Category: desert gardens

Quinces and Figs thrive in the desert. Make great jam, too!

In 2014 Quinces (Cydonia oblonga) were named the Fruit Tree of the Year by the California Rare Fruit Growers Association. Well, maybe rare in California, but here in Tucson quince trees have been growing since the late 1600s. Brought to this locale by Jesuit Father Kino, one of the first Europeans to the area, later travelers complained that the only fruit tree in Tucson was the quince, which is basically inedible fresh off the tree. It has to be cooked and then it is delicious as a jam. I’m sure the travelers were hankering for juicy Spanish oranges or crisp German apples–but no luck. In Tucson hard quinces were the only choice.

Two quinces fro Tucson Presidio
These two quinces were given to me by a docent at the Tucson Presidio. The are unripe, hard, fuzzy outside and have no scent. More modern hybrids have a smooth peel and are fragrant when ripe.

While I have seen plenty of pomegranates growing in yards around Tucson I hadn’t seen a quince tree until I visited the replica of the original Tucson Presidio where a quince tree is planted side-by-side with a sweet Spanish orange tree and a lemon. As you can see, it is loaded with quinces, which are drought tolerant, sun and heat-lovers that need good drainage. Online it stated that 2 trees were needed for pollination, but this solo plant seems to be doing okay by itself. One other thing to note about quince trees: they are covered with lovely white flowers in Spring. So if you are thinking about adding a small tree to your hot, dry garden, maybe a quince is the tree for you. (Or maybe a fig–see below.)

Quince tree at Tucson Presidio Hot Gardens
The quince tree at the Tucson Presidio.

While quince trees are naturally small, fig trees can become enormous, as this fig, below, growing in one courtyard of the Tucson Presidio demonstrates. And it does not take decades to grow to this size. This Presidio was built from scratch on a former parking lot and opened in 2007, so this fig (and the quince above) are no older than 12 years!

fig tree in downtown Tucson Hot Gardens
A huge fig tree in the courtyard of the Presidio in downtown Tucson

In addition to producing delicious figs to eat raw or cook into jam, fig trees (Ficus carica) have large leaves that cast a dense shade to create a cool oasis in a desert garden. The ‘Black Mission’ and ‘Brown Turkey’ are good varieties for the desert. Most produce two crops of figs per year and need regular watering, especially when the fruit is growing. If you intend to plant a fig in your garden, be sure to ask the nursery staff how large the tree is expected to grow. Smaller size fig trees can be espaliered along a wall. (I know. I did this in my garden in Las Vegas!)

Pomegranates on the ground at the Tucson Presidio.

Now a word about pomegranates, which I have written about before because they are among the easiest and most forgiving of neglect of any fruit tree in a desert garden. There are ignored pomegranates on the ground all over my neighborhood, as well as at the Tucson Presidio. But it looks like they are providing food for birds and animals. A good thing!

Our 8 most popular newsletters

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

Plant white this fall for nighttime viewing next summer

Fall is the best time to plant in hot dry gardens. The soil has now cooled enough that the roots of new, young plants won’t die from being enveloped by hot summer dirt. And summer dirt can be really hot: up to 140 degrees F (60 degrees celsius!) in direct sunlight. At that temperature the roots “cook” and if the roots get cooked, the plant dies. So do your planting now. Over winter, the roots will have plenty of time to toughen up and spread deep into the earth before the heat comes back next year.

Now I have a few suggestions for what to plant this Fall for a White Garden for nighttime enjoyment next summer.

A famous garden reinvented for the Southwest

First a little background: the White Garden was “invented” by author Vita-Sackville West when she designed a garden room at Sissinghurst Castle in the U.K. with plants that only produced white flowers. It was a radical idea for that time, the mid-20th Century. In fact, the White Garden vaulted her into fame as a garden designer and horticultural columnist for the London Observer. (She was already famous–maybe infamous–for her personal scandals and novels!)

