It's time to break out of the everyday landscaping design. What does your lawn consist of? Lots of green grass - that takes a lot of time to mow and a lot of water to look healthy, trees and shrubs. Perhaps some flowerbeds flanking the house itself.
But there's so much more you can do with your landscaping, if you just decide to do things a bit differently.
Decorative
In desert locations, of course, like Arizona and Mexico, why bother to try to force grass to grow at all? Why not simply cover your yard with attractive, ornamental rock and stone, with a few shrubs. Or as the joke has it, "I'm retired, I've mowed my last lawn!" The reason is simple - you may think water is a renewable resource - but it doesn't renew as fast as mankind is consuming it. In desert states where water comes from below ground aquifers, the level of this fresh-water source is lowering every year, and rainwater cannot replenish that level fast enough.
Even if you don't live in a desert climate, there's no reason why you can't make a rock garden - either large or small - in part of your yard. Such a garden will cut down on the time needed to mow your lawn, there'll be no need to spread pesticides around, and it will be a quiet and restful place around which to sit.
Like any other landscaping element, a rock garden does have to be planned carefully. Rock doesn't absorb water - so any rain run-off will go straight into your lawn and does need to be carefully drained off. Don't put your rock garden over electrical or phone lines, either.
You may think that a rock garden is equivalent to a Japanese garden, but that isn't necessarily the case. The Japanese garden combines three elements: stone which represents mountains or islands, water - representing purity, and plants. A Zen garden is what most people think of when they hear the term Japanese garden - a stretch of white sand with black rocks placed strategically about, and one meditates by raking the sand smooth.
There are two ways to install a rock garden...one would be to make the rock look like a natural outcropping of bedrock...used to cut off an inconvenient slope. The more usual design is to pile up the stones - both large and small - in harmonious groupings...and if you simply must have greenery, leave small gaps between the rocks into which the plants may be placed.
Surf the web to get ideas for how to design your rock garden, and venture far and wide, into sites from Japan and India as well as the United States. You'll find beauty everywhere.
Decorative Rocks and Ornamental Stone - Landscaping
Andrew Caxton is a consultant who writes on many consumer topics like lawn care for [http://www.lawn-mowers-and-garden-tractors.com] . Find more publications about landscaping [http://www.lawn-mowers-and-garden-tractors.com/landscaping.html] at his website.