Hi Lynn, love your adobe look walls in the front and your view in the back is wonderful. I'm glad you plan on preserving your view in the back and think it's great that you're thinking of water conservation. Since you're close to Santa Fe I hope you've been to High Country Gardens/Santa Fe greenhouse. I've been buying plants mail order from them for fifteen years and I understand they have some great waterwise landscaping at thier store in Santa Fe. In this month(Sept.) issue of Sunset magazine there is a Santa Fe landscape with adobe walls and a planter against the wall like what you are talking about. It does have a lot of plants in the ground also but it is a great backyard landscape by Wilder Landscaping. Your idea of all raised planters sounds very attractive and ambitious. I know you where conscerned about the heat situation with all that masonry. All your walls would act as a heat sink collecting the warmth during the day and then radiating it out at night. You would have cooler temperatures in the mornings from the walls and warmer temperatures at night. About the planters using less water I can't get around this idea. Planters because they are exposed to the hot summer air on the sides as well as from overhead actually heat up the soil more than in ground plantings. This makes them use more water not less. Of course you are talking about other issues too such as ease of planting and not having to deal with your rocky soil. Mulch is a great way to help keep soil cooler and use less water, rock mulch for more deserty type plants and organic mulch for others. And your shade trees will really cool things off for you too. If you use plants well adapted to your area you could really keep your water use down and not have to feel like you need all the planters.

Hi anngio, The members of our gardening forums are very informative and are always glad to share their knowledge. You might try posting your question on either the Square Foot Gardening forum or the Container Gardening forum. I hope this helps!

We are planning to eventually build out a deck around the other side of the house, but that won't happen for a while (there is a fire escape in the way. It's an old house, and that's a whole other story...). The lot is only ~50-55' wide at that point (pretty densely packed mostly single-family houses), so I think having too large (especially too wide) of a deck would be weird. The half patio/half deck gives a compromise of more useable space without having the deck as the whole outdoor space and running the width of the yard. Rereading your comment, though, are you suggesting to replace the stoop entirely and build the patio up to the stoop stairs? The two-stage plan would give us house-level decking and ground-level patio.

Definitely line the wood with plastic. It will last longer. I did that with my new raised beds last year even though I built them from 2x6 cedar. If you get very wet weather, you may find the raised beds won’t drain well since they are sitting on concrete. You could elevate them ever so slightly so that the bottom boards are not flush with the concrete and use landscape cloth to contain the soil. You may have a mess on your patio though that you’ll need to hose off. Unless you are growing carrots or daikon radish you may not need 18” - my beds are 12” deep (and nothing I grew last year had roots that went deeper, even my carrots). For the deep rooted veggies, just use some of the deep Rubbermaid totes (drill holes in the bottom) if esthetics are not that important. Or build some deeper large containers from lumber for those so they match your larger beds. My daugher’s 2x4 bed.