Golf Engineering Associates Technical Help - Public Education Series

How do you maintain luxurious landscapes in places like Albuquerque, Palm Springs, Phoenix, El Paso, Northern Mexico, Las Vegas and Tucson, to name a few? Well, it's not easy, but somehow we manage to have some of the most fantastic landscapes to be found in any climate. Our style of "landscaping in the desert" is pure Xeriscape, whether people who live here know it or not.

Xeriscape...the way of the Southwest
Homes out West naturally utilize the principals of low-water use Xeriscape because that is our natural environment. All of our nurseries are chock full of desert plants, cactus, flowers, trees and shrubs that survive in high heat and low water situations without much problem. Many of these plants are native to the Sonoran Desert (Southern Arizona and Northern Mexico) while others have been imported from other arid climates. Most of these low-water use plants will explode with growth if you water them regularly, and drip systems which deliver 2 to 10 gallons of water per week to an average sized shrub are more than adequate. Without any water, life ceases to exist: but with just a little water, we enjoy abundant natural desert landscapes.

Watering Guidelines in the Desert for Established Plants:

Establishing New or Relocated Desert plants:

1. Early Spring or Fall is the best time to plant. Soil amendments and fertilizer should be used sparingly, if at all, with real native desert plants. Water every 3 or 4 days to establish. After a few weeks begin to space the waterings out. Over watering will cause decline; by Summer once or twice a week is plenty.

2. Frequency and duration changes for watering should be made ahead of schedule if hot/dry or cold/wet spells occur.

3. Very sandy soil may require more frequency due to deep drainage; but DON'T increase unless the soil is literally like a sieve.

4. Temporarily interrupt automatic irrigation systems during monsoon seasons, unless long dry/hot spells occur.

5. Diseased, shocked or declining plants probably will not use as much water and too much may cause further decline. If the leaves are dry and yellowing and the soil is wet, the problem could be over-watering.

Where Does All The Water Come From?
Visitors to places like Palm Springs and Las Vegas can hardly tell that they are in the middle of a vast, harsh desert. Water is everywhere, and lush landscapes with acres upon acres of beautiful golf fairways abound. Lots of people go hiking in the mountainous public parks of Phoenix only to be rescued by emergency crews because they forgot to take a jug of water along; probably because they forgot or were not aware of the natural habitat. So, where does all of the water come from? Much of it comes from the Colorado River and it's tributaries, including man-made canals which stretch across the states. The Grand Canyon houses part of the mighty Colorado. A series of huge dams (including Hoover Dam) harnesses the power of the Colorado River to produce most of our power also. Still more water is recycled, called "effluent" water. Sure, we are in a harsh desert climate, but there is plenty of water around to be used for irrigation. By some estimates, up to 65% of all municipal drinking water is used for landscape watering, even with our common use of Xeriscaping principals. We do get rain (Phoenix gets about 7 inches a year) but only very sporadically. So, we have multiple water sources but it rarely ever comes from the sky: that's why we're in a "desert".