Yard of the Month Award
Put your noteworthy landscape in the
limelight by entering it into our Yard of
the Month competition.
If you or someone you know has an eye-catching landscape, enter it in the Southern Nevada Water Authority's (SNWA) Yard of the Month competition. Yards can be nominated by anyone who appreciates a well-maintained landscape, including the homeowner, their friends or landscapers.
To nominate a deserving yard, simply submit a photo, along with the property address, and your contact information.
Judges are looking for visually appealing, functional landscapes that include a variety of water-efficient plants, trees and shrubs. Both front and back yards are eligible. The Yard of the Month Committee will review submitted photos and select a different winner each month.
Winners will receive a Yard of the Month sign for serious bragging rights, and may be featured in SNWA publications, shows and the website throughout the year. The winner will be notified before any public announcement is made.
Previous Landscape Awards winners are not eligible for the Yard of the Month competition.
For more details, call (702) 258-3836.
Winner of the Month
SNWA's Yard of the Month a cactus lover's haven
The October 2011 winners of the SNWA Yard of the Month competition, Richard and Carrie Field, converted their backyard to a cactus garden better suited to their retiree lifestyles.
Two years ago, the Fields decided their backyard – with its lawn, mulberry trees, and a garden of corn and tomatoes – had become too high-maintenance for their retiree lifestyle. So, to make it more user-friendly and simultaneously reduce their water bills, they removed those thirsty plants and replaced them with the ultimate low-maintenance, water-efficient landscape.
Now these days, when Carrie Field says “I like cactus,” she’s understating the obvious – the Las Vegas couple’s backyard is a showplace of spiny succulents, a corporeal compilation of cacti that earned them the SNWA's Yard of the Month designation for October.
In the couple’s backyard, gravel paths entice visitors to meander perilously close to myriad thorny flora including prickly pear, barrel, San Pedro, beavertail, Angel’s Wings and organ pipe cactuses, as well as Mexican fence posts, Eve’s Needles and other varieties. For good thematic measure, the landscape also includes several cholla and ocotillo.
“The problem was, the stuff we had in here before went to sleep in winter,” Richard Field said. “This stuff stays like this all year.”
It also saves them a lot of money. Richard said monthly water bills often reached $150 before they converted the landscape. Since then, they pay on average between $20 and $25 per month in the summer. Plus, the savings escalate in winter; according to Richard, “We don’t water anything from November to February.”
While the plant selection is perfectly suited to Southern Nevada’s arid climate, it may seem out of the ordinary for two people who grew up in far more lush surroundings.
“She’s from Wisconsin and I’m from Massachusetts,” Richard said. “But when we decided to convert the landscape, we wanted to go with a Western theme. We just wanted to mix in a little of the Old West.”
And that, they have done. Throughout the yard, cactuses rise up not only from rock-lined beds but also from Southwestern-style pots. Themed decorative items include a statue depicting a Native American chief, wagon wheels, a cow skull and various incarnations of the flute-playing deity Kokopelli.
Despite – or perhaps because of – the landscape’s seemingly harsh appearance, it provides the couple with a peaceful retreat. Carrie Field said hummingbirds are frequent visitors, and Richard said it requires much less upkeep than the previous landscape, making it perfectly suited to his retirement years.
Still, some human visitors have had close encounters of the thorny kind in the backyard. Richard said one of his relatives, intent on touching a cactus despite his warnings not to do so, ended up with a fistful of barbed spines.
“I have plenty of tweezers and magnifying glasses on hand,” he said. “That’s the life of a cactus gardener.”
Note: Las Vegas Valley Water District, Southern Nevada Water Authority and Springs Preserve employees, contract employees and family members are ineligible.
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