Decorating Indoors

Stark Contrast Landscaping is passionate about landscaping, remodels, and helping you increase the value of your home. We offer our customers full landscape redesigns, installing/removing trees, routine maintenance, and helpful seasonal tips to keep your yard vibrant.

But we get just as excited about dolling up the inside of your home, as well. Sticking with our theme, from our last blog, we wanted to show you a few of our favorite ways to decorate your home with succulents.
Each succulent is beautiful on their own. Installing wooden tiered shelves can serve as the perfect succulent holders. This creates a clean look indoors, while still adding the freshness of the outdoors into your home. (You can purchase these exact, half moon wooden shelves, on Etsy) When thinking of how to decorate the inside of your home, be create!

These unique succulent vases (To the right) are even perfect for creating a beautiful centerpiece at your dinning table. Attaching them to the ceiling will allow you to hang multiple succulents at different heights. Creating decorations like this, in your home, is bound to make your home a "pin worthy" humble abode!

We are excited to announce that we will be posting a video of simple DIY projects you can do at your home. Keep checking back with us to find out more adorable ideas to make your house a home!

For more information on how we can help service your home and yard, please contact us today: 

(480) 277-1993 

We are excited to help you create your dream home! 

Succulent 101

Tips for growing, planting, watering and finding new project inspirations

You may have heard that it's impossible to kill succulents. While they are rather forgiving, there are still certain directions that you should follow. We will provide you with some tips and tricks to keep your succulent thriving. Once we explain how to care for them, we will give you some design inspirations to spark your creative side! But first, lets talk about how to care for these beautiful plants.

Lets Start With Soil: 

"Succulents are in the cactus family and prefer a very well drained soil.  If their roots are sitting in soggy dirt they will rot and kill your plant (oh no!). " The best option is choose a soil mix designed specifically for succulents, or even one that is made for cactus. Knowing that your succulents can't survive in a large amount of water, it is best to plant them in a pot that has holes in the bottom to drain the water. We aren't saying you can't pot them, they just takes a little more attention. Typically the rule is, it is better to underwater than overwater! Which leads us to our next tip!

How To Water Your Succulents: 

We already established soggy roots are a no-no, as are dry roots. Both extremes have the potential of stopping the growth of your succulent, or it could possibly kill it, altogether. To figure out how much water your succulents need, depends on many factors:

• Outdoors:  water evaporates quicker outside the hotter it is, and slower on indoor plants
• Humidity:  succulents can pull water from the air so a more humid environment (indoors or out) requires less watering
• Sunshine:  sunshine in the morning is best (south facing window for indoors), while too much can burn your plants
• Soil:  in a gritty, well-draining soil your plants need to be watered more often than in a standard potting soil

A fairly unknown fact about succulent water is many don't know that a drought followed by a good soaking will make your succulent thrive! Again, what defines a "good soaking" is dependent on the type of soil and how fast the water drains. Look HERE for more water techniques!

We encourage people to use succulents to liven up any desert landscape because they can flourish in rocks. Purchase your soil mix and take time to figure out the amount of water your succulent needs, then you ensure a long lasting succulents!

For more information on growing, planting, or landscaping, please contact us at STARK CONTRAST LANDSCAPING.

Or call us today at: 480.277.1993

Pin-Worthy Landscape DIY's

We decided to dedicate this weeks blog post to DIY projects that you and your family can easily do. Stark Contrast Landscaping does more than trim trees and cut grass! As a matter of fact, we focus on design aesthetics and curb appeal as well. One way to do this is by spending a little time doing some "do-it-yourself" projects. We will be focusing on two ways utilize standard gardening pots for a unique alternative purpose.

The first one it a lovely idea for your front yard - you can place these close to your curb or by your homes entry way. Purchase your desired size of gardening pots and by the potting plates to match. Then select your color scheme, preferably something that will stand out, and then paint your pots! You can use a spray paint designed to withstand different weather conditions, or regular paint that you brush on. Once that is complete, freehand or stencil the numbers of your home address on the pots so it can be seen from the street. This is a fun and creative way to change up the normal home address numbers that are found on your curb!

Second on the list is this colorful bird bath! If you have lived in Arizona for any amount of time, you know that the summer heat can be very grueling. We found that this is a fun and inventive way to provide your neighborhood birds the ability to take a bath and grab a drink! You simply add the amount of pots you need in order to reach the desired height for your bird bath. You then place a large potting plate on top. If you don't have little kids that can knock this over, you will not need to cement the top portion of it to the stacked pots. (If you do have kids, we recommend cementing the top portion to the pots below it.) The design we are displaying is obviously very colorful and would make a statement to any yard - if this doesn't go with your style, you always have the option of paining each piece with a natural color tone. Help out the birds and lend them a cute place to bathe!

These are fun ways to liven up your yard and bring a unique spin on the average gardening pot! If you need help with any other landscaping design elements, we'd be happy to offer our visual design opinion. For more information or to receive a quote, visit us at STARK CONTRAST LANDSCAPING, LLC or call us now at: {480} 277-1993