Construction Landscaping
It used to be that the city ended at the top of our road where the school is. Walking Rain Road dead-ended there, and gave way to a wide open stretch of gently hilly scrubland for half a mile to the highway. It was empty.
No more. When we moved here they had already begun clearing for a huge development that will fill the whole area. Six hundred homes, Santa Fe's second hospital complex, a retirement community, senior center, retail stores, a railrunner train station -- it's acres and acres huge, going all the way to the highway. Construction has been ongoing since we got here.
The hospital opens in September, and about 300 homes are already built and occupied. I walk through the new houses because our neighborhood's walking trails connect to the extensive trails all through the new development, and because there is always something to see with new construction going on constantly.
Especially the landscaping! I am stunned by what they have planted. The trees and shrubs and perennials and decorative gravel and drainage swales and contoured hills all went in before they built the houses.
This will be a huge development -- 600 homes -- and there are thousands of plants already installed. They all look spindly now, but when they grow, in just a few years, this will be such a green and leafy community.
The plant choices are spectacular, with a mixed variety of trees and shrubs. There are flowering fruit trees, crabapples, western maples, sycamores, conifers, oaks and so much more. Catmint, sages, potentilla, junipers, lavenders, grasses and roses, yarrows, and on and on.
The drainage swales and buffer areas are planted randomly, to give a naturalistic look. The streetsides are planted with repeating plants in structural lines, but with a wide variety of plant choices.
Sometimes repeating plants are in lines of threes or fives or sevens. Some are much longer lines of the same plant, but the plants are interesting, such as a long curve of grasses along the sidewalk which will be full of movement when they are tall and billowy.
With all the houses and sidewalks and hardscape, the repetition and use of lines of plants is actually soothing. It amazes me that complex and varied plantings have all gone in along the streets long before the house foundations are built.
It's hard to describe, or even show in pictures, how extensive this landscaping is. Newly planted greenery occupies every street, every sidewalk edge, every corner, every open area in this vast complex. Even the long access road that comes in from the other side, off the highway, has dozens of trees and ornamental grasses lining it.
True to Santa Fe style, there is no lawn anywhere. It's all gravel. But even with the gravel covering every inch of ground, the choices are interesting and varied. They mixed colors and textures and made it visually interesting.
Every single plant -- not just the big trees, but each shrub and flowering perennial and every little lavender and every last grass plug -- is on its own drip irrigation. Whenever I walk the neighborhood I see landscape trucks, the men working the plants alongside the construction workers hauling beams and roof tiles.
It will be interesting to see if this level of care persists over the years. Where are they getting their water? What are the homeowner association fees that cover this level of common area planting and watering and maintenance? The house prices are reasonable, but the fees must be steep.
The hospital and senior living and train station are being built by separate contractors, but the housing development is being constructed by Pulte, a national developer like Toll Bros. The houses themselves are awfully generic and tightly crowded. I find them very unattractive. They look like a mashup of southwestern and Italian, rather than classically Santa Fe adobe style. Or worse, they look like an Albuquerque subdivision. That's not a compliment.
At least the houses are low slung, and with the contoured hills and curving roads, the whole massive development is barely seen from our neighborhood or even from the highway. It all sits below the horizon, pretty well concealed. The three story hospital is visible sitting on a rise a little further away, but even it blends in to the hills okay. When the trees gain height and the shrubs fill in, from afar the area will simply look like a green bosque tucked in low hills.
But there is no disguising that right now it is a vast construction site just beyond us. The noise has not been bad; the trucks have to access the site from another direction, so our neighborhood remains quiet, but the dust kicked up by grading has been terrible at times.
And yet I remain greatly impressed. Not with the houses, which are crowded and kind of ugly. And not with the scale and scope of such a huge development at the edge of our community (although I like the idea that I'll be able to walk to the hospital if I need to). But the landscaping, oh my.
It is abundantly extensive, beautifully thought out, creative, visually interesting, healthy, and it clearly takes pride of place in this vast sea of construction.
No more. When we moved here they had already begun clearing for a huge development that will fill the whole area. Six hundred homes, Santa Fe's second hospital complex, a retirement community, senior center, retail stores, a railrunner train station -- it's acres and acres huge, going all the way to the highway. Construction has been ongoing since we got here.
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| Starting construction on the hospital last year |
The hospital opens in September, and about 300 homes are already built and occupied. I walk through the new houses because our neighborhood's walking trails connect to the extensive trails all through the new development, and because there is always something to see with new construction going on constantly.
