Front Yard Yucca Garden Design

Low-Water Landscapes: 8 Ideas for Dry Gardens, from Designer

Please forget everything you think you know about dry gardens (especially if you are imagining harsh, spiky, half-dead-looking landscapes).A low-water garden can have lush foliage, soft textures, and will welcome you into deep, luxurious shades of greens if Northern California-based landscape designer Daniel Nolan created it.

Nolan, who made his name as an inventive in-house designer at San Francisco’s beloved Flora Grubb Gardens and is founder of the eponymous Daniel Nolan Design, recently collected 25 favorite projects (including some of his own) in a book, Dry Gardens.

An expert on container gardens, as well, Nolan chooses plants that can thrive in dry soil with infrequent irrigation.

When we asked Nolan to share his secrets for designing a dry garden, he offered eight tips (illustrated beautifully in his book, with photographs by Caitlin Atkinson):Photography from Dry Gardens, courtesy of Rizzoli.

My new favorite front yard in town

This is the kind of front yard I would have if I started with a blank slate: rectangular terraced planting areas in different sizes and colors filled with a variety of succulents and waterwise perennials.Hands-down, this is my new favorite front yard in Davis.

Instead of visiting gardens elsewhere, I need to spend more time exploring my own town!

Based on the historical Google Street View photos below, the raised beds already existed in August 2007:August 2007 (image © 2017 Google)May 2012 (image © 2017 Google)May 2015 (image © 2017 Google)It doesn't appear like the hardscaping has changed in the last 10 years, but the plants certainly have.

This front yard could be on the cover of a coffee-table book showcasing the beauty of water-wise contemporary landscaping.

Sharing a garden with a neighbor and ripping out lawn

Funny story: When I was paying for the ‘Whale’s Tongue’ at Barton Springs Nursery, one of their wonderful employees smiled and asked, “Are you getting another Moby?” Moby is famous!Moving to the right, you see the new decomposed-granite path that straddles our property line and meets up with an existing garden bed in my yard.What was formerly a no-man’s-land of thirsty grass is now a useful path that allows us to be in the garden.One of my priorities with any garden is to make sure there’s an invitation to enjoy it.

Don’t they look more natural amid a garden, with decomposed granite lapping up on one side?

Landscaping Garden Design With Succulents

Soil Most succulents will do well in the same soil that other garden plants grow in as long as it drains well.Water Succulents thrive in arid conditions and are quite hardy once established.

Soft Landscaping With Succulents Plants soften the hard landscape and give it an organic look.

When you're designing with succulents, plants are chosen for their colors, textures and growth habits.

Senecio cinerariaSucculent Landscaping Tips Designing an attractive succulent landscape is fairly easy and following a few tips can help you create a garden that rivals the design of professional landscapers.

Landscaping With Yuccas

Growing Yuccas Yuccas vary in height and be as small as a 2 feet or big as 12 feet tall.Many Yuccas roots can used to make soap.

Landscaping with Yuccas are great to add a southwest flare to your gardens.Banana Yucca -Most yuccas have dry hard fruits, but the fruits of banana yucca are fleshy and succulent.

Maintaining YuccasPrune and Plant Yuccas is fairly simple.

Carissa (Emerald Blanket)

Plant It Tampa BayQuantity Decrease quantity for Carissa (Emerald Blanket) Increase quantity for Carissa (Emerald Blanket)Carissa (Emerald Blanket)Carissa varieties 'Natal Plum', 'Boxwood Beauty' and 'Emerald Blanket' grow slowly, can be kept small, and have some of the most exquisitely beautiful deep green foliage of all South Florida shrubs.Emerald Blanket is the dwarf cultivar, and its low spreading habit makes it an ideal ground cover shrub.It too has a spreading habit and can be used as a ground cover shrub as well.

Trimming these plants is rarely necessary, though you may want to trim now and then for size or shape.Although carissa is considered drought-tolerant, getting watered on a regular, well-timed basis will keep this shrub pretty and healthy.

How to Care for Outdoor Succulents in Texas

The beautiful thing about succulents is that they’re extremely hardy, and therefore easy to maintain.Let’s take a look at the most important items in caring for outdoor succulents:PlacementMost succulents hail from desert-like regions, with plentiful sun and occasional drought.

Planting and PropagatingIf you’re new to the care of succulents, it’s good to know how best to establish them.The other aspect of desert plants that is easy to overlook is that many of them are quite cold-hardy.As for pruning, the rules for succulents are not so different than any other plants you’re caring for in your garden.