So borrowing her idea–although not the plants she used in cool, damp Kent in southern England–here is a slide show with a few plants to use in a White Garden in the American Southwest.

  • White roses
  • White crape myrtle
  • White yarrow
  • Japanese Privet
  • Pittosporum- very fragrant

In addition to these white flowering plants you could also include dwarf White Oleander, White Jasmine Vine, white Iris, or Texas Wild Olive. Be careful with the Texas Wild Olive, Cordia Broissiere, because the seeds are slightly toxic to humans. Birds, however, love them. Also take care with the Oleander, all parts of it are poisonous.

Plants with variegated or silver leaves can also add luminousness and be reflective in a nighttime garden.

  • Variegated Turf Lily
  • Artemesia Powis Castle

Even if you are not interested in a white garden room, adding white blooming plants to an otherwise color-filled or all-green garden brings a spark of interest and contrast to the other plants.

Full Disclosure: I have visited Sissinghurst Castle to see Vita Sackville-West’s garden rooms. The book she wrote about her gardening ideas, “Sissinghurst” is available on Amazon. Someone, not VSW who passed away in 1962, is posting on Twitter using the handle @thegardenvsw . The tweets, taken from her writings and accompanied by photos, are always very interesting.

A reminder for Fall: be sure to add organic mulch around plants in your garden and, if possible, dig it in without disturbing the roots. Also avoid using mulch that has peat in it. From what I read from U.K. gardeners peat retains carbon which helps slow climate change. Better for all of us for the peat to remain buried in bogs rather than scattered around our gardens.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

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

Texas Rangers are the earth’s “Thank You” to the monsoon

In recent weeks TV weathercasters in the desert Southwest have been laughingly referring to the “non-soon” as the annual summer rains got held up in West Texas. And, to make it worse, even fewer clouds came out of the Sea of Cortez. No rainstorms from either direction. Finally in late July one storm dropped enough rain to begin bringing Texas Rangers (Leucophyllum fructescens) into bloom.

Texas Ranger Leucophyllum frutescens in bloom

Since then even record setting temperatures have not slowed the rush to flowering by these heat loving shrubs, native to the Chihuahua desert. They are a visual joy in blue, purple, lavender, and white!

Texas Ranger untrimmed
Thanks to Starbucks in Marana AZ this Texas Ranger has been left untrimmed, although perhaps with too much shade on the plant. It prefers full sun.

Better yet, as SW natives the Texas Ranger thrives in very alkaline soil of .8 to .9 pH. While these 8 foot to 10 foot tall shrubs bloom in concert with the monsoon, they prefer fast draining soil to keep their roots almost dry so be sure to add plenty of organic material when you plant a Texas Ranger. And only irrigate them–lightly, if at all–during the summer months. Stop watering at the end of the monsoon in late September. And as for fertilizer? None needed at all. Fertilizer makes them spindly and weak.

NOW FOR MY RANT: Do not trim Texas Rangers into lollipops! Commercial groundskeepers seem to be the worst offenders of this practice, as you can see in the photo below. Texas Rangers have a beautiful loose shape and should be allowed to keep it. If you feel you absolutely have to cut back a plant, do it in March–one time during the year, only once! Or maybe plant a dwarf “compacta” variety instead. END OF RANT.

improperly trimmed Texas Rangers shrubs
These 4 Texas Rangers in a parking lot have been severely trimmed. Whoever developed the horticulture plan for this commercial area should have chosen the Leucophyllum frutescen ‘compacta’, the low growing variety of the plant.

Amazon Burning- what you can do

The new President of Brazil ran on a platform of developing the Amazon. What we are all seeing now is that landowners, particularly cattle ranchers, took that to give them a greenlight to start burning their way deeper into the life-giving jungle after he took office.

Now we can all be outraged as Presidents Macron and Trudeau have been on Twitter or we can actually do something about it in the real world. Countries like Pakistan, India, China, Senegal, Nigeria and even tiny Nepal have already embarked on programs to plant millions of trees.

