Category: desert gardens

Gates to hide secret gardens and courtyards

Summer heat has arrived and planting season is behind us in the Southwest. If your gardening urge is still strong, there are other additions and/or changes you can make at this time of year starting with landscape features — the walls and garden gates around your home.

In newer communities in the Southwest, grey concrete block walls on three sides of a property are pretty much standard. In Tucson, perhaps because of its long ties with Mexico and Spain, many homeowners–especially in older neighborhoods–go one step further and enclose the front yard to create a private, family courtyard. And with walls on four sides, the garden gate entry to this secluded area becomes a very important statement.

So be inspired by these photos. Some are of very expensive custom stuccoed walls with garden gates designed by artists. But there others that use standard, off-the-shelf elements and even one that falls within the do-it-yourself range. And a simple coat of paint on a gray block wall or iron fence can always bring new life to a desert garden.

Fearless color and custom gates

One would expect a Spanish Revival home behind this wall and custom garden gate, but actually the house looks more like a Craftsman home that has been painted dark chocolate brown with orange trim. The gate with its sunburst is clearly Arizonan, but not a visual barrier. Definitely no fear here–well, except for that coiled snake on the left.

Another orange/terra cotta wall, but with a far less elaborate–and less expensive–gate. It is an ordinary door, painted deep blue. The sugar skull design appears to have been routed out of a thin panel of wood, but using paint for the face would create a similar look. The lights on either side of the door have pierced clay covers. Privacy is clearly important to these homeowners. But where is the door bell? I’m not sure.

Three doors that are almost medieval. All three appear to be handcrafted with found or repurposed wood. And each says “Stay Out”. The small sign on the brown wood door with a lion knocker states that the person standing there is under video surveillance. I guess some people are friendlier than others.

Gates across your driveway

  • garden gate with giraffe

Driveway gates with decoration added. The teddy bear parade gives passers-by laugh, especially with the giraffe, far right, peaking over the wall. In the second photos, the actual gate to the house is quite open. And in the third image at another home, the trickster Kokopelli playing his flute guards the drive.

Less expensive and very Arizonan

An ocotillo branch fence — a tradition that goes back thousands of years. The indigenous people used ocotillo for fencing, as well as for “roofs” on their ramadas long before any Europeans showed up. You may be able to collect ocotillo branches yourself, or they are available for purchase at a few stores I found online.

Another use of ocotillo on a gate. This one, however, seems to be a hybrid of the medieval fortress gates and ones using natural materials.

Rustic and charming

This is a charmingly rustic, do-it-yourself sunburst garden gate. It appears someone dismantled an ordinary gate and inserted painted metal elements representing the Arizona environment: cacti, mountains and a sunburst. The wall has been artificially “aged” by incomplete exposure of the brick. Fun!

Painting a iron gate and fence purple gives a customized look to what is probably an off-the-shelf addition to this Spanish Revival cottage and garden.

True confession: I love this gate and wall. 100% found and repurposed materials aging naturally in the Arizona sun. And who knows what lies behind; it’s on the edge of a light industrial area. In the second image, it is apparent that the red door was once something else that looks as if it is from India. Repurposed on an entirely different continent!

One last comment: if your homeowners association bans front yard walls or if you prefer not to add one, see the 6 distinctively different desert landscape designs on this website. They range from woodland to dry creek bed. All are open to the street.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  2. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  5. Nine trees to combat climate change
  6. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  7. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat
  8. Follow 90F degree rule for planting

Visit my author’s site to see the books I’ve published.

Oh so yellow, gravel gardens and no mow rewilding

When April comes in Tucson and the temperature reaches to the high 80s F (30C) the Arizona native Palo Verde (Parkinsonia florida) trees burst into dazzling bloom. Street after street are lined with them and, were gas prices lower, I might be tempted to spend a hour or two every day driving around the city taking photos of them.

The Palo Verde is a good basis for a two-color garden–green + one other color–and yellow is a good color to pick because so many plants for hot, dry gardens bloom in yellow.

Plants for a yellow green garden

So here are a few plants to use in a green and yellow garden with almost no extra watering is required.