Stylish xeric garden by Sitio Design

My friend Curt Arnette, the talented landscape architect at Sitio Design and plant lover whose personal garden I visited in May, designed this contemporary gravel garden for a Westlake client, and I recently got to take a peek.So Curt planted desert plants and dry-loving grasses—plus a few thirstier bamboo for verticality and lush, evergreen foliage—directly in the gravel.Pass through the gate and you enter a small, partly shady side garden with palms, bamboo muhly, asparagus fern, and inland sea oats.A Corten steel box planter steps down the slope and helps define the separation between the garden and the driveway.

While the garden is quite small, it packs a big punch for those who admire contemporary, clean-lined design and a surprising wealth of fascinating plants packed into it.

Succulent Garden Design Essentials from an Award-Winning Garden

Finer-leaved succulents tend to dry out more easily and will be happiest around the base of the mound or in a swale.See my article, "How to Water Succulents."Grow rangy non-succulents in potsInstead of in the ground, Nancy's herb garden occupies large terracotta pots near her kitchen door.

This keeps the plants under control (some, like mints, are invasive) and makes them easy to water, tend, harvest, and replant.

To create the look of rushing water, designer Michael Buckner lined Nancy's dry creek bed with cobbles turned sideways.

Massing of Color Guard yuccas

When it doesn’t rain and temperatures soar into the 100s every day for weeks, the garden can look a bit…shall we say…parched.I recently responded by ripping out a mishmash of crispy plants, a lot of onesies and twosies brought along from my former garden, and replaced them with a curved line of dramatic ‘Color Guard’ yuccas (Yucca filamentosa ‘Color Guard’).However, I’m not missing the spotty clutter that was formerly this bed, one of two curving spaces around my stock-tank pond.

Now I’ve got to come up with something equally dramatic and xeric for the shady side, to complement the sunny side’s ‘Color Guard’ yuccas.And with yuccas you don’t have to wait until fall to break out the shovel.

Designing With Spiky Plants

Given the right soil, drainage, and sun exposure, many spiky plants are hardier and more adaptable than gardeners may think.When designing with spiky plants, especially rosettes (plants with clustered leaves arranged like a rose blossom), recite this mantra: “Repetition, repetition, repetition.” These plants can look out of place without some spiky cohorts; by planting together several of one variety or similar-looking species, you can make the whole creation look purposeful, connected, and a bit more natural.

Choose airy or lacy companions to create a pleasing contrast with the bold, rigid forms of your favorite spiky plants.Photo: Charles Mann Whether you are using spiky plants in groups or displaying them as focal points, pay attention to their neighbors.

Perhaps the easiest way to design with spiky plants is to use them as the overall theme for a bed or garden room.

Succulent Landscaping Trends

As the author of two editions of Designing with Succulents ten years apart, I'm sort of obsessed with the evolution of succulent landscaping.The most memorable succulent gardens include specimen plants.

Exercise extreme caution when trimming any succulent euphorbia, and never plant one where children, pets or passersby may come in contact with it.

"I'm shifting toward specimen gardens," says celebrity designer Laura Eubanks.

Watch for an upcoming newsletter in which Laura Eubanks shares advice for aspiring succulent designers.

Southwest Garden Design

Southwest Gardening Tips Eight dos and don'ts for designing a Southwestern garden Genevieve SchmidtSouthwest Landscape Design Use this design sheet to help you create the perfect Southwest landscape.Southwest Landscape Design (PDF)View all Landscape Design Style GuidesThe Designer's Favorite Sources: California Cactus Center in Pasadena, CA is a family business owned by three talented sisters.

The Southwest is incredibly diverse, with different elevations and types of desert defining the landscape.

Even so, themes like earth-colored stucco, shade ramadas, and plants like cactus, native yucca, and desert spoon give Southwest landscapes their unique character.

Here are Cristiani's professional tips for creating a beautifully-designed Southwest landscape.

Top 70 Best Desert Landscaping Ideas

Here we show you that the best desert landscape ideas are not for the uninspired or unimaginative, but for the man who sees what the average soul overlooks.We’ll first look at what drought tolerant plants and trees you can put in your desert garden before looking at some unique ideas.AgavesPerhaps the most versatile plant when it comes to desert landscaping ideas is agave.

