and Improving Mature Tree Health

Nothing adds the same quality and value to a landscape as a healthy mature tree. The benefits include cooler outdoor spaces, cooler homes, aesthetic appeal, carbon capture, stormwater mitigation and more. There are some key things to think about when it comes to...

Share Your Fruit Tree Harvest to Help Nourish the Community

If you’ve walked around your neighborhood, you’ve probably noticed cherry trees being flocked by birds and buckets of fruit with “Free Organic Apricots” signs. Yes, it’s harvest season in Albuquerque. Have you ever wondered what becomes of all that fruit? Back in...

Why Trees Die

Have you ever heard of forensic arboriculture? Probably not … but it is a thing! Figuring out why trees die can be a challenge as there are often multiple causes, and the clues may be obscured by time or a deep layer of rock mulch. If you look at enough dead and dying...

Amorpha fruticosa, False Indigo

Type: Deciduous Exposure: Sun/Shade Water Use: Medium Mature Size: 10’ x 10’ This beautiful deciduous native shrub fills with unique purple spiked flowers in May and June. This plant is adored by wildlife for its small seedpods, and pollinators love the flowers. It...

Plants for Passive Rainwater Harvesting Gardens

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...

Favorite Mediterranean Plants for Albuquerque Area Landscapes

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...

A Valuable Bosque Understory Shrub: Clove Currants for the Birds, Bees, Butterflies and Foragers

When I mention black currants while talking fruit trees and shrubs with people in Albuquerque, I have come to expect that we are often starting the conversation thinking about different things. Most commonly, people have experienced or heard about the European black...

Carolina jessamine, Glesemium sempervirens

Type: Vines Exposure: Sun/Shade Water Use: Medium Mature Size: Climbing x 10’ wide This vine, also known as Carolina jasmine and the state flower of South Carolina, has shiny green leaves growing on reddish brown climbing stems. In early spring, it puts out fragrant...

Recipe for a High Desert Meadow

Being someone so immersed in planting design in my daily life and someone who is so plainly in love with plants, both wild and cultivated, it can be difficult to narrow my focus and play favorites. I owe this relationship with plants unequivocally to my grandmother...

Efficient Irrigation Rebate Highlights

The Water Authority offers several rebates for irrigation efficiency equipment that might help you reduce water use your yard. You also can contact a Water Authority irrigation specialist at AskAnExpert@abcwua.org for a consultation or efficient irrigation...

Food Forests, a Prehistoric Agroecosystem for your Backyard

Food forests and edible landscapes have been around for a very long time. They are what helped ancient humans survive and thrive. Hunter-gatherers likely did not expend precious energy by wandering aimlessly, hoping to find sustenance, but rather they were able to...

Kaleidoscape: Vivid Blooms Create a Rainbow of Color

Color has a more dramatic impact in a garden if plants with strong flower colors are juxtaposed against one another. In this Kaleidoscape design by Judith Phillips, the blue-purple blooms of dwarf butterfly bush, desert sage, catmint, lavender and vitex are contrasted...

Bosque Restoration Would Benefit Endangered Fish

Water flowing from the Southside Water Reclamation Plant is so clear that a person can see rocks at the bottom of the riverbed, and the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority is trying to make that outflow a better habitat for fish and more accessible...

Loungescape: A Strikingly Beautiful and Low Maintenance Yard

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...

5 in 5: Our 5 most read articles in our 5 years!

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...

Hotscape: An Attractive Native Landscape that Loves Heat and Full Sun

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...

Greenscape Landscape Plan: Evergreen Plants Provide an Ever-Beautiful Front Yard

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...

How to Research and Hire the Right Landscape Contractor for Your Project

Sometimes you need help to create your perfect desert friendly landscape. Many times, this involves hiring a landscape contractor. The Water Utility Authority is committed to helping its customers. Below we share some tips to help you choose a landscape contractor....

Albuquerque Soils

Albuquerque has a variety of soil types. Learning what type of soil is in your yard is a critical step to understanding how water will infiltrate the soil and how long specific plants need to be watered to get the water to the correct depth. VALLEY SOILS Valley soils...

Wildscape Landscape Plan: A Celebration of Wildlife in Your Landscape

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...

Coolscape Landscape Plan: A Cool and Calming Southwestern Oasis

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...

How to Build a Trellis

One of the questions the Water Authority xeriscape inspector gets asked most often is how to inexpensively build a trellis for vines. You can make a DIY trellis from materials that are easy to find at your local hardware store. Off-the-shelf trellises can be...

Cultivating Inner and Outer Climate Resilience

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...

DIY Xeriscape Conversions that Use Wood Chip Mulch

As Albuquerque area homeowners convert their high-water-use turf grass to desert friendly xeriscapes, many are opting for wood chip mulch rather than gravel or other aggregate, which can be hot and allow weeds to pop up. The Water Authority checked in on two...

Xeriscape Conversions on the West Side that Use Wood Chip Mulch

As homes around the Greater Albuquerque Area are converting their high-water-use turf grass to desert friendly xeriscapes, many are choosing to use wood chip mulch instead of gravel or other aggregate, which can be hot and allow weeds to pop up. The Water...

Wildscape Landscape Type

The Albuquerque metro area has a wide variety of landscapes. These include desert friendly landscapes, lush pollinator friendly xeriscapes and wildscapes or prairie plantings where native grasses and wildflowers bring the feel of a prairie to a yard and attract...

Xeriscape Conversions That Use Shredded Wood Chip Mulch

As homeowners around the Greater Albuquerque area are converting their high-water use turfgrass areas to desert-friendly xeriscapes, many are choosing to use wood chip mulch instead of gravel, which can be hot, expensive and also very good at cultivating weeds. Gravel...

Efficiently Watering on a Slope Requires a Few Simple Steps for Your Plants to Thrive.

Regardless of how you water, you will want to create a berm, or raised “dam,” on the downside when planting on a slope. This berm captures any rainfall coming down the slope, detaining it long enough to soak in, and also holds water that comes from irrigation or...

Rain Garden Landscape Type

The Albuquerque metro area has a wide variety of landscape types, which include desert-friendly landscapes, lush pollinator-friendly xeriscapes and wildscapes or prairie plantings where native grasses and wildflowers bring the feel of a prairie to a yard. Rain gardens...

The “Wow Factor” – Summer Containers Simplified

One of our favorite things to do at Bennu Organics is design container gardens. We like to talk about the “wow factor,” and containers are a fantastic way to add stunning, season-long color to our landscapes without digging a single hole in our hard, unforgiving soil....