Two Palo Verde trees across the street from my home. Look closely and you’ll see others further on down the street. The only water this garden receives is rainfall of about 14 inches (35 cm) a year, most of that during the summer monsoon. In Spanish Palo Verde means green stick — the trunk and branches stay green year ’round. The leaves are tiny and, overall, the Palo Verde is not great as a shade tree –but awesome in April!

Going native with yellow flowering plants

yellow flowers on purple prickly pear cactus

Prickly pear cacti (Opuntia) in bloom. The variety on the right, the Santa Rita, has the bonus of bringing purple to your garden after the flowers fade. Another bonus with prickly pear: the fruit is edible and especially good as jam.

If you want a garden like an Arizona native, plant a Brittle Bush (Encelia farinosa) with its daisy-shaped yellow blooms. Actually, they grow well with little attention in both the Mojave and Sonoran deserts–that means in Las Vegas and Phoenix.

yellow lantana in bloom

If you don’t care about native v. non-native a golden yellow Lantana (Lantana montevidensis) fits right in a yellow-green garden theme. Whoever planted this South American native slipped in a couple of small purple Lantanas, but they are not as long-blooming or hardy was the golden yellow ones.

Of course, you can always add an annual like the Sunflower — Ukraine’s national flower–or Rudbeckia, a low-growing perennial with sunflower-shaped blooms. And your local plant nursery may have other suggestions.

Gravel gardens — a new trend?

While it may not be apparent in these photos, none of these gardens have lawn. The one near my home, has–as you can see in the photo–simple Arizona dirt underlies the garden. The Lantana was planted in fine pebbly mulch in a Southern California garden.

So I read with some amusement of the “new” trend toward gravel gardens in the U.K. and in the U.S. northeast. Basically, they are what we call desert gardens with rock mulch. In the northeast and U.K., however, the aesthetic choice seems to be grey gravel instead of golden or red sandstone colors. But planted lawns that have to be mowed, watered and intensively cared for — they’re out!

Rewilding roadsides may be dangerous

Another trend out of the U.K. is the rewilding of roadsides. It seems to have taken hold as more and more towns across England simply let the verge alongside roads become home to native plants and grasses instead of mowing them. Traditionally, May is the mowing month. But no longer.

In truth, many of these roadside gardens are not purely native: they receive a little boost with seeds of wildflowers scattered among the volunteer plants. While I like the rewilding idea, just letting plants and grasses grow along roadsides can create added wildfire danger here in the American West.

So while I can cheer the trend toward no lawn “gravel gardens”, I have problems supporting letting native grasses and plants grow uncontrolled along the Western roads and highways.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  2. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  5. Nine trees to combat climate change
  6. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  7. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat
  8. Follow 90F degree rule for planting

Visit my author’s site to see the books I’ve published.

5 fragrant plants for your hot garden

Summer is coming and with it, warm evenings to enjoy outside on a patio beneath stars and moon — and all of Elon Musk’s orbiting satellites.

While star-watching and satellite-watching may appeal to the eyes, fragrant plants in your garden create appealing scents that makes being outdoors after dark an even better experience.

So here are 5 very fragrant trees, shrubs, and vines that do well in hot, dry climates. Note that not all are drought tolerant. Some will need watering as the days heat up. And some bloom and release their fragrance during the day, too.


Fast growing and fragrant

Butterfly Bush or Summer Lilac (Buddleja davidii). This rangy shrub, above, grows fast and produces fragrant, lilac-like blooms in mid-summer. In cold winter areas it may freeze to the ground, but will regrow and bloom the same year. In fact, if you plant one now, you may have a good-size shrub with blooms this summer in your desert garden. One interesting variety is the ‘Harlequin” with dark magenta flowers and white-edged leaves. Another popular variety also created by Monrovia Nursery is the “Black Knight,” pictured above.

A show-stopper in your front yard

Flowering Crabapple. (Malus ionsis ‘Klehms’) Cars will come to a screeching halt on the street outside your home if you plant a flowering crabapple in your front yard. When this tree blooms, it is covered with glorious, fragrant double-pink flowers. The blooming period is short and the resulting fruit is best in jellies or pickled. In the fall the leaves turn a brilliant rusty orange giving you a second season of color.

