In North Scottsdale, landscape designer Peggy De La Garza uses a holistic approach for a landscape refresh.

Landscape designer Peggy De La Garza has a tried-and-true arsenal of landscape materials and techniques that she favors, ranging from using craggy boulders and native desert plants to contouring and creating drainage paths. But when it comes to the actual design, this intensely busy and list-making creative goes all Zen. “I walk onto a property and get an idea of what I need to do,” De La Garza says. “I just follow that, and it works.”

Dan Becker appreciates De La Garza’s instinctive approach. She had designed the landscape for his previous home at Desert Highlands and, when he purchased another property in that golf course community, he knew the landscape designer could work her magic there as well. “The home I bought was a 1980s Southwest style on the golf course,” explains Dan, a Midwesterner who spends winters in Scottsdale. “The house had been remodeled, but there wasn’t much landscaping. I trusted Peggy because she gets things done and is very creative. The only thing I told her was that I wanted color in the landscape.”

De La Garza, a Phoenix Home & Garden Master of the Southwest, walked the site and instantly realized that there were drainage issues. “This property is basically in a hole,” she explains. “It sits lower than the street and, in back, lower than the golf course. I could also see that there weren’t enough plants to stop erosion.”

In the front and backyard, the landscape designer carved out a series of natural-looking drainage washes—or arroyos, as she calls them—that carry rainwater away from the house into a series of culverts and below-grade pipes. Contouring and carefully placed boulder massings also added character to the previously unremarkable landscape.

Her design approach, De La Garza notes, is to view the landscape, particularly the plantings, three-dimensionally. “Things have to flow,” she says. “I don’t clump things together, so they look good from the street. You must look at it from every angle.”

Working with an existing, gnarled ironwood and several other trees in the front yard, De La Garza filled in the landscape with desert favorites that she knew would thrive at Desert Highlands’ cooler, higher elevation, which is prone to frost. She chose Engelmann’s prickly pear (Opuntia engelmannii), golden barrel cactus, Argentine giants, saguaros and blue cardon cactus, interspersed with dwarf olives, agaves, desert spoon and yucca rostrata. Closer to the house, De La Garza added color and form with small palms, Tecoma stans and coral fountain shrubs. Another design bugaboo she tackled was softening a lengthy retaining wall that snaked from the entry drive back to the garage. “It was just a long, plain wall,” she remembers. “We
espaliered pyracantha along the wall to add greenery and texture. In the fall, they produce beautiful red berries.”

In the backyard, the landscape designer worked with the existing patio, pool and cantilevered fire pit, filling in the hardscape with lusher, colorful plantings, including bougainvillea, fountain grass, liriope and purple skyflower (Duranta erecta), using Mexican spoon (Dasylirion wheeleri) as a sculptural contrast. “We didn’t place trees back here,” says De La Garza, “and we kept the plantings low so we could maintain views of the golf course and Pinnacle Peak.” 

The completed landscape has had a few seasons to mature, become lusher and complement the house. “This is a classic desert landscape,” says De La Garza, who has been creating gardens at Desert Highlands and other North Scottsdale sites for more than four decades. “With the right maintenance and maybe a few additions or replacements, it should look just as good years from now.” In the meantime, the homeowner is enjoying the fruits of De La Garza’s labors.  “In the spring, the landscape pops with color,” Dan says. “It’s just beautiful. In the evening, I like to sit out on the back patio where the greenery extends onto the golf course and watch the sunset turn everything red and gold.”

“It’s just beautiful. In the evening, I like to sit out on the back patio where the greenery extends onto the golf course and watch the sunset turn everything red and gold.”

 Dan Becker, homeowner

SOURCES

• Landscape designer: Peggy De La Garza, Trademark Landscape, Phoenix, trademarklandscapeaz.com.
• Plants: Cox Cactus Farm, Phoenix, coxcactusfarm.com.
• Trees: Clear Creek Tree Farm, Phoenix, clearcreektreefarm.com.