Category: flowers in desert

Hot Days, White Nights: How to Design a Moon Garden

When the desert mercury climbs, our relationship with our gardens shifts. We retreat indoors during the sizzling daylight hours, only to emerge when the air finally begins to cool after dusk. This shift is the perfect reason to design a Night Garden—a landscape specifically engineered to shimmer in moonlight.

A Quick Reality Check: While we’re dreaming of moonlit blossoms, remember the Hot Gardens golden rule: Plant in the Fall or early Spring. Once the temperature rises, new plants struggle to survive.

Here is your guide to the best white-blossomed, silver-leaved, and scent-heavy plants for a desert sanctuary. And as a bonus, learn which wildlife visitors your garden may have at night.

The Luminous Anchors: Trees & Shrubs

  • White Roses: Opt for white or pale yellow varieties. They offer a shimmering beauty and a classic fragrance that hangs perfectly in the balmy night air.
white rose
  • White Oleander (Nerium oleander): A rugged, water-wise alternative to roses. Beyond its months-long bloom cycle, it is fire-retardant—a vital feature if you live in high-risk wildfire zones. (Pro-tip: Always maintain a 100-foot defensible perimeter of cleared brush around your home)
  • Texas Olive (Cordia boissieri): Not a true olive, but a tough native shrub that starts its show in late Spring and often provides a “bonus” bloom in Autumn.
White Crape Myrtle

White Yarrow (Achillea millefolium): A sturdy native that requires almost no water once established—perfect for the “lazy” summer gardener.

White Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), left: In our alkaline desert soils, these are slow growers (topping out at 15–20 feet). Help them thrive by adding plenty of organic mulch to provide the acidity they crave.

Night-Scented Sensations

  • Evening Primrose (Oenothera caespitosa): Don’t confuse this with the invasive pink variety. This native white version blooms specifically at night and smells incredible. It grows in a mounded shape.
  • Moonflower (Ipomoea alba): A nocturnal cousin to the Morning Glory. Its massive white flowers unfurl at sunset like nature’s own lightbulbs. (Be careful that you do not buy Jimson Weed also known as Datura. It has large flowers that look like morning glory, but is poisonous and not suitable for gardens.)
  • White Jasmine & Hall’s Honeysuckle: These climbers are fragrance powerhouses. Honeysuckle pulls double duty, attracting bees by day and perfuming your patio by night.
  • Nicotiana alata: The wild species is the most fragrant, but the ‘Domino’ variety is much better at standing up to our intense desert heat.

Pittosporum tobira: A sweet-smelling flowering shrub also called by the name mock orange. As a tree form it reaches 15 to 20 feet in height. It also comes with variegated leaves to add to nighttime luster.

Texture & Reflection: Silver Foliage

  • Lamb’s Ears (Stachys byzantina): The soft, fuzzy, silver-grey leaves act like a mirror for moonlight, creating a velvet-like carpet on the garden floor.
  • Variegated Turf Lily (Liriope muscari ‘Silvery Sunproof’): A durable groundcover with striped leaves that catch the light, finished with delicate summer blooms.
Variegated lirope turf lily

The Secret Sauce: White & Pale Yellow

When wandering your local nursery, keep one rule in mind: If it’s white or pale yellow, it belongs. These shades reflect the shortest wavelengths of light, meaning they will “glow” long after the sun sets, while reds and purples disappear into the shadows.

Javelina Cousin book ad

The “Night Shift” Pollinators

While you’re enjoying the cooler air, your garden is hard at work. By planting white, fragrant, and night-blooming species, you are creating a vital pit stop for the desert’s nocturnal ecosystem.

  • Sphinx Moths: Often mistaken for hummingbirds due to their size and hovering ability, these moths are the primary fans of Moonflowers and Evening Primrose. Their long proboscises are perfectly evolved to reach deep into tubular white blooms.
  • Nectar-Eating Bats: In the Southwest, lesser long-nosed bats and Mexican long-tongued bats are crucial pollinators. They are drawn to the pale, sturdy flowers of the Texas Olive and native cacti.
  • Nocturnal Bees & Beetles: Many smaller desert residents rely on the highly visible “landing pads” of White Yarrow and Dwarf Cup Flower to find food in the dark.

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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!

Where to get a free or cheap tree for your home.

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!

Javelina Cousin book ad

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.

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Hot Days, White Nights, How Design a Moon Garden
  2. Australian Plants for a Desert Garden
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  5. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  6. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat

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.

Where to get a free or cheap tree for your home.

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. Most native plants bloom in yellow.

