Question
Hi Kathy.

I know you specialize in backyard design with children.. And I have a similar question pertaining to backyards with children of the 4 legged variety. ;)

My fiance and I are moving into our first home. It has a HUUUUGE (by my downtown Phoenix standards) backyard that is about 100 feet deep and 60 feet wide. It is completely dirt. Because it is difficult to maintain grass in arizona, we wanted to just lay down decorative rock, figuring it would be easy to keep up and there was little the dogs could do to mess it up. Then we found out how expensive it was. WAYYY out of our budget. We have champagne taste on a dirtwater budget. Do you have any suggestions for alternative style backyard covers? As in not rock or grass? We would leave it just dirt, but then for the few monsoons AZ gets each year the dogs would have mudbaths.

Thank you for any help!
zip 85003
I'm not sure the directiopn yard is facing
Preferred style: economic, minimal to zero upkeep.

Answer
Hi Haley,

Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do. Stones would be a poor idea. The first reason, you've already cited which is cost. But, there are other reasons as well. Eventually, over time even stones wear down and dirt starts to move through and over it - even with using landscape fabric.

If you can't invest in grasses or other types of natural groundcovers there is not much you can do.

Here, in Virginia, we have very clay soils which means extremely hard soil in the summers and extremely wet, muddy soil in the spring. We have grappled with a similar problem.

Personally, our solution is going to be drainage. So, at least when our Golden Retriever is back there he doesn't come into the house a muddy mess. We also chose to drain so we could get more out of our backyard year round. Building a drainage system in our backyard isn't as complicated as we thought so we are giving it a try.

You may want to ask a landscape contractor the details about how to go about doing this in Arizona. The geography is very different on the east coast where I am familiar with.

Good luck,
Kathy