Like most crabapple trees, it is rounded and low-growing to about 15 or 20 feet and definitely needs regular irrigation during hot summer months. Because some varieties are susceptible to regional diseases, ask your local nursery which one is best for your area. But try to find a fragrant, double-flowering one!

Imitating orange blossoms

Pittosporum (Pittosporum tobira) is also called ‘Mock Orange’ because its fragrance can envelope a garden in an unforgettable scent similar to a true orange. Over the years pittosporum has become quite popular with commercial landscapers because two dwarf varieties are definitely drought tolerant: ‘Wheeler’s Dwarf” or “Turner’s Variegated Dwarf’. They are almost indestructible.

But neither of these dwarf hybrids produce the incredible fragrant flower clusters that the non-dwarf Pittosporum tobira does. It can be used as a hedge shrub or small tree and grows from 6 to 15 feet tall with very dense shade beneath.

Another member of this family is the Cape Pittosporum (P. viridiflorum) which grows to 25 feet high, has small, very fragrant flowers, but–alas–may not be suitable for all hot gardens. It does better in more humid, tropical climates. Again, ask your local nursery.

A true night bloomer

It’s commonly called “night-blooming jasmine”. It is, however, not a true jasmine at all, but is a jessamine plant (Cestrum nocturnum), a member of the nightshade family along with tomatoes and peppers. Whatever its name it is noted for releasing its fragrance after dark in hot, dry gardens.

Like jasmine, jessamine plants can be shrubs or vines. Night-blooming jessamine is a tropical, evergreen shrub, native to the West Indies that grows 8-10 feet (2.5-3 m.) tall and 3 feet (91.5 cm.) wide. It is evergreen and tall so it makes night-blooming jasmine an excellent candidate for privacy hedges and screens. It bears clusters of small, white-green flowers from spring through late summer. When the flowers fade, white berries form and attract a variety of birds to the garden. These berries are toxic. Do not eat them.


Decades of graceful purple blooms

The lovely Wisteria (sinensis) is a surprisingly tough vine suitable for growing in hot dry climates. Better yet, it does well in poor soil so, if you plant one, do not fertilize it. Wisteria requires patience because it may take up to 5 years for the first flowers to bloom if you have planted one grown from cuttings. Wisteria grown from seed may take 20 years to bloom. Then it is non-stop! After that it could continue to put forth fragrant flowers for decades. In Sierra Madre California the annual Wisteria Festival celebrates one plant that is documented to be over 100 years old. And still blooming!

I had considered adding Hall’s Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica ‘Halliana’) to this list because it is so very fragrant, but even in hot dry climates is is highly invasive.  Like Cat’s Claw (Macfadyena unguis-cati) it will take over wherever it’s planted.


If you want to add white, night-blooming plants to enjoy during hot evenings, visit our June newsletter for suggestions about what to plant this Spring.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  2. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  5. Nine trees to combat climate change
  6. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  7. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat
  8. Follow 90F degree rule for planting

Visit my author’s site to see the books I’ve published.

Birds and cactus on the move

On Christmas Day the Audubon Society turned out thousands of its members for the 122nd annual bird count.

The goal of the bird count is not only to calculate how many of which birds are where, but if there are any changes. Changes like non-appearance of certain birds which could mean that a bird species has moved to a new area or, in the worst case, become extinct.

While the results and post-count analyses of the 2021 Christmas Bird Count have not yet been finalized, results of previous years’ counts have.

And what past bird counts tell us is that almost all North American birds are under pressure by the changing climate to move northward. For example, in California the ranges of many bird species are now 200 miles north of their traditional habitats.

NOTE: There is a new international bird count in the works called the Great Backyard Bird Count. It will be held on February 18-21, 2022.

What does this have to do with hot gardens?

Yellow finch on Sunflower

Depending upon how severe the changes are in your area, birds that formerly ate pesky or damaging insects may be long gone. New species may arrive in your neighborhood from further south, but they may have different diet needs. It may be that the newcomer birds are seed eaters or leaf-lovers like the Yellow Finch in this photo, rather than bug eaters.