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Hot Days, White Nights, How Design a Moon Garden
  2. Australian Plants for a Desert Garden
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  5. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  6. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat

Light and shine for your holiday garden

luminaria

Even if you decide not to deck out your home with strings of lights and other festive decorations this year, consider using luminaria on your porch, in windows or along a walkway during the holidays. To my eyes, homes with luminarias are so much more attractive than ones with dancing elves and soaring Santas. (Although children love the elf-and-santa version of decorations!)

Many garden stores now have ceramic or metal luminarias but they are easy to make at home:

1) fold down the tops of brown paper lunch bags you can buy at the grocery store as if making a cuff and
2) fill in the bottom of the now-shorter bag with a handful of sand or garden soil to anchor it, then
3) set a tea-light in the bottom center of your handmade luminaria and
4) light the tea-light. Voila–you’re done!

Garden Gifts

If you have a gardening friend and are looking around for a holiday gift idea, consider giving them a garden ornament. These three are definitely for the friend who has everything. The two glass ornaments are in the garden behind the Sonoran Glass School in Tucson and are available for sale. The desert tortoise is not for sale and permanently at home in the Arlington Garden in Pasadena.

turtle garden ornament

But these three can be inspiration. If you like the idea of glass in the garden but would like something more affordable, consider buying a tempered glass wind chime at your local holiday faire. And almost every good garden shop has animal ornaments for reasonable prices.

Winter Flower Blooms Again

amaryllis bloom

Looking ahead: when the amaryllis blooming in your home during the holiday season fades, plant the bulb outside in a very sheltered place and in about 14-16 months, the amaryllis will bloom again…and every year after that. I had one in my Mojave garden that bloomed and produced offset bulbs for over a decade! The offset bulbs, which I separated from the original bulb and replanted, in turn bloomed in Springtime, too. It was definitely a gift that kept on giving! Happy holidays to you!

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Hot Days, White Nights, How Design a Moon Garden
  2. Australian Plants for a Desert Garden
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  5. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  6. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat

Look to South Africa for unusual off-season flowers

Our mild Autumn weather is almost a second Springtime, especially for gardeners who live at lower elevations in the desert with warm winters.  Plant pretty annuals like carpets in empty flower beds to replace any perennials that have died back. Take care not to disturb the roots of the perennials because they will be back next year.

Or fill pots on your patio to overflowing. At higher, cold-winter elevations it may be too late as the first winter storms have blanketed mountains with snow.

Should you dig up the flower bulbs?

While some people, particularly in the U.K. and New England, dig up their bulbs in Fall, in most of the U.S. southwest it is not necessary. But if you want to add flowers from bulbs, rhizomes and corms to your garden, now is the time to plant to assure yourself of Springtime flowers.

purple and white iris

Freesia and Iris are two of our favorites. Both require little water and no attention. The exception, however, are those re-blooming iris that flower in spring and fall which need heavy watering.

The incredibly fragrant Freesia dies back to the ground after blooming; the Iris keeps its leaves and provides an upright structural element in a garden border.

If you already have Iris, split and replant the rhizomes now for double the flowers next year. Do not plant them deep. Simply place them in a shallow trench and cover lightly–deep enough to protect from a freeze if you live in an area with occasional light freezes in winter.

About tulips: yes, you can plant the bulbs, but they really love a damper, milder climate — like the Netherlands or Seattle.

Flowers from South Africa

Gladiolus dalenii

You may be much better off planting bulbs native to South Africa, such as the freesia-like Tritonia or the Watsonia borbonica, which looks like a miniature gladiolus. The low-growing Babiana is a Sub-Sahara native also worth considering as an edging plant. It looks somewhat like a crocus and does well in a desert garden.

The Gladiolus (Gladiolus dalenii), above, a South African native, is a delicate variation on the large, sturdy upright “glads” of late summer. These bloom in Spring.

Salvia leucantha sage

One plant that is a joy for so many gardeners in California and the Southwest is the Mexican Bush Sage, Salvia leucantha ‘Midnight’ that blooms twice a year. Unlike re-blooming Iris, the Mexican Bush Sage is not a water guzzler. It naturally blooms in Spring and late Fall.  It is a super-tough plant with tall spires of purple or purple and white flowers that stay in bloom through December! One year I even clipped the flower stems and used them to decorate my Christmas tree. Tip: Cut it back to about 8 inches high in January and it will re-grow and bloom again in March.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Hot Days, White Nights, How Design a Moon Garden
  2. Australian Plants for a Desert Garden
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  5. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  6. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  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.

Where to get a free or cheap tree for your home.

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Hot Days, White Nights, How Design a Moon Garden
  2. Australian Plants for a Desert Garden
  3. Cover up that naked wall
  4. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  5. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  6. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat