Pioneer Landscape Centers

About Pioneer Landscape Centers

The gates open early, before the heat, and the loaders start moving rock while the Santa Ritas are still a soft gray line to the south. Pioneer Landscape Centers is where a great many Tucson yards begin — decomposed granite, gravel and rip rap, boulders, sand, soil and mulch, sold by the yard and loaded into whatever a person drives up in. Much of this city's front-yard ground cover leaves this lot: rock raked smooth to the walk, a dry wash of river stone, a bed topped off so the plants can get on with it. A materials yard at dawn is a good place to stand, everything sorted into its own pile and the day's projects still hypothetical. By noon it is all on somebody's driveway, turning into a yard.