For other birds the impact is more complex. As an example, take the Cactus Wren which makes its home in saguaros. In the Saguaro National Park, the saguaros are now “moving uphill”–growing at higher elevations on the hillsides. According to a SNP naturalist the saguaros will only grow within a specific elevation range and no higher. They are close to that maximum elevation now and their range has become much narrower. So as the older cactus die out at lower levels that means fewer homes for Cactus Wrens and less food for saguaro pollinators like the white wing dove and the long-tongued Mexican bat.

So what’s a hot gardener to do?

Well, I’m not going to recommend that you build a bat-house in your back yard. (And–yes–there is such a thing as a bat-house as you can see in the photo on the left taken at the Tucson Mission Garden.)

New Year’s Resolution No. 1: feeding the birds

But hanging a bird feeder, especially if you live in a winter-snow part of the desert, and keeping it stocked can help birds in your area. Mourning doves, like the ones shown at the top of this post, have moved northward and definitely need food help surviving over winter.

Resolution No. 2: plant a large shrub or two

While almost every environmental group is recommending planting large trees to shade the earth, I think water-wise shrubs--large ones like Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis) in its shrub form or a fast-growing Photinia (Photinia x fraseri)–provide better nest habitat and shelter from predators for birds as well as adding cooling shade to your hot dry garden.

For whatever it is worth, Mourning Doves have made a home in a Mexican yellow oleander (Cascabela thevetia) in my back yard for years as you can see in the photo at the top of this post. I don’t recommend planting a Thevetia, however, because it is highly toxic to humans, but the Mourning Doves don’t seem to mind. And I love to wake up in the morning to their calls.

So make planting a bird-friendly shrub one of your New Year’s Resolutions.

Resolution No. 3: keep tabs on what’s happening

Set up a free gardening blog/journal online and post something daily to keep track of how your garden is changing as the climate changes.

What to post? To make it easy, keep it short. So how about…
– a single flower photo
– a sentence or two about what is new in your garden
– notes of dates you installed plants or planted seeds
– a picture of your Little Free Plant Stand
– a photo of children playing in the garden or
– snow covering everything

If posting daily is too much for you, post weekly.

You will have to pick a name for your online journal/blog and I’d recommend that you include your location in that name. For example: CatherinesLasVegasGarden or SamGardensinSydney.

And keep this in mind: this online gardening blog/journal is primarily for yourself to help keep track of changes caused by climate change, so don’t be concerned about having or building followers. That can end up taking all your gardening time and then some! Interested people will eventually find what you are posting and enjoy it. Free blogs are available at WordPress.com and other sites.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  2. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  5. Nine trees to combat climate change
  6. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  7. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat
  8. Follow 90F degree rule for planting

Visit my author’s site to see the books I’ve published.

3 trees for Fall color in desert, but beware

With the limited color range in gardens in hot, dry desert climates–usually shades of brown and muted greens–having a tree outside your window that blazes with reds, yellows and oranges in Fall is a happy choice.

(I have a warning for you about leaves turning yellow at other times of year…but more about that later.)

First, let’s look at 2 big, beautiful, drought-tolerant trees and a small one that signal the change of seasons with their leaves.

These drought-tolerant Chinese Pistache (Pistacia chinensis) trees are still young. When mature, they are excellent shade trees at 40 feet tall and about 30 feet wide. Every Fall their leaves on the male trees turn from summer green to yellow to gold to blazing red–often with all those colors on the tree at one time as you can see in the photo at the top of this post. The female trees simply turn golden yellow. Strictly ornamental trees, they produce small non-edible red berries.

  • Rio Grande Variety of Fan Tex ash tree

The ‘Rio Grande’ cultivar of Fan-Tex ash (Fraxinus velutina) in this photo is about 14 years old. Not only is it a fast grower, it can be ideal for summer shade and winter warmth, after the leaves fall and the sun shines in. Once established, it is drought tolerant. While there are other ash trees that grow well in hot arid gardens — for example, the very fast growing ‘Modesto’ ash–only the ‘Rio Grande’ Fan-Tex ash leaves turn gorgeous gold in Fall. Click on photo to see it in summer.

And a colorful Fall and Spring tree for smaller gardens

If you do not have space for a very large tree, consider planting a crabapple (Malus) tree in your garden. They grow to about 15 feet wide and 15 feet tall. While needing regular watering, the crabapple flowers beautifully in Spring and the leaves turn a lovely orange/red in Fall. See second photo for spring blooms. If you should decide to buy one be sure to ask what the Springtime blooms look like. Some bloom white, some pink, some almost red and some are single blooms, others doubles. And the fruit is edible as a jam or pickle when cooked properly.

