Landscape Strategic Plan Committee Update

#3

Article submission by Kim Dwyer and Dara Sitter

The Landscape Strategic Plan (LSP) Team is pleased to update Residents on our activities in July. We understand the importance of continuously informing residents of team activities. This article follows up on the information shared in the July newsletter. In July we had one face-face meeting (7/7/2023) where we adopted our Guiding Principles and we initiated a review of initial conceptual designs for the Grandview/Lava Falls Park, Bright Angel Park, and the Saguaro Center Event Space.

Conceptual Deigns: Grandview/Lava Falls Park, Bright Angel Park, and the Saguaro Center Event Space

Wilder presented initial, rough concepts based on our feedback to the inspirational images they had presented in June. It was exciting to see how our feedback was clearly heard. The concepts start to give us options on how these spaces could look, responsibly examine the cost implications/water use/maintenance requirements and importantly how we can "stack functions" to aim to use these spaces in multiple ways. We reviewed water usage data and potential savings with proposed designs for Bright Angel, Lava Falls and the Saguaro Center common areas. Spoiler alert, our team is motivated to improve our community environment. These park areas are being re-envisioned to provide a richer experience for DWDM residents. The potential designs will accommodate multiple functions/users: nature seekers, informal meet-ups, dog walkers and add fun to our daily walks. Imagine the Saguaro Center Event Lawn transformed so that we can enjoy a variety of activities from big groups to intimate size groups, games or solitude and reflection. We want to create beautiful, useable, affordable common areas with Sonoran Desert beauty and more shade.

A lot more work is needed in future meetings to refine these concepts. Team members were assigned homework to thoughtfully provide offline feedback once they had a chance to think through the rough concepts and allow Wilder to refine the concepts for our August 4th meeting. Future meetings will focus on the 2 front entrances, and the streetscapes.

Guiding Principles: Development process & details

First, let’s tell you how the LSP’s guiding principles were defined. Since coming together as a team we discussed interests and concerns for our common areas landscape. We would like to have the landscape require less maintenance and water. We are advocating for our whole community and focused on advocating for our whole community and focused on how people and wildlife can enjoy the common areas. We want to include native plants to support local insects, pollinators and wildlife. Of course, ideas include protecting our property values and minimizing costs. We want to promote safety as well as be leaders in 55+ communities for being responsible desert dwellers. As we review survey results and talk with fellow residents we know that our common areas could be more functional and intentional for Resident enjoyment. These ideas turned into the following main categories:

Recurring costs/maintenance

Education/representation

Environmental

Property values/community integrity

Functionality

From here, principles to help guide design decisions were developed. Guiding Principles are easy to understand, do not conflict with one another, cannot be subjective and will be adhered to when making decisions. In other words, these principles create a roadmap for how the team will partner with the Landscape Design professional to develop a strategic plan for common area transformations.

Our Guiding Principles

1. Conserve Water. Use low water use plants and incorporate water harvesting.

2. Minimize Maintenance. Select and locate plant material to keep down maintenance requirements.

3. Inform. Provide monthly community updates on LSP progress via newsletter.

4. Educate. Promote understanding of our unique environment.

5. Plant native. Utilize the DWDM enhanced native plant palette for common area landscape improvements and conversions.

6. Design for everyone. Nature and people.

7. Consider Costs. Proposed landscape conversion projects will be funded from Reserve Funds and will have an aggregate payback period of 10 years or less.

8. Stack functions. Design to accommodate multiple uses and user groups.

For each of these Guiding Principles, we thought you might like to have us expand so you can better understand how the team has agreed to operate.

Conserve Water: Most of us in the desert Southwest are aware of our limited water resource and conserving wherever we can in our households and personal property. We also want to be water resourceful in our common areas

Minimize Maintenance. Proper landscape maintenance enhances the beauty of our community and so we want to make plant choices where constant pruning is reduced, sometimes allow the leaf litter to enhance the soil, and reduce/eliminate pesticide and herbicide use.

Inform: Life-long learning keeps us young(ish). We want to have a forum where ideas and information can be sharedto enhance our knowledge and experiences in the Sonoran Desert. Also, since many of us did not grow up in this desert, there may be opportunities to educate that can broaden people’s appreciation for different landscape design options.

Plant Native. Using native plants wherever we live allows all the living things that were present before we ‘decimated’ their environment for our personal pleasure (building our personal “nests”) to re-establish their habitats in our community. Imagine a world where you were only offered foreign things to eat—yummy and probably quite adventurous at times, but many of us recognize the value of that “tried and true” food that we enjoy and can rely on it nourishing our bodies with important nutrients. Insect, birds, snakes, rabbits and coyotes need their food, shade, hides-. And, by having a defined plant palette, we can strive holes, and nutrients too. We were attracted to the beauty of Dove Mountain when we chose to live here and hopefully can learn to continuously improve how we live together with the desert plants and animals. And, by having a defined plant palette, we can strive to ensure a consistent, cohesive landscape design across the common areas in our community.

Design for Everyone. Landscape designs can work for people and nature. This goes back to planting in the right place – creating shade, keeping plants out of our line of vision in roadways, placing thorny shrubs and pollinator-attracting-milkweeds away from walking paths.

Consider Cost. Costs are a big concern in everything we do. Reducing high water use and manual maintenance can save us money in the future. More importantly, proper landscaping will enhance our community and subsequently increase our property values which may benefit all of us. Remaining immobile is not an answer and may only compound our existing landscape problems.

Stacking functions. Think of our kitchen islands, which are certainly surfaces for food preparation, probably where meals are served, but also perhaps a place to display flowers, perhaps do art projects, etc. Similarly, if we stack functions in our common areas then our parks can enrich our lives more by providing space for us to relax, play, spend time with our pets, deepen our friendships while also providing habitat for wildlife.

Backhand Volleys Give the "Safe" Signal

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