The Desert Southwest Hillside Front Yard
The front yard part of this Desert Southwest landscape design was so easy to create. While the hillside isn't so sloped that the retaining wall is totally necessary here, it does create a lot of interest and desert Southwest atmosphere.
A simple grade from the home to the curb would have worked just as fine as the retaining wall idea. However, as far as curb appeal goes, this works much nicer.
To view more about this design, return to desert hillside landscape design.
More Photos Of This Desert Landscape
Front Yard Retaining Wall And Plants
Side Erosion Control Retaining Wall
A Few More Pictures Of This Design
Xeriscape Plants In This Design
- Diascia - Red
- Coreopsis - Yellow
- Ocotillo - Tall Cactus
- Lavender
- Texas Sage
- Red Tip Yucca - Hesperaloe
The plant selection is very simple with native plants or adaptive to our desert southwest climate. The plant choices for this design includes the native desert plant "ocotillo" which is the tallest plant in the picture. It not only creates height but also provides some neutral gray color.
Related Design Resources
As you can see, the rest of the planting scheme is very simple and follows a consistent setting of just a few varieties and colors. The plants here are Coreopsis (Yellow), Red Tip Yucca (Red), Lavender (Purple and Neutral), Texas Sage (Purple and Neutral), and Ocotillo (Red and Neutral).
While this isn't a typical front yard landscape design in most areas, it is becoming quite typical for our area and most of the desert southwest areas like New Mexico and Arizona. This is a perfect example of xeriscaping (water wise landscaping). And as you can see, xeriscaping (zee-ri-scaping) can be quite beautiful. It's not just about rocks and cactus.
