This astonishing landscape design was developed by the homeowner in an upscale neighborhood that is under strict watering limitations. She told me she had no art training so I think of her as a self-taught landscape designer, sort of a “Grandma Moses of garden planning”.
Encouraged by the water department, this homeowner replaced her lawn with drought tolerant plants and dozens upon dozens of garden ornaments. To one side there is a long row of ornamental grasses.
Circles within circles seems to be her main design motif. At night lights surround these plant beds. See below.
Instead of planting an ordinary selection of cactus and succulents, she let her imagination take flight by adding blue bottles, wind spinners and, at night, lights encircling the plant beds. And, from the empty pots and bags of mulch still stacked around the garden it appears she isn’t done yet.
She inspired me to check out garden ornaments on Amazon and I found this attractive wind spinner and some interesting solar lighted lilies.
What do you think of this garden?
The homeowner’s love of wind spinners is quite obvious.
Among all the cactus and succulents is this tropical plumeria tree. It requires more water than most of the other plants. All the plants in this garden appear very healthy.
While the blue bottles are the most conspicuous visually, there are actually many more wind spinners in the garden.
When the homeowner/designer said she had added lights to the garden and invited me to come back after dark to see it, this is what I saw. It is a quite subtle light display.
It is a subtle change but one day you notice that the leaves on one of your shrubs (or maybe a tree) are turning yellowish and as far as you know yellow leaves are not natural to this plant–even in Fall. You look closer and see that the veins in the leaves are still green as you can see in this photo.
Well, what you are looking at is chlorosis, a kind of iron-deficiency in plants that inhibits the development of chlorophyll, the stuff that makes green plants green and keeps them alive and growing. It is most common in plants grown in alkaline soils with high pH.
The problem begins in the dirt, the soil in your garden. Even in hot dry desert-like gardens there is ample iron in the soil, but unfortunately plants can’t access it. The technical causes for the iron/soil problems read like a chemistry textbook so I will skip it, but advise you to take steps to reverse the condition before it gets worse. After all, you don’t want to lose an expensive plant or tree, especially to a plant problem that is curable.
What you need to do at this time of year is apply a foliar spray of iron chelate (pronounced “key-late”) to the leaves of your plant. It is available online and probably at a local big box gardening or hardware store for less than $15. It may take repeated applications of the spray to green up your shrub again.
But even a foliar spray is a temporary solution, effective for two or three months.
The next steps are to
Test the pH of the soil around the plant with chlorosis using an inexpensive pH testing kit which you can easily find online. You may want to test other parts of your garden too. (In fact, you may want to check the pH every year!)
Add chelated-iron fertilizer to the soil around the plant or tree IN SPRINGTIME(not Fall). This is a longer term solution than the foliar leaf spray.
Dig in extra amounts of organic materials in the Fall and the Spring to balance the soil in your plant beds to a neutral 7 pH. If you can get it to 6.5, all the better. Plants love 6.5 pH! Keeping a high level of organic materials in and around the plants is a long term solution to chlorosis.
BTW, if you have a Fan Tex Ash tree the leaves on it will naturally turn yellow in Fall. It is one of the very few trees for hot dry gardens that has lovely Fall color. (Of course, there are the aspen trees that grow in the mountains around the deserts and also become golden in Fall.)
CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE
In an abrupt about-face the Australians tossed out their Prime Minister who announced last week that keeping fuel prices low was more important than meeting Paris Accord climate change limits. Among the first things the new PM stated was that climate change came first–particularly in light of the severe drought that is impacting ranchers in New South Wales, outside of Sydney.
For a few weeks now I have been seeing images of luscious vegetables on my Twitter feed. Big juicy-looking red tomatoes, golden orange carrots with lively green leaves, a basket of potatoes with earth still on them, and, of course, deep green heads of lettuce and more lettuce. Interestingly enough no one has posted brag-photos of kale, the worst so-called vegetable on the planet. Maybe the kale insanity is passing.
These organic red and yellow grape tomatoes were delicious in a fresh lettuce salad. Simple to make and very healthy too.
The truth–a sad truth–is that trying to grow vegetables of any kind in a hot dry garden is a next to impossible unless you are willing to invest a lot of money and water into the effort. The two people I know who tried it several years ago in Las Vegas–one was particularly interested in growing her own tomatoes–used shadecloth as a tent to shield the plants from direct sunlight. The plants were in raised beds and pots, not in the native soil. And I’m not even going to guess what their water bills were. For both these gardeners the results were not satisfying. Neither repeated the effort the following year.
There is, however, a commercial tomato grower in Las Vegas, but the plants are grown hydroponically in an absolutely controlled environment for his primary customers, the casinos’ kitchens.
