Luckily, the sun-loving plants typical of the Southwest do well beyond its borders as well – barrel cactus (Echinocactus) grows in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 9a through 10b, century plant (Agave americana) grows in USDA zones 9a through 11 and tree aloe (Aloe arborescens) grows in USDA zones 8a through 11. When you add American Southwest yard decorations to these plants, your yard gains a distinctive and unified look.
The red, brown, white and grey rock formations of the Southwest are easy to duplicate in your yard with crushed stone to decorate paths or flower beds, large boulders strategically placed or clusters and piles of stone. When you nestle the rocks among Southwest plants, you create an authentic Southwest effect. Use a distinctive cairn marker, stones piled in a pyramid or column to indicate a route or trail, at your front entry for a Southwest welcome.
One way to decorate your yard is to rely on the vibrant colors and themes distinctive to the early Mexican settlers in the Southwest, such as bright red, blue and yellow painted planters or walls, colorful mosaic tiles and tin cutouts using Mexican themes of sunbursts, chickens or burros. Other Mexican features include stucco walls or fireplaces in their original adobe color or painted in a distinctive Mediterranean blue or desert rose. You can repeat the colors, shapes and themes in patio furniture and pillows as well.
Native American Themes
Yard decorations using Native American themes include flower planters, patio cushions and pillows decorated with geometric designs of spirals and zigzags from Anasazi basketry and pottery, either in the black-on-white style or the later black, yellow and red style. Tin cut-outs of Native symbols in shades of turquoise would look great hung on fences or walls throughout your yard. Use shapes from Kachina spirit masks or from Anasazi petroglyphs such as hand prints, the flute player Kokopelli, a pronged antelope or a stick-like human figure.
Ranching and Mining Decorations
Relics from the mining and ranching days of the Southwest in the late 1800s and early 1900s include those items that you might find in any western ghost town, such as rusting coffee pots, bed frames, tin oil containers or machinery. Any of these items can be re-purposed as planters or decorative items nestled among plants in your yard, just as you might find them left on a dusty trail in the Southwest today. Other ranching and mining decorations to incorporate into fences, garden bed edging or trellises include wagon wheels or axles and reclaimed wood.
- The New Sunset Western Garden Book; Kathleen Norris Brenzel, ed.
- Gardenality: USDA/Sunset Zones Climate Conversion Chart
- Phoenix Home and Garden: Southwest Garden
- Phoenix Home and Garden: Color in the Garden
- Easy Field Guide to Rock Art Symbols of the Southwest; Rick Harris
- Arizona State University: Logging, Mining and Ranching
- Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images