Category: garden landscapes

You don’t need a pristine green thumb to become a Master Gardener

Many people think you already need to be an expert to join the Master Gardener program, but that is a major misconception. Whether your current garden is a sprawling oasis or just a few succulents in terra cotta pots on your patio, the program is designed to train you from scratch.

At its core, being a Master Gardener is about education and community. If you love gardening, want to learn from great teaching gardeners, and are willing to share your new gardening know-how with your neighbors, you are a perfect candidate.

Cultivating a Legacy: How the Program Began

The Master Gardener concept was born in 1973 in Tacoma, Washington State. Dr. David Gibby of the Washington State Cooperative Extension noticed a massive shift: homeowners were flooding local agricultural extension offices with urban horticulture questions.

Historically, Co-op Extension offices only served commercial farmers by giving them advice on how to make their farms more successful. Suddenly, they were being asked about which roses produced the longest-blooming flowers, how to get rid of tomato pests, and what to plant for a hedge in a specific neighborhood.

Instead of hiring more government staff, Gibby created a volunteer training program. These trained volunteers could then step up to answer community questions, plant demonstration gardens, and teach local classes to adults and, much later, to children in schools.

As the Master Gardener program spread nationally, the training changed to adapt to local conditions. Suggestions for the best pink rhododendrons may be great for Washington state, but best blooming cacti is a more pertinent topic for the Sonoran desert conditions of southern Arizona.  

Another major change: As time went on, local Master Gardener programs became part of state Universities, rather than the state agricultural Co-op Extension offices.

Surviving Master Gardener Training

Master Gardener training is highly localized, intensive, and incredibly rewarding. I took the multi-month training program in Clark County (Las Vegas), Nevada. Having previously gardened in the lush, coastal climate of Santa Barbara, California, transitioning to the Mojave Desert required learning a completely new set of rules.

In the desert, you learn to work with the environment rather than trying to make it conform to your dream garden. The training dives deep into:

  • Soil composition: Managing rock-hard caliche and alkaline desert soils.
  • Water management: Capturing rainfall and mastering drip irrigation as well as efficient xeriscaping.
  • Plant selection: Identifying native and desert-adapted species that thrive in intense heat with low rainfall.

If, for example, someone asks you about best way to maintain a Bird of Paradise (that red/yellow/orange flowering shrub above), you may need to ask some questions. Why? Because just one state to the West in California, there is another plant called Bird of Paradise which looks like a lily that belongs in the tropics and won’t survive in the desert. To give good advice you will have to know exactly which plant they are asking about.

Another plant with a different issue: The smaller purple shrub on the left in this image has multiple names (Texas sage, Texas ranger, Leucophyllum frutescens) and only blooms when the humidity gets high enough. As a Master Gardener you will have to break the news to them that watering it like crazy will NOT bring on the lovely purple flowers. They will have to wait until monsoon humidity arrives.

And these are just two of the many, many types of useful things you could learn in a local Master Gardener program.

After I finished the training and began fielding questions from people who were first-time desert gardeners I decided to share my knowledge beyond Nevada. A total tech novice I developed a successful website about gardening in a hot, dry desert climate to reach would-be desert gardeners around the planet. For that I thank the Clark County Master Gardeners.

How to Join Your Local Program

So, are you ready to master the green world of gardens and share your knowledge with your community? You can find a local program by visiting the American Horticultural Society or checking with your local state university.

To become a Master Gardener typically requires 40 to 70 hours of classroom instruction covering botany, soils, plant pathology, pest management, and sustainable gardening. The fees for the training vary from state to state.

Next comes 40 to 75 hours of community service working with senior Master Gardeners. You would be doing such things as answering questions from callers to the MG help desks, advising school gardens, leading basic gardening classes for adults or managing demonstration plots. Then you will be expected to do 20 to 30 annual volunteer hours to maintain. 

And I can tell you that when you join the program you will learn more than names of plants and best gardening practices, you will meet new friends among the Master Gardeners who will endure for a lifetime.

PotMen run wild in a drab desert garden

Of course you can do more serious things with terra cotta pots than create PotMen for sculpture in your desert garden which probably looks a bit dull at this time of year. You could create a water-wise plant watering system with terra cotta ollas. Or set up a mini-fountain to provide water for thirsty lizards and birds. Or simply position large painted terra cotta pots — either solid color or elaborately designed–here and there as color in your summer monochrome garden.

