Landscaping in Pueblo, CO

What you Need to Know about Pueblo’s Climate

Pueblo sits in the high desert area terrain of Southern Colorado. It doesn’t get a lot of moisture during the year, so the plants that survive in the area have to be able to survive without a lot of moisture. During the winter, they will get snow, but due to the elevation of Pueblo. The good news it, because of Pueblo’s high elevation and overwhelmingly high number of days with sunshine they receive, every year, the snows won’t typically stay on the ground for that long. With the abundance of sunshine that Pueblo gets every year, but the lack of moisture and rainfall, this climate zone has a particular breed of plants and trees that are unique to the region.

So what are some of the most commonly found plants, trees, and shrubs in Pueblo?

What are the best looking species of these for landscaping your home?

What do you need to know about them in order to take care of them well, so your home and lawn can look spectacular, year round?

Shrubs in Pueblo

A) Benefits of Growing Shrubs

Shrubs can be beautiful compliments to any lawn, home, or even commercial area. Shrubs that grow and can live naturally in the Pueblo area have a lot of character, and come in a variety of shapes sizes, and textures that can add new zest and life to your landscaping.

The other benefits of native shrubs include having beautiful looking plants around your home that require little to no maintenance. If you are using shrubs that are native to the Pueblo climate, and can try to replicate the natural living conditions that they are used to (in the wild), on your lawn, you can create a brilliant and low-maintenance landscape. That is just going to mean less watering, weeding, mowing, and fertilizing for you, which can be nice. 

Another benefit of planting native Pueblo shrubs around your home is attracting local wildlife. You will see that many of the shrubs that we are going to take a look at are fruit bearing. If you like the idea of having fun birds, critters, and visitors to your home, you can attract some interesting wildlife, with the right set of shrubs.

B) Types of Shrubs

Let’s take a look at some of the most common and most beautiful shrubs that you can find in the Pueblo area.

1) Rocky Mountain Maple

The Rocky Mountain Maple prefers shaded areas around your home or residential area. It is characterized by smooth gray bark and red buds, that turn into a brilliant yellow in the fall. These plants are great for Pueblo because they don’t need a lot of sun to survive. 

2) Saskatoon Serviceberry

You can spot this shrub by its dull green leaves, with the contrast of its bright white flowers. It is a fruit bearing shrub with small redish-purple berries on the edge of its twigs. These are commonly eaten by small wildlife, so keep that in mind when you are thinking about using the Saskatoon Serviceberry. You may or may not want to attract creature visitors. 

3) Bearberry 

The Bearberry is a dense green shrub that also bears red-colored fruits. This is another shrub that brightens up your lawn in spring with gorgeous pink flowers. This shrub lives best on rich, drained soils. 

4) Fringed Sage

This shrub is long and slender, and has silver colored that will bloom in late summer and early fall. This is a really interesting, tall, and spindly shrub that could add some excellent contrast and personality to your home landscape. 

5) Mountain Big Sagebrush

The big mountain sagebrush is a close relative of the mountain sagebrush. This shrub is another tall and thin plant that tends to bloom from midsummer to early fall. 

6) Fendler Ceanothus

This is a spiny shrub that blooms gorgeous white flowers in late spring. This shrub is interesting because it also has red berries, but they grow in a triangular shape on the plant. 

7) True Mountainmahogany

This is a tall shrub, standing at four to six feet normally, but in the right conditions it can grow up to nine feet in height. It naturally has thick, dark, green leaves and it produces bright red flowers in the spring. It prefers to live on dry rocky sites, so this is another low-maintenance shrub. 

8) Parry Rabbitbrush

This shrub has white, soft, felt-covered stems that are growing out of the base of the shrub. It has beautiful clusters of yellow flowers when it bursts into bloom in late summer and early fall. 

9) Beaked Hazel

This is another green leafed shrub, but what stands out about it is that it has two nuts on its branches which are held in green, paper-like husks that cover them. 

Overview of Shrubs

Shrubs are wonderful because you can use them in such variety with your landscaping needs. You can contrast tall with short, bright with dark, and pair ones with that bloom in spring with others that bloom in fall so that you can have a colorful landscape, year round. 

Types of Trees in Pueblo

A) The Four Main Types of Trees in Pueblo

The first thing that you need to keep in mind about trees in the southern region of Colorado is that there are four main types of trees that are native to that area. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with some of these trees to get a good idea of vibe that they are going to bring to the commercial or residential area that you are going to place them in. 

1) Pines

Colorado pines are characterized by their

• Bundled needles that are held together by a thin sheath at the end
• Woody pine cones
• Thick scales on each of the pine cones
• The scales of the cones can often be protruding

Pines are typically full, beautiful looking trees that stay green year round. They are cone bearing, which gives them that nice, holiday look to them. 

2) Spruces

Spruces are another beautiful breed of tree that you will often find in Pueblo and other adjacent regions. Colorado spruce trees are characterized by there

• Single, sharp needs that are sticking out of the twigs of branches
• The twigs of the tree are rough, after the needles fall off. Not smooth
• The scales of spruce cones are thin and paper-lie
• The scales of spruce cones and the cones themselves always hang downward

3) Firs

Fir trees are yet another beautiful Pueblo native that is full of life and character. Some of the noticeable characteristics that you will find about fir trees are

• Flexible needs that are singular.
• Needles that are flat and blunt.
• Twigs that will have smooth, round-shaped scars, after the needles have fallen off
• Cones that always appear upright.
• That the center or the spine of these cones will actually hold to the branch, even after the scales of the cone have fallen off. 

4) Douglas Firs

Douglas firs are another luscious type of tree that you will commonly find in the Pueblo, high desert region. These lush, full-bodied trees can be characterized by there

• Single needles that lay flat and are very narrow toward the base, where they are attached to the twig
• Cones that hang downward
• Three-pronged bracts that give their cones a very distinguishable and unique look
  

B) All major species of trees in Colorado

Know that you have a good idea of what some of the most common types of trees look like in Pueblo, we will give you a brief breakdown of some of the most commonly found coniferous and deciduous trees within the region. 

Coniferous Trees in Pueblo

• Blue Spruce
• Bristlecone Pine
• Douglas Fir
• Engelmann Spruce
• Limber Pine
• Lodgepole Pine
• Pinon Pine
• Ponderosa Pine
• Rocky Mountain Juniper
• Subalpine Fir
• White Fir

Deciduous Trees in Pueblo

• Box Elder
• Chokecherry
• Gambel Oak
• Narrowleaf Cottonwood
• Peachleaf Willow
• Plains Cottonwood
• Quaking Aspen
• Rocky Mountain Maple
• Thinleaf Alder