While we can have no hope of getting support from the current administration in Washington D.C. for a massive tree planting effort in the U.S. I am confident that local groups, like the Tree People in Los Angeles or the National Forest Foundation, will continue and expand their Plant-A-Tree programs in cities, towns and forests across the country.

Crepe myrtless in bloom

If no organization near you is doing it at the very least plan to add a tree to your garden this fall when planting season begins. If every person in the U.S. planted just one tree we would have 329 million new trees which would help offset the damage being done right now in the Amazon.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

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

The bee-friendly Tucson Botanical Garden

The Tucson Botanical Garden has become very bee friendly. Yes, of course there are still displays of cacti and other desert plants as well as their famous ramadas and winding shady paths. Their efforts to support bees, however, are non-traditional for a Botanical Garden and should be applauded. And, in my opinion, should be emulated by other public gardens!

Here are some of the efforts they are making:

solitary bee homes Tucson Botanical Garden

Above, what appear to be tall, whimsical garden ornaments are actually homes for solitary bees–the kind of bees that do not live in hives and do not produce honey–but pollinate flowers and fruits and vegetables nonetheless. These bees are non-aggressive because they do not have hives or honey to protect.

As you can see these homes are holes drilled into the wood. It is something so simple almost any gardener could do it. Or you can purchase an economical bee home online and easily hang it up on any branch in your garden.

What to do about honey bees

Bee trap in tree Tucson Botanical Garden

Working in conjunction with a local Tucson beekeeper, this box up in the tree is a bee trap — not a bee house. When a swarm of honey bees has entered the box, the beekeeper comes and removes it to transfer the bees to his apiary because honey bees can become aggressive. The bee trap in the tree is then replaced with an empty one.

flowers to attract bees at Tucson Botanical Garden

The Tucson Botanical Garden is noted for its shade-producing ramadas in several designs. Beside this one is a bed of flowers to help provide food for bees. Not to mention the flowers are visually appealing.

Mediterranean herb garden Tucson Botsnical Garden

One of my favorite places in the garden is the Mediterranean herb garden under its blue pergola. It was one of the first gardens created in 1964 by the plant collector Harrison Yocum who founded the Tucson Botanical Garden at his home. Since then the garden has been expanded with purchases of neighboring properties.

And here are some other photos of the garden, including the docent who gave me a private tour. Thank you, Carolyn.

colorful ramadas at Tucson Botanical garden

As I was leaving I discovered this amazing decorative wall by a local Tucson artist. No bees that I could spy but there are hummingbirds, red peppers, butterflies and magical angels. If anyone knows the name of the artist, please let me know.

Decorative wall Tucaon Botanical Garden

Just a reminder. Until the daily high temperature falls below 90 F (32 Celsius) the only thing your garden plants need is regular watering. It’s inadvisable to fertilize or transplant during hot summer months.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

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

Gardens walled in by color in historic old Tucson

By midsummer most of the plants in hot, dry gardens–with the exceptions of Lantana and Mexican Bird of Paradise–are muted desert green.  Desert style gardens simply look drab and dull  at this time of year. The plants are in survival mode until Fall.

xicn Bird of ParadiseMy first plan for this post was to focus on those two plants which bloom in full force in summer. It turns out that the Mexican Bird of Paradise (Caesalpinia mexicana or C. pulcherrima. ) is also known as the Pride of Barbados and Poinciana. And while it flowers in sunset colors, left, one variety has only yellow blooms. And as for Lantana, a least here in Tucson, these popular plants need some shade during the day or they will rush to bloom and make seeds.

But as I was driving around historic old Tucson neighborhoods looking for good examples of Mexican Bird of Paradise to photograph, I noticed that so many gardens were  filled with color. But not from plants.  Homeowners had taken an adventurous route with painted walls — both on their homes’ exteriors and the garden walls that surround them. The green colors of plants had almost become accents.

Yes, we all know that painting walls and homes can be quite expensive, but the colors can be inspiring. And, once painted, the colors last for decades.  No watering, no fertilizing, no replacing sick or dying plants required.

