Designing a garden is a bit like putting together a puzzle. The color and texture of the materials—plants, walls, paving, mulches—play a large role in pulling together a cohesive garden design. Strong plant combinations and plants paired with interesting architectural features give a landscape character. Bold contrasting colors, subtle variations of foliage tones and textures, sculptural plant forms displayed against walls, and pathways that separate plant groupings and draw us into the picture, all create moods that permeate spaces and persist in memory.

Traditional landscape design relies heavily on the negative space of an expansive lawn to organize the garden. In design-speak, negative space is open space, not a value judgment but the nondescript glue that holds everything together. In the arid Southwest, where cyclically drought may be more or less severe but is always part of the equation, using thirsty bluegrass as a major design feature has become a true negative. Too often the alternative to bluegrass is gravel, the simplistic substitution of a heat-absorbing and -reflecting surface for a cool if water-intensive one. Not exactly an equal trade, and certainly not an artful one. There are as many ways to avoid “zeroscape” (a common mispronunciation of and misconception about xeriscape) as there are xeric plants to play with. Therein lies another common design negative: the collector’s gallery of beautiful drought-tolerant species planted with no apparent rhyme or reason, like pieces of a puzzle dumped on the ground awaiting someone to sort them into a coherent whole.

Green is what is obviously lacking in a gravelscape. From the plants’ perspective, green is all about photosynthesis and regeneration. To plants, green means food for growth; green means survival. For the garden artist, green is a broad palette of shades, from the softest pale blue-green tones of the Artemisias through the muted gray-green of fernbush, from emerald threadgrass to deep green Arizona rosewood and dark forest curlleaf mountain mahogany. Color and texture are ephemeral. In spring the translucent greens of new leaves unfurling seem to glow in the warming light. The soft tips of conifers are often several shades lighter and much softer than the mature foliage. These subtle variations on a verdant theme may be used to offset a companion planting of flowering trees or shrubs, making their color more effective. Redbuds exult “An Ode to Joy” when backed with the dark needle color of Austrian or limber pines. The yellow flowers of golden currant are equally jubilant when backed by the blue-green foliage of a female (pollenless) cultivar of juniper such as Blue Heaven. In smaller spaces, a north-facing blue-gray fence can serve the same purpose. At the end of the season, when the currant’s leaves turn red, the color is even more brilliant against a soft blue backdrop.

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