Ratatouille anyone? There were also tomatoes, onions, peppers, zucchini, and garlic in this market booth.
In hopes of being able to suggest an alternate to (not) growing vegetables outdoors in a hot dry garden, earlier today I checked out equipment for hydroponic gardens. It turns out that it’s very expensive and would not be a very practical or economical way to grow veggies for a family.
As the upsurge in organic farming continues and the distribution of organic vegetables increases into every big box grocery store in the U.S., a better choice than growing one’s own fresh vegetables is to buy organic ones. Even better, buy them at a farmers’ market so you are as close to the earth as you can get without getting your hands dirty.
(The photos in this post were taken yesterday at a farmer’s market where each farmer had to certify that they grew the vegetables themselves.)
And keep in mind that fruit trees–apricots, peaches, plums and nectarines–will grow beautifully in hot dry gardens. Grapes, pomegranates, and figs will also thrive. So instead of a vegetable plate from your own garden, plan to make a fruit salad!
Note: It’s too early and too hot to plant a fruit tree in your hot dry garden. Wait until it cools down.
Climate Change Update
Not good news. It is bad enough that Trump pulled out of the Paris Accords, but today, August 20, 2018, Australia pulled out of the limits set up in that agreement. The government spokesman said that keeping the price of fuel low took priority over meeting the temperature limits in the Accord. This is a surprising decision considering the horrible drought that is afflicting ranching and cattle growers in New South Wales
UPDATE: That Prime Minister lost his job and the new PM has declared that environmental issues are more important than fuel costs.
Just after I earned my Master Gardener certification I saw a low water usage succulent garden while visiting Long Beach, California. It really stood out because most of the gardens in the area, less than 3 blocks from the edge of the Pacific Ocean, showed a strong tropical plant influence. Well, tropicals with roses.
Many gardens near the ocean in Long Beach used to be filled with tropical plants and roses. A small patch of grass as a “front lawn”was common.
Back then there were no significant water restrictions and most homes had small lawns in front. Long Beach today has some of the most rigorous water restrictions in Southern California and it shows in the changed gardens.
A couple of weeks ago I was back in the same neighborhood and saw that drought-tolerant succulent/cactus garden again and took a photo thinking that I would show the change and maturation of the plants over the years. At home on my computer I looked closer and recognized that many plants in the garden now are almost entirely different from the ones back in 2003.
I realized that I had always thought of drought tolerant succulent gardens as being “eternal”–requiring almost zero upkeep and lasting forever. Not true–as this garden in its 2 incarnations shows:
Succulent garden BEFORE 2003:
This garden in 2003 had the tropical giant bird-of-paradise (Strelitzia nicolai), on the left, but most of the other plants are drought tolerant succulents and cacti. The reason I never published this photo on Hot Gardens is because of the many New Zealand Flax (Phormium tenax) plants. These upright grass-like plants seem to simply die in hot, desert-like conditions which is too bad because they come in many sizes and great colors ranging from red to green to black and some nifty striped ones. Agave plants make up another important upright feature in this garden.
SUCCULENT GARDEN AFTER 2018:
The giant bird-of-paradise plants are still in the garden, but now they have tall trunks leading up to the leaves at the top. Gone are the blue-green iceplants (Delosperma) that lined the sidewalk as are the New Zealand Flax plants. The Agaves have survived. And there are some tall tree-like plants in the parking strip that appear to be new. (Sorry I don’t know the names of them.) It is, in a way, the same garden only different. And to be honest, I really like the 2003 version of this garden much better.
For months now in 2018 the daily high air temperature has been above 90 degrees (F) (32C) which means that plants in hot dry gardens in the Northern Hemisphere have gone into summer dormancy. Even drought-tolerant plants and natives just hunker down and try to survive until Fall when the air and earth cool down. (One of the few summer bloomers is the Crape Myrtle tree, shown above.)
As your garden’s best friend and caretaker, you should water the plants regularly, but do not fertilize the plants in your arid garden in an attempt to make them bloom or grow. They are thirsty at this time of year but not hungry now so deep irrigation is best. They do not want to grow. They do not want to produce seeds. And only a few bloom during summer dormancy phase.
Blooming color in summer
Crape Myrtle blooms in hot pink and white, both shown here. They also have paler shades of pink and even one with lavender blossoms. Best of all they love the heat!
My absolute favorite of the summer bloomers is the hot pink Crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), a native of India and China that thrives all across the southern U.S. in both dry and damp climates. By nature the Crape Myrtle prefers acidic soil, not the alkaline soils of the American West. In the South where the soil is acidic and it rains in summer, the Crape myrtle grows to 20+ feet tall. In the very dry hot Southwest, the trees bloom beautifully but rarely reach that height.