Here are a few of those colorful walls and homes.

multi color home
Why settle for one or two  when you can paint each wall a different color? Variations on this  shade of green seem to be growing in popularity. The terra cotta wall and beige are more traditonal–but not when used this way!

blue stucco garden wall
Blue garden wall with a pink painted house is a color combination I saw more than once. I wonder if the lights wrapped around the tree trunks are turned on regularly or only during the winter holiday season.

pink garden walls
There is a kind of subtle minimalism about the pale pink walls with just a few plants. The home behind the walls is a slightly darker shade of pink.

golden stucco garden wzll
The palm trees leaning over this golden garden wall are laced with bougainvilla blooms–a very clever idea while the palms are not too tall.

orange color stucco wall
Nothing shy about this chocolate brown painted home with vibrant orange trim and a matching wall. The desert plants in front of the wall seem to be accents now, but the agaves and barrel cactus will grow quite large in time.

green color house Tucson
While green is making a comeback as an exterior color, this all green home is really over the top. Maybe a subtler shade of green? Maybe tempering the green with an accent color? It is certainly non-traditional for a stucco home.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

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

Summer Do’s and Don’ts and Spying on your Garden

I have to apologize for not posting on the Hot Gardens blog for a while.  As some of you already know I have been traveling for several months and blogging on the road can be a challenge.

In the U.K. many gardeners are now calling for a return to roadside and backyard natural meadows. “Stop mowing”, they say.  Not only can a meadow be beautiful it will support insects and animals that are under threat by climate change.  This is a practice that Prince Charles has advocated for decades. His castles are surrounded by native meadows not tidy mowed lawns.

superbloom flowers
Flowers in the Sonora desert outside Calexico

This wet Spring those of us who live in the Southwest had a rare glimpse of how desert meadows can look during the amazing Super Bloom that swept across the West. Yellow, orange and golden flowers everywhere!  People, birds, insects and animals loved it. The rainstorms have finally slowed down and the Super Bloom meadows have now vanished.

Even without a meadow in your backyard you can help support native insects and animals, by adding a water source somewhere on your property.  It doesn’t have to be a fountain.  Simply put a few pebbles and small rocks in the bottom of an old pie pan then add water to it daily to help sustain the life of native creatures you may never even see. The pebbles give birds and insects someplace to perch while drinking the water. Putting out a larger container of water might also attract native night visitors like deer or rabbits.

If you are eager to see which creatures are visiting your “water hole” or “desert oasis”–whatever you want to call it–install a motion activated video camera aimed at that pie tin or water bucket. Some of these cameras  are now priced below $80.

Lantana camera in fountain
Lantana overflowing a fountain that has been repurposed as a flower container.

And, finally, just a reminder that when the temperature reaches 90°F on a daily basis, you should slow down fertilizing your garden. In the extreme heat that will continue into Fall, plants hunker down to survive.  With the exception of a very few summer bloomers, in hot, dry climates plants don’t waste energy on growing or blooming during summer. Feeding them lightly perhaps monthly will help them survive.  Water your garden regularly, however.

If you would like to follow my travels around the U.S. go to Wandering Lady and become a “Fellow Traveler”. I have been on the road since March and am now in New Orleans. Happy gardening!

Our 8 most popular newsletters

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

Be a superhero! Plant flowers and save the world’s food supply

Okay.  Maybe that headline is a bit extreme…but it is not that far off.  Here’s why.

As we all have heard, bees seem to be vanishing all over the planet. And without them to pollinate edible plants–whether tomatoes in Pasadena or romaine in Yuma or pecans in the San Pedro river valley–we humans may be in trouble and face food shortages.

And it turns out that flowers can be part of the solution.

Red and Yellow cherry tomatoes Hot Gardens

At a recent gardening event in Los Angeles a speaker recommended planting annual flowers between tomato plants to encourage more bees to pollinate the tomatoes while they are seeking nectar from the larger, flashier annual flowers. It helps keep the bees well fed and the bee colony thriving. Tomato plants will produce more abundantly, too.

