Garden

Small Desert Garden Design

In this photo you can see the illusion of distance created by the curved river bed. Remember, this little desert design is only 22 feet ...

Creative design ideas for a small garden with a desert southwest atmosphere

In this photo you can see the illusion of distance created by the curved river bed. Remember, this little desert design is only 22 feet long.

Plants and landscape lighting are still needed to finish the landscaping. Still, in this phase of the design, we can get a good idea of the personality and character of the design.

The stacked flagstone wall at the far end and beginning of the river bed serves to create a focal point as well as create a second level. Try and imagine how dull and flat that even a small garden like this would be without it.

As with all our designs, this entire space is under lain with quality landscape fabric. In gardens like this with the potential of foot traffic, a superior quality fabric (not plastic) is required. The jagged rock edges in pathways eventually cut through most underlayments.

The plant selection is once again very basic and follows the principle of simplicity. You can see the planting scheme in the desert landscape design plan. Also, on this design I used a pattern to create my planting scheme. It was very simple with very little thought to do it this way.

I simply selected my plants and placed them in rows and on either end. I then used Stipa grass throughout the garden design to create the atmosphere of the desert scene and to unify and tie everything together.