As desert plants rarely sprawl out, having some boulders in place can help fill up the space and prevent it from looking bare.It’s one of the best yard landscaping ideas if you want to stroll around your garden.

All about yucca plant care, including the spineless yucca cane!

Caring for the hardy yucca plant—including the spineless yucca cane!Yucca elephantipes, also known as spineless yucca, giant yucca, or yucca cane, is a tall tree-like yucca that can grow up to 30 feet tall.

That’s the yucca elephantipes, aka the yucca cane, yucca gigantea, the spineless yucca, and the giant yucca.It’s important to remember that the yucca cane plant is not the same as the common household plant the dracaena fragrans commonly called the “Yucca Elephantipes” or the “corn plant,” which is a drought-tolerant and low-light tolerant plant.Yucca plant FAQsHere are a few more questions and tips you might have about caring for yucca plants, particularly the spineless yucca cane.

Desert Garden and Landscape Ideas • The Garden Glove

You must work with the desert environment to have a gorgeous desert garden!Paths, shade structures and walls all are integral to a desert garden that looks amazing all year round.In a desert garden, to appreciate the texture and form of most desert plants, they look better spaced apart.Many desert garden plants are adored by hummingbirds… plant them em masse.Front Yard Desert Landscaping IdeasThese front yard desert landscaping ideas show you how a garden in the desert can beautifully partner with your homes’ architecture and the environment.

Coleson Bruce's crevice garden in spring flower

Two weeks ago Coleson Bruce invited me back to his garden to see it in spring flower.Colorado-style crevice gardens are unusual here, and Coleson’s is not only beautifully constructed but planted with hardy succulents, cacti, and perennials.

Let’s pull back for a wider view of the crevice garden along the front walk.

Hesperaloes flower among them, including red yucca up front and giant hesperaloe between the yuccas.A larger crevice garden fills an island bed along the street, and also buffers passing cars.

Mid-Century Modern Landscaping Ideas Earth Development

Mid-century modern landscaping design blends minimalist design with comfort.The best part about these mid-century modern landscaping ideas is most of them you can do all on your own.Low-Maintenance Linear ShrubsBold shapes and linear structure are a common theme in mid-century modern landscaping.Terraces are often stone which is another common theme in mid-century modern landscaping.

Mid-century modern landscaping ideas are becoming increasingly more popular.

Yucca 'Bright Star' lives up to its name

I stopped dead in my tracks the first time I saw Yucca ‘Bright Star’.Yucca ‘Bright Star’ in our front yard, September 2022In January 2018, I planted my newly acquired Yucca ‘Bright Star’ in the long bed next to the sidewalk.It’s likely the rains also tricked our Yucca ‘Bright Star’ into flowering.

As I was collecting photos for this post, I realized that I didn’t really know what Yucca ‘Bright Star’ was and where it had come from.If you have your own Yucca ‘Bright Star’, this should give you a good idea of when to expect flowers.

Garden Decoration With Cement Pond Stock Photo

iStockGartendekoration Mit Zement Teich Stockfoto und mehr Bilder von Baum - Baum, Blatt - Pflanzenbestandteile, BlumeJetzt das Foto Gartendekoration Mit Zement Teich herunterladen.Und durchsuchen Sie die Bibliothek von iStock mit lizenzfreien Stock-Bildern, die Baum Fotos, die zum schnellen und einfachen Download bereitstehen, umfassen.gm950305894€ 9,00 iStock In stockProduct #:

front yard landscaping Archives

We sell a variety of these fountains in the garden shop.You know we love a good hibiscus, especially in pots, and they look great next to the seated glider that overlooks the lake.For a fun and colorful added touch, the pink flamingo (also from our home decor shop) really adds a pop.To the right, an Evergreen screen creates a privacy wall and blocks the view of the neighbor’s house without takkng up space in the yard.The evergreens to each side frame the house and really show that every inch of this yard has been carefully thought out.

A Ginger Snapped

Technically, I started my new position as Nanny over a month or so ago, I just haven’t been required to “clock-in” yet.In my defense, I knew I was about to sign away my uber-exciting life of freedom starting…well…starting really soon.

I’m not sure how long a person can hold a plastic dinosaur and pretend to roar at another person holding a plastic dinosaur?But I know snuggly kids that want to lie around doing nothing all day are not in the best interest of America’s future.So, one day a week, STARTING NEXT WEEK, I SWEAR, I’m going to shed my pajamas and put on pants with a snap and a zipper, drive over there and support the cause.