“Wait a minute”, you say. “There are no commercial growers near me and I’m not growing vegetables in my backyard. Why should I encourage bees?”

The answer is that you can become part of a larger effort to sustain genetic diversity all over the planet.  That’s where the Gardener-Superhero role comes in.

As I look at many desert style gardens filled with agaves and other rarely flowering plants I realized that our new water-wise gardens are creating starvation conditions for our friends the bees. Not enough variety, not enough flowers blooming for not a long enough time.  Worse yet, in many desert areas, the native plants that could provide nectar to bees are being removed to make way for houses and roads.

It is, however, not necessary to plant water-guzzling plants to have bee-friendly flowers in a hot, dry garden.  Here are some that will thrive and  produce flowers over a long period without running up your water bill.

Lantana ground cover mixed colors
The low-growing Lantana (Lantana montevidensis) comes in many colors these days.

Low-growing Lantana (Lantana montevidensis)  is one of the best and most readily available flowering plants for hot, dry gardens. Bees and butterflies love it! It blooms for as long as 9 or 10 months out of the year and because it is a perennial, rather than an annual, you will not have to replace it every year. Be aware that the purple and white varieties bloom for a much shorter time than the gold, yellow or varigated Lantanas. Upkeep is easy: in mid-winter cut the low-growing branches back to a foot or so in length.

Instead of the low-growing lantana, however, consider planting Lantana camera.  It grows to 6 feet tall and makes a very colorful, bee-friendly hedge. A light mid-winter trimming is all the maintenance needed.

Next, Rosemary (Rosemarinus officinalis) attracts bees like a magnet and can provide a delicious herb for your table. Plant several about 2 feet apart to create a rosemary hedge or simply put one plant outside near your back door to clip and use the aromatic leaves in bread or for baking chicken.

Lavender (Lavendula) is another tasty and aromatic herb that bees love as much as humans do.  I prefer French lavender to the English or Spanish varieties, but I have to confess that I have not had much success keeping lavender plants alive from year to year. I simply replant annually.

And finally: annual sunflowers.  If you plant the seeds over a period of a couple of weeks, you will have a longer blooming period for the bees to harvest the nectar. Then later, birds will come to harvest the seeds. You can harvest them, too, and then toast the seeds in your oven for a tasty snack.

So get out your garden gloves and think of them as the red superhero cape for gardeners.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

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

What’s this? A pig topiary? With succulents?

topiary pig with succulents
A moss topiary pig wearing succulents.

On a trip to Southern California last week I wandered into Brita’s Garden Center which is 3 blocks from the ocean in Seal Beach.  And there in the back of the center was a pig topiary about 3 feet long.  Someone had built a framework of chicken wire/hardware wire and added plenty  of moss.  Next, came the succulents in a variety of colors and shapes. I am sure they were drawing the moisture they need from the damp moss.

curly pig tail on topiary pig
This little pig even has a curly black tail.

This is a clever idea for a garden ornament, although in a hot dry garden these tender succulents may shrivel up when the summer heat begins to build!

I also made a trip recently to Phoenix and will be reporting about my observations at the Desert Botanical Garden shortly.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

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

Succulents bring winter color and possible danger

Green and black Aeoniums and orange Firestick Euphorbias seem to be closing in on the Agave for the title of the most popular drought tolerant plants used in desert landscapes or for lawn replacement. They are showing up everywhere, it seems, from small front garden plots to street side plantings to pots on patios.  So this post was originally going to be about some attractive plantings of these succulents that I have seen recently.

But as I did more research, I learned that, as beautiful as they are, some can pose a real danger to pets…and potentially to people. Some are quite toxic.

Firestick succulents (Euphorbia tiruccailli ) are used as a hedge outside a restaurant in Pasadena California.  You can trim them to keep the plant smaller, but be sure to wear gloves and even goggles: the white sap is toxic.  Place cuttings into a plastic bag that you can tie up tight so pets will not be exposed to the sap.

