Softscaping Amarillo, TX

Wondering what the difference is between our Amarillo softscaping service and our hardscaping service? While both refer to different fields of landscape design, they concern very different detailed landscape elements. Amarillo hardscaping refers to the hard elements in your exterior living space. Basically, elements such as your patio space, garden pavers, outdoor kitchens, dry creek beds, retaining walls, fences, gates, and trellis are considered hardscaping features. While this also includes flower boxes or xeriscaping, hardscape features are predominantly made from concrete, brick, stone, metal, or wood materials to create a functional and appealing outdoor environment. Amarillo softscaping, on the other hand, refers to the live, horticultural elements. This means, as you’ve guessed, plants, trees, and grasses. Whether they are temporary features or permanent installations, an Amarillo softscaping service fills in the spots left blank by the durable hardscape elements in your outdoor space. While hardscaping is static and unchanging, this type of landscaping is meant to grow and evolve over time, adapting to your space and preferences. Ask our team how you can complement your outdoor environment with our Amarillo softscaping and hardscaping service.

When it comes to softscaping, Amarillo, TX residents will be pleased to learn that we can do their service in stages. By having staged softscaping, Amarillo, TX residents can take advantage of greater budget control and resource availability to design a landscape that better suits their needs and preferences. With a staged installation by our professional landscapers, Amarillo, TX homeowners can take advantage of different planting seasons for better plant growth, prioritize different areas, make changes as needed, get more out of their budget, and learn how to care for their changing garden. Ask our landscape designers how you can incorporate phased softscaping. Amarillo, TX homeowners will find that they will have greater control over their yard changes and the final design.

When it comes to softscaping, Amarillo, TX property owners often ask for a sustainable design that still has curb appeal. That’s not a problem with our team of softscapers! Amarillo, TX residents can count on us to use native plants such as sunflowers, mulberry, honey mesquite, golden pothos, broadleaf milkweed, and summer cypress in your Amarillo softscaping design. We’ll also take into account the natural topography of your outdoor space and local climate conditions to create a sustainable landscape design that not only looks amazing, but also functions the way you need it to, so you can enjoy your backyard retreat.

Wind does more damage to a new planting than the Panhandle cold ever will. A root ball that hasn’t anchored yet loses moisture fast in a stiff gust, and a young tree can lean permanently or even snap near the graft before its roots catch hold. Staking new trees through their first year and grouping tender shrubs behind a windbreak solves most of the problem. The National Weather Service puts Amarillo’s average wind speed at 13 to 14 mph, among the highest of any U.S. city, with March and April bringing the strongest gusts of the year. After years of installing beds across the Panhandle, our crews plant windbreak rows first, usually junipers, desert willow, or Russian olive along the southwest and north property lines, and let them establish for a full season before adding anything more delicate behind them.

Fall beats spring for most permanent plantings here, even though April feels like the obvious month to start. Amarillo sits in USDA Hardiness Zone 7a, and cooler fall soil combined with fewer windy days lets roots establish before next summer’s heat and dry spells set in. Trees and shrubs planted between late September and early November get a full season of root growth without fighting 90-degree afternoons or the worst of spring wind. Spring planting still works, but only after the average last freeze passes in mid-April, and young plants need extra watering through that first hot summer, regardless. One thing we watch closely on Panhandle properties: a warm stretch in March can trick homeowners into planting early, only for a late cold snap to set everything back. We hold off on tender perennials until soil temperatures stay above 50 degrees for two consecutive weeks.

Yes, and it’s worth planning around from the start rather than fixing later. The City of Amarillo’s Drought Contingency Plan can shift outdoor watering to an odd- and even-address schedule, typically two or three days a week, whenever Lake Meredith and the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority’s supply drops below set thresholds. That schedule makes zoned irrigation matter more here than in many Texas cities. Turf, shrub beds, and new plantings dry out at different rates, so putting them all on one zone usually means something gets overwatered while something else gets missed on a restricted day. We design new softscape installs with separate drip lines for beds and dedicated turf zones, and we lean on natives like honey mesquite and broadleaf milkweed that can coast through a skipped watering day without stress, something a lot of imported ornamentals simply can’t handle.

Amarillo soil looks fine on the surface, but a few inches down, many Panhandle yards hit a hard, chalky caliche layer that roots can’t push through, sitting beneath alkaline clay with a pH that often runs above 7.2. That combination is why a hole full of nice topsoil can still drain poorly. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension recommends breaking up compacted subsoil and working compost or expanded shale into the surrounding bed, not just the top few inches where most homeowners stop digging. On properties near the canyon rim and toward the eastern edge of the city, we’ve found caliche sitting closer to the surface than most people expect. A soil test before digging, something we run on every new bed installation, saves a plant that would otherwise sit in standing water after the next storm.

Whether you live in Amarillo, Bushland, Canyon, Channing, Dumas, Masterson, Panhandle, Umbarger, Wildorado, or a neighboring community, to get the most out of your landscape design, contact The Grounds Guys of Amarillo for professional softscaping. Amarillo, TX homeowners can rely on our team of expert landscapers for innovative and sustainable exterior property upgrade services for your yard’s living elements. Request a job estimate online, or give us a call today, and experience the difference a professional softscape design can make in your outdoor retreat.