If you are planning to plant a Crape Myrtle tree this fall after the weather and earth cool off, be sure to add a lot of organic materials to the soil around it and water the root ball thoroughly–soak it through–before it goes into the ground to encourage good root growth. It’s a good idea to mulch around the tree every year so it remains happy and blooming every midsummer.
Climate Change Update
During this last month in the summer of 2018, people in Spain, Japan, and countries around the world experienced record-breaking temperatures of 117 degrees (F) (47 Celsius) and higher. Off the coast of La Jolla, California, the usually cool Pacific Ocean temperature was 78 degrees which is 10 degrees above normal. At the southern end of Florida, the water temperature reached 98F (36 C) Some fish, of course, can swim away from uncomfortable temperatures, but underwater plants and slow moving and non-moving animals are stuck and may die out.
Water once trickled out of the top of this solar-powered fountain. As water restrictions increased the fountain was turned off. Here flowers cascade around it. To see how it looks in 2018 go here.
In Mexico, just south of Tijuana, the highways are lined with semi-improvised shops – at least they were the last time I was there several years ago. In almost every one of these shops cast concrete garden fountains were for sale. Some were two-level; some three-level; all had elaborate decorations. But I suspect that the never-ending drought conditions across California and the U.S. Southwest have forced those garden fountain fabricators to turn to making other garden ornaments. Benches, perhaps, or concrete angels.
Drought conditions also have forced many people who purchased a fountain in Mexico or their neighborhood garden shop to turn them off as urban water restrictions increase. So it is time to put those fountains and the shallow pools that surround them to another use as raised flower beds. Cascading flowers, obviously, replace cascading water.
The photo at the top of this page gives you one example. The solar-powered fountain has been turned off and colorful and sturdy coneflowers, daisies, California poppies, and black-eyed Susans (Echinacea) spill over the sides of the raised bed around it. This design works best when the fountain is relatively plain.
(In my last post you can see how this fountain area has changed again as the drought has continued. In the current version of the fountain at the entrance to Arlington Garden in Pasadena, the colorful flowering plants have been replaced with low water usage, mounding plants that do not bloom abundantly. The fountain still isn’t flowing but an inch of water has been added to the basin for use by birds and small animals.)
This fountain never has had water bubbling over the sides. It has always been used as a planter for succulents, which need regular hand watering.
Arlington Garden also has a good example of how to convert a three-level fountain into a very attractive planter. Instead of plants to spill over the sides, this one is planted with succulents some of which trail over the edges and all of them can survive in relatively shallow soil.
Plants like the Coneflowers or Lantana would not work because their roots need deeper soil than is possible in a shallow fountain basin. The succulents, of course, need to be watered to survive. They may need a daily or every-other-day splash of water. I especially like the blue-green gravel mulch around the base and in the basins. It is suggestive of flowing water.
And my final suggestion about a waterless fountain: simply leave it in place as a garden ornament. Most of the fountains I’ve seen are very attractive on their own.
As climate change brings more drought and more water restrictions to gardens in arid climates, many gardeners have closed down their backyard garden fountains and small koi ponds.
Years ago they turned off the water to this solar fountain in Arlington Garden, Pasadena. Now they have begun to keep some water in it because the garden has become an official wildlife habitat.
By doing this, however, wildlife such as birds, animals, and insects which have for their entire lives relied on that fountain or that little pond for their daily drinks of water are suddenly cut off. By this one change the very attractive habitat you created with your garden abruptly becomes a threat to their lives.
The birds, of course, may be able to fly to another source of water. Deer will wander away. Animals such as rabbits or gophers or mice may scurry off to another water spot or simply die out. And insects are likely to decide to join you inside your home.
So the issue of water in your garden becomes a real dilemma. Do you turn your garden into an utterly dry desert garden which is watered only infrequently and let wildlife find other solutions? Or keep your fountain running for at least part of the day?
Or perhaps you make a third choice which is to provide shallow pools of water for the animals which have made their homes in your garden. This would be my recommendation.
One example of a very shallow pool of water for birds and animals is in the photo on this page where a former fountain in a public garden has be converted to a wildlife water station with about an inch of water in it.
Today I saw another example on my Twitter feed – which I can’t find now—from a gardener in the U.K. where a ferocious drought has afflicted the eastern part of this normally damp, rainy, wet country. She had used a broad shallow dish/pot with no drainage hole in the bottom. Then added a handful of large stones in it as perches for birds. Water came next. It was less than one inch deep. While birds prefer to drink from trickling water, I’m sure this mini-pond could be a lifesaver. A variation on this is using a plastic plant saucer with rocks in it.