Especially the landscaping! I am stunned by what they have planted. The trees and shrubs and perennials and decorative gravel and drainage swales and contoured hills all went in before they built the houses.
 |
| This is a buffer zone park, looking back at the homes in our established neighborhood, from the new development. |
This will be a huge development -- 600 homes -- and there are thousands of plants already installed. They all look spindly now, but when they grow, in just a few years, this will be such a green and leafy community.
 |
| Every section -- and there are multiple "neighborhood" sections -- has land dedicated to wide areas of plants. |
The plant choices are spectacular, with a mixed variety of trees and shrubs. There are flowering fruit trees, crabapples, western maples, sycamores, conifers, oaks and so much more. Catmint, sages, potentilla, junipers, lavenders, grasses and roses, yarrows, and on and on.
The drainage swales and buffer areas are planted randomly, to give a naturalistic look. The streetsides are planted with repeating plants in structural lines, but with a wide variety of plant choices.
 |
| Flowering shrubs used in repetition. |
Sometimes repeating plants are in lines of threes or fives or sevens. Some are much longer lines of the same plant, but the plants are interesting, such as a long curve of grasses along the sidewalk which will be full of movement when they are tall and billowy.
 |
| This long line of grasses will become wavy and kinetic when they grow. |
With all the houses and sidewalks and hardscape, the repetition and use of lines of plants is actually soothing. It amazes me that complex and varied plantings have all gone in along the streets long before the house foundations are built.
 |
| There are houses on the right side of this street, but construction hasn't started on the left. And yet the trees and lavenders and shrubs and grasses are already planted. |
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| Once the area is cleared and graded for building, trees and ponds and landscaping go in, well before any houses. The area behind this pond will be rows of houses soon. |
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| Even where nothing is happening -- behind the silt fence screen they haven't even graded yet -- there are big trees and shrubs already installed. |
It's hard to describe, or even show in pictures, how extensive this landscaping is. Newly planted greenery occupies every street, every sidewalk edge, every corner, every open area in this vast complex. Even the long access road that comes in from the other side, off the highway, has dozens of trees and ornamental grasses lining it.
 |
| A road through the development with a median strip planted, of course, with multiple trees and groundcovers, and varied gravel. |
True to Santa Fe style, there is no lawn anywhere. It's all gravel. But even with the gravel covering every inch of ground, the choices are interesting and varied. They mixed colors and textures and made it visually interesting.
 |
| It's all very structural and rigid, but the use of contour and texture and gravel colors softens the repetition, and when the plants grow in, it will look great. |
Every single plant -- not just the big trees, but each shrub and flowering perennial and every little lavender and every last grass plug -- is on its own drip irrigation. Whenever I walk the neighborhood I see landscape trucks, the men working the plants alongside the construction workers hauling beams and roof tiles.
It will be interesting to see if this level of care persists over the years. Where are they getting their water? What are the homeowner association fees that cover this level of common area planting and watering and maintenance? The house prices are reasonable, but the fees must be steep.
 |
| The use of different gravel colors and sizes is inventive. Despite using thousands of plants, there are also areas where rock hardscape provides the visual interest. |
The hospital and senior living and train station are being built by separate contractors, but the housing development is being constructed by Pulte, a national developer like Toll Bros. The houses themselves are awfully generic and tightly crowded. I find them very unattractive. They look like a mashup of southwestern and Italian, rather than classically Santa Fe adobe style. Or worse, they look like an Albuquerque subdivision. That's not a compliment.
 |
| Most look like this, vaguely "southwestern Tuscan" and not to my taste at all. |
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| A few homes interspersed among the faux villa styles are classic Santa Fe adobe styles like this. |
At least the houses are low slung, and with the contoured hills and curving roads, the whole massive development is barely seen from our neighborhood or even from the highway. It all sits below the horizon, pretty well concealed. The three story hospital is visible sitting on a rise a little further away, but even it blends in to the hills okay. When the trees gain height and the shrubs fill in, from afar the area will simply look like a green bosque tucked in low hills.
But there is no disguising that right now it is a vast construction site just beyond us. The noise has not been bad; the trucks have to access the site from another direction, so our neighborhood remains quiet, but the dust kicked up by grading has been terrible at times.
And yet I remain greatly impressed. Not with the houses, which are crowded and kind of ugly. And not with the scale and scope of such a huge development at the edge of our community (although I like the idea that I'll be able to walk to the hospital if I need to). But the landscaping, oh my.
It is abundantly extensive, beautifully thought out, creative, visually interesting, healthy, and it clearly takes pride of place in this vast sea of construction.
All photos were taken on my walk on an unusually cloudy day in Santa Fe, with my iPhone. Apologies.
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