Beware of some yellow leaves

You may notice that the leaves on one of your shrubs are turning yellow — but the veins stay green–and it isn’t even Fall. This is an indication of plant chlorosis due to problems with soil conditions, specifically iron deficiency. There are commercial treatments you can use, like Kerex or other iron chelates and other spray-on treatments. They work short term. But improving the overall condition and chemical balance in the soil should be your next step after spraying for longer term results.

Listen to Mother Nature

Mother Nature plants in Fall and so should you. By planting at this time of year when the soil temperature has cooled off, the shrubs and trees have the opportunity to develop deep roots over winter and are, thus, stronger plants when they start to grow above-ground next Spring.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  2. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  5. Nine trees to combat climate change
  6. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  7. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat
  8. Follow 90F degree rule for planting

Visit my author’s site to see the books I’ve published.

A one color garden–no, make that two

Gardening writer Vita Sackville-West’s ‘White Garden’ at Sissinghurst Castle in the U.K. was revolutionary in 1950. And inspiring to this day.

Instead of a garden filled with billowing rows of mixed-color flowering plants–a style that had dominated English gardens for generations–Sackville-West installed only plants that bloomed in one color: white. According to her weekly gardening column she decided that the plants themselves must have either green or gray leaves. No yellowish or reddish leaves for this garden.

In fact, despite what she said, it was mostly a green garden because the white flowers bloomed only once a year for a brief time. The green color leaves endured year round.

While a garden as lush as seen, above, in this recent photo of Sissinghurst, would be challenging and an utterly wasteful use of water in a hot dry climate, the idea of a one or two color garden continues to appeal to garden designers.

One color and water wise in Las Vegas

Back in the early 2000s a one flower color, water-wise garden took root in Las Vegas. Garden designer Victoria Morgan told me that her primary goal was to create a water-wise green garden. Even back then, the water level in the Colorado River which supplies Las Vegas was falling so drought tolerance was a must, she said.

The flower color that she chose was yellow–and not much of that: just a few Lantana montevidensis by the fountain and nearby. Some additional color came from non-plant sources: painted furniture under the arbor, tiles around the fountain and large blue pots in front of the home, as you can see in this slide show.

grape vines with colorful patio chair and table

Another requirement she set was low maintenance, so there were no flowers to dead-head or fertilize. Shrubs like the Korean boxwood were trimmed once or twice a year. And the tall, shady nut trees that took up a large part of the garden needed attention primarily during harvest. For more photos of this very soothing orchard garden, go here.

Morgan’s use of green with yellow was a natural choice for a Southwestern U.S. hot, dry garden: many native plants (or non-natives like Lantana which thrives in our climate) bloom yellow. Some cacti, of course, produce pink flowers, but yellow is the dominant flower color in the desert, especially when rain comes and sweeping fields of yellow wildflowers spring up among the cacti.

Yellow blooming plants and shrubs

Should you decide to plant a green-plus-yellow garden here are a few plants–some native, some not–you could include. In order they are:
Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa)
Mexican Gold Poppy (Escholtzia mexicana)
Desert Marigold (Baileya multiradiata)
Lantana (Lantana montevidensis)
And for larger shrubs:
Mexican bird of Paradise (Caesalpinia mexicana) and
Thevetia (Thevetia peruviana), sometimes called Yellow Oleander, it is pretty but poisonous. (I have one in my backyard; someone else planted it.)

A good tree to include in a green/yellow garden is the wildly popular native Palo Verde (Cercidium parkinsonia). Planted in home gardens, parking lots and growing naturally along dry washes, it is the Arizona State Tree. Blooming brilliant yellow in Spring, it doesn’t offer much shade, however, because its leaves are tiny.

And for yellow color in the Fall–plus shade in summer–a good choice can be the Fan-Tex Rio Grande Ash, below.

Of course, you could choose another color for your one color garden–reds, pinks, purples and magentas–but yellow seems to be a natural garden design choice for the hot dry gardens of the Southwest.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  2. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  5. Nine trees to combat climate change
  6. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  7. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat
  8. Follow 90F degree rule for planting

Visit my author’s site to see the books I’ve published.

