A typical Southwestern scene.
Southwestern style landscaping is heavily influenced by Native American, Mexican and Spanish building styles. Also adapted to a mostly dry and desert climate with profuse sunlight but little rain, Southwestern landscapes often incorporate bright colors, rough textures such as stucco and adobe, and native rocks and plants to create simple, elegant designs that are both pleasing to the eye and environmentally practical. Does this Spark an idea?
Native Materials
Using native and natural materials to create a Southwestern landscape for your home is practical, economical and environmentally smart way to developing your landscape. Common Southwestern landscaping materials include unfinished wood, such as aspen, pine or juniper, as well as common river rocks including granite and limestone. Terra cotta tiles, stone slabs, and gravel are common landscape materials for walkways and other paths. Wood, brick, stucco and stone are used for barriers, edgings, and sitting areas.
Accessorize
Southwesterners take pride in local crafts such as rugs and pottery, many of which have been made by locals for generations. Using these crafts as elements of your landscape design is a sophisticated and lively way to enhance your landscape. There are countless pottery and other craft options you can employ with deciding on accessorize your landscape. For instance you can hang handwoven baskets with native plants in them, attach popular sun plaques, kokopelli symbols, or rugs to walls or beams, place sculptures of animals or other Southwestern imagery such as cowboy boots around the yard, and even paint picturesque images and murals on exposed walls or other areas.
Add Local Flora
Southwestern gardens are generally low-maintenance affairs that require little water and not much labor. Planting cacti, succulents and other common plants such as yucca and pinion trees are a great way to enhance the Southwestern landscape of your home. These plants are simple and economical to grow and will give your yard a lively and colorful presence. Make sure to be careful of the cacti stickers however, and try to plant them out of the way of highly frequented paths where they could accidentally poke someone.
Design Elements
Since Southwestern home landscapes are often made up of simple, geometric designs that fit into the sparse local landscape, you can be creative with the shapes and geometry that you choose to employ in your personal landscape. For instance, instead of making your walkway straight, add some nice curves to it, and plant local plants in the curves, or place a statue or two along the way. Add design elements such as wood and rocks to give your landscape a natural, textured look which you can interact with. Adding a shaded area to your landscape is a popular Southwestern design technique since the sun beats down hard and direct for most of the year. Putting the shaded terrace or patio between your home and garden area will make a nice place for you, your family and your friends to relax and admire your landscaping.
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