New Mexico Acequia Art

Acequia art as discovered throughout New Mexico...
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Natural acequias at Taos Town Hall

The first acequias, as discovered by the Spanish. Pueblo people used to use natural watercourses, damming them and creating ponds so they could control the flow of the natural watercourses.

Spanish acequia control at Taos Town Hall

In the second wave, Hispanic settlers installed acequias where they wanted them, within the limitations of the landscape, using natural swells and drainages in concert with a rich topographical understanding.

Acequia landscape at John Gaw Meem's Hall at Los Poblanos Inn in ABQ.

Eventually acequias became a part of our "natural" landscape, so subtle and taken for granted that they were almost forgotten, and many were allowed to break down irreparably.  But all is not lost! Communities throughout the state are working now to save their acequias and bring the water back to their fields.

Link to my Southwest Vernacular Zone & Arid Climatic Zone Design Guides

Click Here to see how my firm is using the techniques of the Southwest Architecture of the past to inform the design of land and architecture throughout the Southwest today.

Click Here to see how we are using data collected on the Arid Climate Zone to further determine how we will design that landscape or structure.

NM Gardens and Landscapes

Landscapes in the early days and up til the 1930s were nearly exclusively of harvested local plants. In the May, 1939 issue of New Mexico Magazine, Elizabeth Emerson writes that the first rule of planting was to make transplants “feel at home,” noting that “A cactus that has basked in the sun all its life isn’t going to be happy on the north side of the house under the drip from an eave.” Trees were transplanted in the fall, with a trench dug out around the tree to cut the horizontal roots, and then in spring the tree actually moved once new horizontal roots are forming.