In Pasadena’s Arlington Garden Firestick euphorbias have been left untrimmed for over a decade and are now approaching 25 feet in height. The cactus in the center has also become a tall, beautiful focal plant.  

The mix of plants in this curbside border–aeoniums, daisies and a firestick succulent–looks great now, but the firestick will grow up to 30 feet tall if left untrimmed. As with all flower/plant borders, it is important to think ahead as to how large each plant will become at maturity. Or be willing to prune some big plants and replace others to maintain the appearance. In this group, the daisy plant will die long before the succulents do.

A mix of succulents in a curbside planting demonstrates the variety of color these tough plants can provide. Lurking in the middle, however, is a potential giant: the Firestick euphorbia!  But its orange color is a nice complement to the blue-ish Secenio Talindoides, the green Aeonium, and the brown-ish Kalanchoe.

I love how the color of the bell-like Kalanchoe blooms coordinate with the glass ball on the top of this ornamental garden statue! You may be more familiar with one variety of the Kalanchoe known as the “flapjack” plant. It has large pink 
and green leaves.The blossoms appear to be sprouting up from the bright green Aeoniums, but actually are from the pink-ish Kalanchoes on the left.  

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

Red and green for holiday color in a hot dry garden

If you had planted  “Wonderful” pomegranate shrubs last Spring, and did not harvest the fruit this Fall, you would have plants in your garden that appear to have big, brilliant red Christmas tree ornaments on them.  Of course, the leaves on your pom shrubs would have turned a glorious gold then fallen, so your red “ornaments” would be on bare branches now.  

Mother Nature’s holiday ornament!

If you are thinking of adding a pomegranates to your garden in Spring, you will be happy to know they are very drought tolerant, as you can read here. The name “Wonderful” designates one of the best varieties of pomegranates for private gardens.

If you are reading this post in Australia or elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, pomegranates bear fruit from March to May, rather than from September to February as they do in the U.S. Southwest.

Among the other plants that will give you green and red during the holiday is the very drought tolerant Heavenly Bamboo, (Nandina domestica), which has bright red berries, reddish leaves and is not a bamboo at all.  I am not a big fan of the shape of this plant; it looks too much like a cluster of sticks to my eye…but nonetheless I do love the winter color and the fact that it will survive with considerable neglect.

This Heavenly Bamboo (Nandina domestica) is beginning to change from summer green to winter red.

Surviving considerable neglect is also a prime characteristic of the sturdy bottle brush, another plant that I do not care for–well, I don’t like the big tall ones with red blooms that are used as center barriers along freeways in California. 

Dwarf bottle brush “Little John” as a low hedge beside ice plant in a very drought tolerant planting in Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles.

BUT I really love the dwarf bottle brush variety Callistemon ‘Little John’ which is very suitable for home gardens. Instead of primary colors of plain red and plain green, this low-growing shrub has a blueish-grey cast to the leaves and a burgundy color flower.  

This drought-tolerant, dwarf Callistemon “‘Little John’ grows slowly, rarely needs any pruning and is colorful in Fall and winter.

Now there is one other color for the holiday season and that is white, as in white Amaryllis, the ones that you force for winter.  They are big and bold and can be transplanted into a sheltered corner of your hot, dry garden to bloom again year after year.  I did exactly that in Las Vegas, but the next bloom came over a year later near Easter, rather than Christmas. Since then it has bloomed regularly in the Spring.

And be sure to put luminarias out for the holidays to line your patio or walkway.  The old-fashioned way to do them is put tea lights inside paper bags. On Amazon the manufacturers state that the bags are fire resistant. If you can find them I’d recommend terra cota luminarias, some of which are battery powered, and you can use them year after year.

Finally…I am moving after the first of the year so I will be publishing this blog only on an irregular basis until I am settled into my new home. Happy New Year to you!

Our 8 most popular newsletters

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