This is a landscape project we put in a couple of years ago at the south entrance of the City of Shoshone. It is just over an acre and is a first of its kind for this area.
It is a multi purpose area. First it is to beautify the south entrance into the town from the main highway, second is to give drainage for the intersection of the highway and drainage from the nearby parking areas, and last is to give wildlife such as birds and other small animals an area of rest cover and food.
It uses low water to no water plants both native and other. The turf is also a low water fescue lawn that has worked very well and uses about half the water of "Kentucky Blue Grass Turf "
It also acts as a demonstration garden for the general public. This may be its most important attribute. If this helps people use less water, beautify their neighborhoods and create places for wild life then it was worth every penny spent on the project.
This project cost much less than was first projected, because most of the labor and materials came from the City of Shoshone, State Highway, and a special thanks to the local School District for the labor of growing many of the plants in their greenhouse and the labor of planting many of the smaller plants.
There is many small things that could have been done different to enhance the project overall but not bad.
A project is never done, I will try and keep updates on any progress.
One thing I would like to see in the future is some large rocks placed in the dry lake area and perhaps a few more plants. Also the dry creeks look very unnatural, needs many more boulders.
Not the best time of year to show landscape pics, kind of looks dead.
Also the Blue Spruce should have been planted high on the bench, not crowding the other plants. These are going to over grow the surrounding plants.
This was the only pinyon pine that lived, I dug the other 2 up and the roots were planted to deep in the original pots from the nursery. Never plant pines deeper than they grew originally, better to plant to shallow than to deep!
Yucca rostrata, if this dies it will be from root-rot not the cold. Landscape fabric holds lots of moister in, good in some ways, bad for some desert plants.
I love the nice clean look of some fescue grass.
Too late now, but I really wish the blue-spruce were planted on the highest part of the turf mound.
Steve doing prep work on a drainage we added more rock to.
Welcome sign, and the low water use turf. (green in summer!)
Rainbow when I made it home from work.
Mocho!
