Tucson Landscaping

Southwestern Landscape Design

Use this design sheet to help you create the perfect Southwestern landscape. You'll get ideas for color, décor, materials, plants and fabric. It is a great starting point for any Arizona landscaping project.

Backyard Landscape Dimensions (PDF)

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Spanish courtyards brimming with flowers and exotic cactus filled desert landscapes make homes around Tucson some of the best in the world for outdoor living. Here in the Sonoran Desert, a Mecca for golfers, winters are warm and summers are blistering. With Saguaro National Park and the Catalina Mountains just outside the city, there's no end to the beautiful views and homes that exploit them through good design. It's no wonder snowbirds from the North often winter here in golf course country clubs and gated communities. For the year around residents this is a paradise where some of the most expensive and elaborate home landscapes offer everything you need to cook, dine, swim and sunbathe all year around.

Tucson Botanical Gardens is a great place to see all the desert plants in one place. With so many new residents retiring to Arizona, there's quite a learning curve. Not only are the plants different from the rest of America, the entire structure of the growing season is counter intuitive making a good landscaper essential to avoiding scorched and desiccated plants.

The Catalina Foothills community rises into the higher elevations with some of the most exquisite and expensive homesites in the Southwest. Just outside the city, this is home to ranches and rural homes on large lots or spotted into the desert where the exterior landscape may prove more important than the home's interior. With beautiful water features, water misting systems to cool the outdoor air, expansive Arizona flagstone patios and fire features galore, these landscapes are designed for entertaining in the midst of nature.

Spanish style architecture at Casas Adobes reflects the first earthen buildings of historic Tucson. This early subdivision built in the 1940s features traditional Spanish style architecture blending old adobe bricks with modern stone and stucco. The homes here have great bones for expanding and remodeling. This is swimming pool country as is most of the Tucson area, where older pools can be remodeled with fresh tile, coping and decks into contemporary gems in landscapes planted with cactus, yucca and a variety of desert trees and shrubs.

The suburbs west of the Highway features a plain studded between the Santa Cruz River and the rugged Tucson Mountains studded with monumental cactus. Here the suburb of Drexel Heights offers views across the city to the Santa Catalina Mountains beyond. This diverse area offers more space for landscaping a sizable lot with desert natives and other plants from dry regions around the globe.

In and around Tucson, homes range from hobby ranches to experimental eco-modern, but all are on a strict water budget in this dry land. Landscapers use specific irrigation systems as well as planting concepts to offer all the beauty for a fraction of the water. Some companies are masters at stone masonry due to the prevalence of this material in the desert and influences of the indigenous Pueblo cultures. Stone, adobe and wood are all quite common as they fit naturally into outdoor living spaces of small rustic cottages, Spanish ranch homes, Mediterranean villas and the open Spartan spaces of desert modern architecture.