I’d suggest that you check the water every day when you water the plants you have in pots. In 90+ Fahrenheit (32+ Celsius) the water in your wildlife survivor mini-pond may evaporate by mid or late afternoon.
I’ll get back to the topic of waterless fountains in my next post. It was after I saw what was going on at Arlington Garden, the photo above, that I decided to write about water and wildlife first.
CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE: A bit of important trivia from the weather website: it has been 90+ Fahrenheit north of the Arctic Circle in the summer of 2018! As I update this post in 2023, the temps at the the Arctic ocean have only increased and ice is almost completely disappearing.
Visit my author’s site to see books I’ve written and read a chapter of the children’s book free
In the center of a circular driveway the homeowner planted a fountain of Pampas Grass to “rise up and fall” over the edges of the planting bed in a home in Las Vegas.
Fountains in the U.S. Southwest have almost become things of the past because of water restrictions. If however you have a yearning for that “falling and spilling over” effect you can create a simulated fountain using plants instead of cascading water.
I have two suggestions, but in this post I’ll start with the Pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) fountain, pictured at the top. (Avoid planting the other Pampas Grass (Cortaderia jubata) which is an invasive weed. Given certain conditions–usually by a stream–it self-seeds and spreads wildly forcing out native plants.)
Here is how to make this waterless green fountain
You will need a raised garden bed for this design which you can create with stacked stones (real or artificial) or poured concrete as a containing wall. Ideally, it should be at least 8 to 10 feet long by 6 to 8 feet wide by about 1 foot high, but can, of course, be smaller.
Now for the planting: mound good garden soil in the bed where you want your “fountain” located. The mound of soil in the center should be somewhat higher than the soil nearer the edge of the “fountain”. Plant 4 or 5 Pampas grass plants on this raised bed including one at the center. Leave a generous space between the plants. Pampas grass grows very very fast to 8 to 10 feet tall in one season and has a graceful green arching shape – as if it is green “water” rising up and spilling back down to the earth. Toward the end of summer the grass will produce tall white plumes which add another 6 to 8 feet in height to your new grassy fountain.
If you want to use Deer Grass instead of Pampas Grass, here is an example of how it might look. There is a better photo of Deer Grass here.
If you don’t have the large space required for a Pampas grass fountain, try doing a smaller version with Deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens) or red Fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum). The effect with red Fountain grass will not be quite the same, however because it doesn’t naturally have the “spill over” effect. (Avoid white fountain grass, also known as Buffel Grass, a highly invasive African species.)
The care of your new waterless fountain
Pampas grass is drought tolerant in the extreme. It needs almost no water at all. Once a year, in late Fall, Pampas grass should be cut back to 18 inches in height. The grass blade edges are very sharp so be sure to wear sturdy gloves and a heavy long sleeve shirt.
This desert willow is surrounded by agaves in a Las Vegas garden. These plants receive no additional watering during the year. Both desert natives thrive on the meager water that falls from the sky.
Monsoon rainfall season has arrived in the Arizona, Nevada, California — all over the U.S. Southwest. The infrequent, but intense, summer rains sweeping up from the Gulf of Mexico are, however, nothing like the drenching daily downpour of the South Asia monsoon that trapped that young soccer team in a flooded cave in Thailand. The danger here is of hikers being caught in a flash flood in a canyon or cars being swept away on a road.
On the other hand our summer rainfall cloudbursts can add life to your garden if you take steps to retain part of the water falling on your property. (Except in Colorado. More about this below.)
1. The simplest method to capture rain in your garden is to dig shallow circular trenches or basins around your trees and shrubs. The basin edge should be at least 3 feet from the tree trunk and not too deep. Be careful not to damage the root crown at the base of the trunk or the roots of the tree.
2.While most flower beds are raised — hopefully because you add a thick layer of organic mulch twice a year — you may want to consider digging small basins in the center of the beds to capture as much rainfall as possible. The organic material in your flower beds will also retain more water than ordinary desert soil.
3. Another technique is to dig or drill narrow, deep holes–1 or 2 feet in depth–spaced apart in a circle around trees and shrubs just below the ends of the branches. These holes will fill with rain which will then seep into the soil. You may want to consider dropping coarse gravel or small rocks into the holes to keep them from collapsing. These holes are also good for deep watering trees and shrubs to encourage growth of deeper, stronger roots. And deeper roots mean more stability when winds howl across the landscape in Spring and Fall.
