Landscaping in San Ygnacio

San Ygnacio is the oldest place on this list by a wide margin and the most architecturally distinctive. The portion of the community between the Rio Grande and US Highway 83 has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the San Ygnacio Historic District since 16 July 1973, and the Jesus Trevino Rancho, built in 1830, is described as the last standing collection of Mexican ranch vernacular architecture representing nineteenth-century settlement of the lower Rio Grande. Working around buildings of that age and status calls for restraint, and for keeping the planting in scale with what it sits against.

The material palette follows the architecture. Sandstone masonry, packed earth, gravel courts and shade from a small number of large trees is the historic pattern here, and it is also a genuinely good climate response: hard surface in light-toned stone, deep shade over the places people sit, and planting concentrated where water can reach it. A design that borrows from what is already standing tends to look right and to need less water than one imported from elsewhere.

Being on the river does not make the ground any wetter. The same reasoning applies here as anywhere else on this list: planted beds on drip, a lawn only where one genuinely gets used, and shade bought early rather than added later. The exposure along the river corridor is real, and mulch that stays put in wind matters more here than the choice between one shrub and another.

Planting is where most of the visual change gets delivered in a setting like this, and it is also the least disruptive part of a landscape project. Very little needs adding. What matters is that the irrigation goes in where it can reach roots without wetting old masonry, which in practice means drip lines and emitters rather than anything throwing water across a courtyard.