So your garden died. What’s next?

While there are two ways to combat plant death-by-dehydration, it is probably too late for many in the U.S. Southwest, especially Arizona and Nevada, after a weeklong stint of record setting heat. (For those of you outside of the SW, there were high temperatures of 110-120F (43-48 celsius) for 8 days in a row and it continues.)

If you still have hopes for some plants in your garden you can do this:
1. Deep water plants more frequently than usual.
2. Hang shade cloth over your plants.

Realistically, however, dead plants — especially vegetables that were planted not long ago–are the new normal in Southwest gardens.

So what comes next?

For starters you can add those dead plants to your compost pile, so all is not wasted! And do not regularly fertilize any plants during summer months in desert climates. Even sturdy native plants are simply hunkering down and trying to survive until cooler weather arrives. Give them water, and in late summer, a tiny taste of fertilizer–that’s all.

Replanting right away is, obviously, not a good idea. Many gardeners now seem to be considering planting only natives when they replace what they lost this summer, but wisely they are waiting until Fall.

I’m thinking about pots on my patio overflowing with non-native Lantana (L. montevidensis) which seems to be able to survive almost anything and continue to flower.

Adios tomatoes and peppers

My vegetable growing experiment of this year will not be repeated. It has become a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I can buy organic veggies and support organic farmers while I eat healthy.

While I have stopped wasting water trying to help my sunflowers, tomatoes and peppers survive, I am still trying to help birds and other wildlife stay alive. I’d suggest that you do this, too.

Set out a shallow plant saucer filled with water and refill at least once a day. It can be a lifesaver for birds, insects and other creatures suffering from the intense heat and scarcity of water.

I’m not sure which creatures drink from this water source on my patio, but at least this Mourning dove has. You could also set up a trail camera to learn which wildlife comes to visit your garden.

Turning your garden into a kind of wildlife preserve may be the best use of that space as climate change brings hotter and dryer conditions. This extreme heat may not be the last.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  2. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  5. Nine trees to combat climate change
  6. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  7. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat
  8. Follow 90F degree rule for planting

Visit my author’s site to see the books I’ve published.

There outta be a social media law against lawns

*shriek!* Some postings on social media gardening sites drive me crazy!

I just read a post on a Facebook gardening group from a newbie who has planted a big green lawn next to his new home in Arizona. It was, he said, like the one he had Back East. He proudly included photos and thanked other members of the group for all the advice they gave to him. He “couldn’t have done it without them”.

What??!!?

I wonder who told him that a grassy green British lawn was a good idea in a hot, dry climate? That it was a good idea in a land where water has to be imported hundreds of miles across a desert so he can turn a faucet and spill that water on to desert soil where it soaks in an inch or two and/or evaporates almost instantly.

Blame those green lawns on the Brits

Yes. Neatly trimmed green lawns originated in the rainy, damp British Isles. They are not common around private homes in Spain or Italy or Germany or elsewhere in the E.U. or most of the world. And even in the U.K. lawns are a relatively recent innovation that had something to do with wealthy landowners raising sheep or impressing the neighbors or something. Sadly, the lawn idea took hold and jumped across the Atlantic where it spread across the continent–even into Southwest desert communities.

American home builders also are to blame for the U.S. lawn obsession because they planted lawns in massive housing developments particularly after WWII because turf grass in the front yard is easy, cheap and fast landscaping.

Serious drought…really serious

I wonder if that newbie lawn guy, and other well-meaning, but poorly informed, participants in that group, realize how serious the drought conditions are in the U.S. Southwest as the U.S. Drought Monitor shows.

And how fast water tables in towns across the Southwest are falling as local water districts–the ones not relying on Colorado River water–pump more and more local ground water to new housing developments where new homeowners are planting wasteful lawns.

And I wonder if they realize that ground water isn’t being replaced in reservoirs and rivers with rain falling from the sky. The soil just gets drier and drier. The local wells have to go deeper and deeper. And choosing to plant a lawn becomes more and more absurd.