Now for the technique that is more expensive–it’s called infiltration–and it is a problem in Colorado. That State by law owns all the water rights within its borders and individual citizens cannot retain water on their property without permission from the State because it would be denying that water to another person downstream who may have already obtained water rights from the state. And they actually prosecute people for this! IMPORTANT: THIS LAW IN COLORADO HAS BEEN CHANGED AND IT’S NOW OK FOR HOMEOWNERS TO HARVEST RAINFALL FOR USE ON THEIR OWN PROPERTY.
California has passed a law to encourage homeowners to build cisterns on their own property.
Okay…back to saving summer rainfall.
4.Infiltration involves digging a sizeable pit on your property which will receive water from rain runoff from your roof. This means installing rain gutters and downspouts, which are uncommon on desert homes. The pit must be lined with a strong, permeable material and have an overflow to channel excess water safely away from your home. Water will seep from the pit into the surrounding soil, thus “irrigating from underground”. If you decide to go this route, be sure to get a licensed soils engineer to draw up plans to avoid a disastrous collapse.
5.Now for the last suggestion: channel the roof rainfall through downspouts into 50 gallon (or larger) plastic containers. This is a modern variation on the old time cistern, a sealed and lined pit to hold water for later use. You can use the water for irrigation later.
And in between summer monsoon downpours remember to water your plants in pots. They are like animals in a zoo: you have to feed them every so often and water them daily.
The first succulent I ever bought. Love the colors.
It is too hot for outdoor gardening now so I decided to write about hanging gardens.
Hanging gardens usually evoke one of 2 images: the moss-lined baskets with macramé hangers that were planted with common house vines and hung from living room ceilings back in the 1970s…
Or the legendary and long-vanished Hanging Gardens of Babylon where palm trees and other plants grew on terraces and rooftops in scorching hot summer weather in what is now Iraq. (Their irrigation system must have been terrific!)
These days there is a third option: smallish succulents planted as a vertical garden to hang on a wall inside or out. I love the look of these—almost like abstract art in many shapes and shades of green and pink. Searching on the internet, however, I was more than slightly shocked to see that the Pottery Barn is selling vertical succulent gardens. And the cost? $269. On Amazon I discovered a beginners hanging pocket garden–no plants or soil included–for much less.
Well, what if I do it myself, I thought.
After reading a post about how to make a vertical succulent garden—making a framed box, installing a metal grid, adding cactus soil, planting about 50 or 60 tiny succulent buds (which can be purchased online for under $20) and then waiting for a couple of weeks or more for the roots to take hold and replanting if the roots don’t take hold—I realized that this wasn’t a route for me, either. (I am not a builder!)
Then I remembered two “hanging gardens” I had seen in downtown Los Angeles. One was on a north facing wall in Pershing Square and the other one a garden that rises at least 5 or 6 stories high in a parking garage.
A vertical garden of lettuces and herbs in a parking garage in downtown Los Angeles.
The high rise garden was the brainchild of a local restaurant owner who wanted to go really local with the green stuff for his menu. For him local meant upstairs from his restaurant which was on the ground floor of a building with a parking garage several stories high. If you look closely at the photo (sorry, it’s not a great photo, but I never thought I’d write about it) you will see lettuces and herbs stacked floor after floor. What a brilliant idea! But apparently not one that would endure. Last time I was in downtown L.A. this parking garage garden was brown and clearly abandoned.
Which brings us to the vertical garden in Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles which may provide an alternative to expensive hanging gardens. It was planted during the first rush to change all plants on Los Angeles public properties into drought tolerant plantings.
Grasses, agaves and succulents in a vertical garden in Pershing Square, Los Angeles.
It is clear that two shelves have been installed in a niche in a wall and potted plants stacked densely on each shelf. On the top is a row of grasses that dance in the breezes. It is clear that they are simply ordinary pots of identical types of grasses stacked side by side.
The next level down are the succulents, including 3 large agaves. I suspect that the agave pots have been tilted slightly sideways–about a 45 degree angle– so they will grow outward and the soil will still stay around the plant roots. Unlike the more common tidy, vertical succulent garden there are succulents and other plants trailing down, vine-like. And this vertical garden can be watered in place and does not have to be removed for watering.
Overall, using pots stacked side by side seems to be a much easier way to create a vertical garden but probably is best outside. On Amazon I found this vertical garden system that is self-wateringand can be expanded from small space to larger inside or out. Perfect for the neglectful gardener!
The secret to success for all of these vertical gardens, of course, is density. Plant the succulents close together right from the beginning. Don’t wait for plants to spread out and fill in. You can always transplant them later if they become too crowded.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
