Give your Landscape a Fall Face Lift
October 15, 2009 in Gardening, Home Improvement
Ohhhh Glorious October! Our hottest days of summer are behind us,the kids are back in school, the season is upon us and its time to start enjoying the fabulous fall weather we are blessed with here in the desert! It is especially wonderful if you have a delightful and beautiful landscape to enjoy. If like a lot of us, the economy and gas prices have had you cutting back and cocooning more and you look outside and just don’t like or enjoy what you see, maybe now is a great time for a yard and spirit lift!
October is the “Best Month” of the year in the desert to turn your home into a showplace and sanctuary for the years to come. With energy and water prices increasing and likely continuing to do so, now would be an excellent time to do a yard lift by removing some of your high maintenance grass or old, dead or outdated landscape. This is also a good time because you won’t have to spend that extra money to overseed your Bermuda grass lawn this month! Lush tropical landscapes do have physical and psychological cooling affects, but unfortunately they require huge volumes of water just to keep them alive during our scorching summers. However, you can have the best of both worlds-low water bills and lush plantings by selecting water-efficient plants, grouping plants of similar water needs, and installing an efficient irrigation system. There are many beautiful and colorful plants that don’t require watering everyday except in the extreme summer months. Without spending a fortune, you can transition a large yard by removing some of the grass and replacing it with low water use trees, shrubs and ground covers adding cacti, succulents, ocotillos and yucca’s for accent and texture. Creating earthen mounds and dry creek beds with well placed boulders and river rock provide a natural look that requires little water and maintenance. For a little more money you might want to add a water feature for relaxing sound and good feng sui and artificial grass to still have that “cool green feeling”.
If your landscape has really gone to “dead weed heaven” or you have recently purchased a foreclosure home with a sad dead and unattended landscape, a good landscape designer can help you salvage your yard and make it beautiful again by weeding out the still decent and healthy low water plants and removing the “old water guzzlers” and dead debris.
Article provided to the La Quinta Chamber of Commerce – GEM Publication October 2008 page 19.