One woman in Pasadena CA pulled out her front lawn and turned it into an astonishing and somewhat bizarre front garden complete with blue bottles and plastic ornaments. This is the strangest lawn replacement I’ve seen. But to each, her/his own!

Local government officials are trying to handle current and future water usage. Efforts to slow down and re-allocate usage of water imported from the Colorado River show up in things like golf courses closing or being converted to dry landscaping and towns passing laws to ban lawns in front yards.

But there are other choices.

Before I show you some attractive lawn-free gardens for hot dry climates I’d like to suggest that if your heart is really set on the look of a lawn consider planting Buffalo Grass (Buchloe dactyloides) an Arizona native grass that many are planting as turf. Originally known as the grass that American buffaloes (bisons) grazed on, it grows green in summer, dies back to brown in the Fall and needs no irrigation and almost no mowing after it is established. [Note: This is not the invasive Buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare), an African native that is overwhelming plants in the Sonoran Desert. ]

Beautiful replacements for grassy lawns

So here are a few examples of front yards that are lawn-free.

A front yard filled with blooming perennials including kangaroo paw, sea lavender, rosemary and flat grey dymondia groundcover. This garden is located in Pasadena which gets about 17 inches of rain each year.

A desert-style garden in Springtime when the aloes and other plants are in bloom. This garden is located in Tucson which receives about 12 inches of rainfall a year.

These homeowners added berms, small “hills”, to their previously flat front lawn and planted drought-tolerant shrubs and trees that need almost no maintenance. Goodbye lawnmower! Berms need to be carefully designed to channel rainfall away from the house foundation.

This landscaped garden includes a dry creek bed as an ornamental feature surrounded by agaves and blue-gray fescue grass and taller green deer grass. As with adding berms in a garden, adding a dry creek bed has potential problems. Dry creek beds are not always dry and should be designed so rain water flows away from a home’s foundation.

I think of this front yard with its large decomposed granite space as a Mexican Garden because it reminds me of plazas and courtyards I’ve seen in Mexico. The “bare ground” decomposed granite suppresses weeds and is surrounded by drought tolerant plants that bloom seasonally. Zero maintenance and it requires only the water from the sky.

I was also going to write about silly social media posts praising decorative backyard ponds, but I have ranted enough for today. Those weird backyard ponds are as wasteful as grassy green front lawns in hot dry climates. If you have one, convert it to a flower fountain with plants on each level.

A postscript: there are now over 6,000 Little Free Plant Stands in Arizona! Vastly more than when I wrote about them back in March.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  2. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  5. Nine trees to combat climate change
  6. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  7. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat
  8. Follow 90F degree rule for planting

Visit my author’s site to see the books I’ve published.

Happy Solstice – winter and summer!

My wish on today’s Solstice is that 2021 will be a better year for everyone! 2020 can’t end soon enough!

The light at the end of the proverbial tunnel is brighter now that the roll-out of COVID 19 vaccines has begun.

Now, you can make the natural world better this coming year by planting a tree that’s suitable for your climate to cast shade on your garden and home. The world continues to grow warmer and a tree will help cool it down a bit over the coming decades.

And, if you still have a grassy lawn, make 2021 the year you remove it and plant water-wise shrubs instead. Lawns are fine in wet climates, but an unwise use of water in hot dry gardens.

And, keep in mind that by planting long-living shrubs and trees you are also providing homes for Mother Nature’s other creatures, especially birds and insects.

May your garden thrive in 2021!

Carol Lightwood
Hot Gardens

The photo at the top of this page was taken at the Tucson Botanical Garden in December 2020.

4 desert trees good for the soil and 4 toxic ones

Recently Tucson’s Mayor Romero announced a tree planting goal for the City: one million new trees planted in the next ten years to help combat climate change. (That works out to 274 trees a day!) Homeowners are encouraged to plant one or more trees around their homes. But the number of tree choices for hot dry gardens runs into the dozens. So how to choose?

Trees related to peas?

In the hot dry gardens of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts homeowners should consider the benefits of planting these 4 trees that belong to the pea family. Why pea family trees? Because they take in abundant nitrogen (NH2) from the air and convert it to ammonium nitrogen (NH4) which gets added to the soil via bacteria-filled nodules on the tree roots.

