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.

Another hybrid tea is Berolina --a brighter, fuller yellower color than Elina although Elina's creamy color highlighted with a lemony yellow in the center is quite lovely. Anyway, Berolina is supposed to be very disease-resistant also. My neighbor grows the Sunny yellow Knock Out you were considering, and I think hers is very attractive. The opening blooms fade considerably, but the plant as a whole with its combination of sunny yellow new blooms mixed with older blooms fading to a creamy color is absolutely charming to me. She has never complained about it blackspotting, so it must be all right. She certainly lets me know about which of her plants are causing trouble. If you like Sunny Knock Out, I say go for it! It may be the most easy care. Another yellow that many posters praise to the skies is Julia Childs--supposedly has good disease-resistance, but I have never seen one, so I dont' know for sure. But do check it out at helpmefind.com--helpful info. there, if you don't already know about that resource. Good luck. Kate

I learned that anything that has new foliage will get burned -- my large crepe myrtles are pitiful. Today, I noticed leaves on the river birches are black. No way I can cover tall trees. The most expensive investments, and those planted the longest suffered the most damage. Out of my control. Perennials, even newly planted ones did fine. Here's what I learned about how to cover: Take 3 bamboo or other plant stakes and make a tripod around a shrub. Drape a sheet over those like a tent. Pin the flapping edges with clothespins. Make sure the sheet doesn't touch the shrub. If necessary pin the sheet to the ground with landscaping (U shape) pins. Take 1 bamboo stake and place it next to a tender, short plant. Trim the bamboo to be about 6" off the top of the plant. Put a pillow case over the stake and cover the plant to the ground. Put heavy rocks on top of flaps of cardboard boxes to hold them on the ground. Putting a rock on top is great unless it rains and the box collapses (I had one of those). For long rows of shrubs like roses, I used a car cover draped over the fence. As it has elastic in the edges, I put rocks in those to keep it from flapping. I angled bamboo stakes toward the fence to keep the cover off the limbs. I also have two ventilated tarps that I use to cover plants when I haul them in the pickup truck. Those were the best covers and I bought them from a wholesale nursery that uses the same fabric to cover plants. DON'T: let a sheet touch a shrub. And finally -- it doesn't matter if my garden looks like a laundry or a group of ghoulish Halloween characters!

It's important to note that a mixture of lighting options allows us to select which ones we're going to use at any time, which in turn helps cut the BTUs and the bill. It's a mistake to wire a room to be very bright in all corners at all times when all that's necessary sometimes is one or two bulbs for reading the paper at the island. One of DH and my goals was to make selectable lighting. Our house tends to be quite dark in the interior even when the exterior walls are lighted by windows, so we tried to work this out. A couple new or improved doorway openings will help. We have planned a lot of new lighting--perhaps too much. But we will be able to leave much of the room dark-ish if we want it so. We like the term "task lighting" and have employed it. We spent a lot of time asking ourselves "what lighting will we want when we ____" and we tried out a lot of scenarios: walking through the space and returning again quickly; working for hours at the peninsula; eating at peninsula; eating at table; washing dishes; etc. We tried to avoid overkill by choosing a range of lighting types and sites. Example: a single 2-bulb ceiling light over the main corridor section alongside the kitchen, the "walk through and leave" light, which will also serve for "go get the salt in the kitchen" trips. But our decisions also required a lot of wall switches, esp. because we can enter the space through 5 different doorways. My wallet is glad DH was the electrician.