Create your own beautiful, sustainable, and water-efficient landscape by utilizing free classes and resources

While some areas of the country are still dealing with winter weather, our thoughts have turned to spring here in Arizona, which means it’s the perfect time to do some outdoor planning. With a bit of strategy and knowledge, it’s easy to design, plant, and maintain a lovely, drought-resistant, and water-efficient yard. To help you with your spring preparation, the AMWUA cities offer a wide variety of free classes and resources.

Through these free classes and workshops, you can learn about a wide variety of landscape topics, including designing desert landscapes, growing vegetables, picking suitable trees, how to manage your irrigation controller, water efficiently, find and fix leaks, and unravel the mysteries of your irrigation system. This knowledge will help you create your own beautiful and resilient outdoor space. 

These city classes are offered a few times a year to properly prep everyone for the varying seasons. You can check with your city’s conservation offices for more information or view the complete list on the AMWUA website. It pays to have a plan before it’s time to grab your gardening hat and gloves.

For additional assistance with designing your ideal yard, a valuable interactive resource is also available for homeowners, businesses, and anyone looking for a little extra desert-adapted flower power. The Plants for the Arizona Desert website highlights over 200 desert-friendly plants through high-quality photos, which will make planning your yard that much easier. The desert offers a surprisingly diverse selection of low-water-use landscape plants. Blending this distinctive palette of colors, forms, and textures allows you to create plant combinations to suit any landscape situation with creative options that ensure year-round color, seasonal interest, and many other possibilities.

When designing your landscape, it’s important to consider your own preferences and purposes, such as the look you want to achieve, how you will use your yard, the amount of time you want to spend taking care of your yard, and your budget as you develop your unique plan.

Developing that plan is vital because a great yard begins with a great plan, yet typically many people do not know where to start when creating that outline. To help with all phases of planning and building your yard precisely how you like, there are resources and tips to help design, install and maintain your landscape on the Xeriscaping: Landscaping with Style in the Arizona Desert website.

If you are looking for more inspiration, don’t overlook one of the best design resources as you plan your landscape—local xeriscape demonstration gardens . Arizona’s many gardens, including those right here in the Valley, provide a wealth of practical information and showcase mature examples of the diverse array of trees and plants that thrive in our environment.

All these resources will help you start planning for the planting season and looking at options for transforming your yard. The final product will be worth it. After all, a desert-adapted landscape will save you time, water, and money while playing a valuable role in building a sustainable future for all of us. And utilizing the expertise of your local water conservation pros at these workshops empowers us all to be a little more water-wise.

Want to Dive Deeper into Your Household Water-Use?

The amount of water we use every day may surprise you. Many things impact each household’s unique water use – indoors and outdoors. The AMWUA Water Use Calculator allows you to enter a few pieces of information about your household’s water use habits. Based on your information, this tool will help show what you are using versus how much water you need for optimal monthly water usage. It provides insight into where you use most of your water both inside your home and outdoors in your yard. From there, it will make it much easier to adjust your habits.

To print or save this week's blog, a PDF version is available HERE .

For over 50 years, the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association has worked to protect our member cities’ ability to provide assured, safe, and sustainable water supplies to their communities. For more water information, visit www.amwua.org .