So, not only do these trees do what all good trees do–provide shade and remove carbon dioxide from the air–they also help other plants beneath and nearby to thrive by providing nitrogen to the soil for nutrition.

You see this everywhere in untouched, natural areas, like this photo from the Saguaro National park: cacti and other plants growing right under and up through trees.

Food for the soil and plants nearby

First on the Good-for-the-Soil List: Mesquite (Prosopis). Among the most common varieties of Mesquite are Argentine mesquite (P. alba), Chilean mesquite (P. chilensis), honey mesquite (P. glandulosa), the screwbean mesquite (P. pubescens ) and velvet mesquite (P. velutina). The honey and velvet mesquites produce edible seeds pods that are commonly ground up into a flour for cooking. The screwbean is quite a messy tree. In size, mesquites range from 8 to 10 foot tall shrubs to 40 foot tall trees.

Mesquite tree prosopis
Mesquite alba in Las Vegas

They are super-easy to grow. On my short walk this morning I noticed dozens of young volunteer mesquite trees sprouting along neglected areas next to the street. If they are left alone, within a few years they will become trees with no help from anyone.

Trivia: in Australia and Ethiopia mesquites were introduced a few decades ago and loved the weather and land so much that they are now regarded as invasive pest trees because they are aggressively taking over grazing lands.

palo verde tree at Sunnyland garden
“Palo Verde Tree, Sunnylands, CA 2-22-14” by inkknife_2000 (11.5 million views) is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Second on the Good-for-the-Soil list: Palo Verde trees (Parkinsonia florida), the Official Arizona State Tree. In Spanish the name means “green stick” with good reason. It is immediately recognizable by the green color of its trunk and nearly leafless branches. In Spring it bursts into bloom with brilliant yellow flowers and small leaves emerge, only to fade away quickly. While it does not cast much shade, it too helps other plants thrive by fixing nitrogen in the earth. The Foothill Palo Verde, which has a more yellow tinge to the trunk, reaches 20 feet in height. The blue Palo Verde can grow to 40 feet tall.

Acacia in bloom at Los Angeles Arboretum

Third, we have the Acacia tree (Acacia), which some claim should be knick-named the “Allergy Tree”. These fast growing Southwest natives love the heat and bloom with yellow powder-puff flowers in the spring that leave a pretty carpet of yellow pollen and spent blooms beneath them. Some also bloom again in the Fall. The larger varieties will reach 40 feet in heights and provide excellent shade, but there is one smaller variety suitable for courtyards.

Food for the soil and people, too
“Carob tree” by tree-species is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Fourth, and a little harder to find, is the Carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua). Not only does this Mediterranean native tree add nitrogen in the soil, it has pods that, when ripe, can be ground up and used as a substitute for chocolate. Be sure to read instructions online if you plan to do this.

Growing to a height of 50 feet carob trees cast dark, cooling shade. Unlike the previous three on this list, it needs some water year ’round. It is, however, on the suggested tree list in Tucson. For whatever it is worth, it is one of my favorite trees and Carob ice cream was very popular among the hipsters in San Francisco in the 1960s.

4 Toxic beauties

But not all trees in the pea family are good. There are some toxic trees in the pea family which are quite beautiful and are planted in hot dry gardens throughout the Southwest–and probably shouldn’t be. While they can fix nitrogen in the soil they are best NOT planted in a family garden because of the dangers they can pose.

The Golden Medallion tree
Golden Medallion tree in Tucson

The striking Golden Chain tree (Laburnum × watereri) is uncommon, temperamental, and all parts are poisonous. The brilliant yellow flowers hang down like long chains of gold, which is where the name comes from.

The Golden Medallion tree (Cassia leptophylla) is similar in appearance to the Golden Chain tree. Its pods are poisonous.

The umbrella-shaped Mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin) with its pretty pink-white flowers has poisonous seed pods and a reputation for being invasive.

The small Texas Mountain Laurel (Dermatophyllum secundiflorum) is a shrub-like tree with lovely purple blooms that look like wisteria or lilacs. Its brilliant red seed pods are deadly poisonous.

For more information about trees suitable for hot dry gardens, go to our Leafy Trees for Shade page.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  2. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  5. Nine trees to combat climate change
  6. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  7. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat
  8. Follow 90F degree rule for planting