But I started with PotMen, at the top of this post, who are funny and silly and, have “heads” that give you a space to grow non-traditional desert plants, such as nasturtiums, ivy and petunias like those sprouting out of the PotMens’ heads. During peak summer heat and peak sunshine those plants would not survive 24 hours, as we all know. But in the shade and in a milder season, growing those colorful flowering plants is do-able. I plant nasturtiums in pots every Spring and they thrive for a while. Meanwhile the PotMen are fun in a garden year ’round. (FWIW, I first saw these characters in Europe, not the U.S. and only found one person online offering instructions on how to make them. They are strung together with cords and propped upright with narrow slats.)

Call ollas “ancient sustainable irrigation”

Terra cotta ollas were created first thousands of years ago in North Africa, or China, or maybe in Spain or somewhere else. While no one can say definitively where it started, we can make a very good guess about “who.” A woman, somewhere, saw water seeping through a clay pot she used to keep water in her home and realized that by sinking a clay pot filled with water into the ground in her garden/fields she could spend less time hand irrigating plants. She realized the water would slowly seep out into the soil and give plant roots the water they need consistently for good growth. All she had to do was refill the pot, now more commonly known as an olla (pronounced Oy ya), every three or four days. She probably also worked with her village potter to refine the design of her “plant-waterer.” They came up with a round clay pot with a narrow neck to help prevent evaporation and a cap on top–also to slow down evaporation. That design is still used today. Ollas can also be created with ordinary clay garden pots. See DIY instructions on You Tube.

Help a lizard with its drinking habit

When I first set up a plant saucer on my patio and filled it with water it was for the Mourning Doves that live in my neighborhood. And they came and drank and began hatching little doves in the shrubs in my backyard. Success!

A month or so after I set up this mini-bubbler fountain one morning I noticed a little lizard skittering away into the leaf litter. Unlike the doves, the lizard can’t just fly over to the river for water so I continued with this mini-fountain — now more for the lizards than the doves. I have only seen one smaller lizard who could be a baby of the first one, however. In case you want to add this feature to your garden, there are small solar powered bubblers listed online for under $10.

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Control the invaders before they take over

Plant aggressive growers—like certain desert mint varieties or invasive succulents—directly into a clay pot, then bury the entire pot into the ground up to its rim. The thick terra cotta walls contain the root system to stop underground runners from taking over your garden beds. Among the aggressors: ice plants (Carpobrotus edulis) and some Sedum. Sedum Angelina is an example: it is golden yellow during summer and golden orange in the fall. It is tempting because of the color, but highly invasive.)

Nope. Find another kind.

If you are thinking about planting the Mother of Thousands, in a pot with other succulents, it will overwhelm and essentially kill the well-behaved succulents. And, worse yet, little Mother of Thousands plants will sprout up all over the place even if the original plant is in a pot. So beware! More about succulents in an upcoming newsletter.

Gorgeous large pots look great by the front door but they are tempting to thieves

Whether a classic adobe or a contemporary Southwest style home, large pots look beautiful beside the doorway. Alas, thieves think so, too. If you want to do this anyway, be sure to affix the pots to the front landing with silicon adhesive and/or by running a cable from the inside of the pot, through a flat washer and then through the hole in the bottom and lock the cable to a railing. Or you may decide to use your beautiful big pots beside the patio behind your home and leave your front door plain. Keep the beauty of terra cotta pots to yourself, your family and your friends.

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.

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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What to do when its too hot to garden

Today’s forecast in Tucson is for a high temperature of 111 degrees Fahrenheit. Too hot to do more than water the plants in pots and sweep up leaves from yesterday’s winds. It’s like this almost everywhere in the Southwest. Even southeastern California is scorching. (The exceptions are the sky islands of Arizona and Nevada. More about them later.)

So what’s a gardener to do? For me the solution is clear: visit the shadiest public garden nearby preferably in the morning and preferably with a gardening friend.

Seeing the wide range of heat-tolerant plants thriving in the public garden is the summertime equivalent of perusing seed catalogs in winter. You and your friend can look. You can even take notes if you see something very special. But you cannot really do anything about planting in your hot, dry garden until the weather cools months from now. Then after the plant-viewing is done, stop at the cafe in the public garden for a light lunch in the shade. Perfect!

Escape to a public garden

So, here are a few public gardens I’ve visited during the sizzling hot summer months over the past 20+ years I’ve been writing Hot Gardens. Often, I confess, my goal in recent years is to go for a shady walk in an appealing urban space and have a fun lunch with friends. Plants are just an extra.

(For a list of all the gardens I’ve written about on Hot Gardens, go here.)

I’ll start with the obvious: Tucson Botanical Gardens. It was founded in 1964 in the back yard of a horticulturist, Harrison Yocum, so the trees in parts of this garden are 60 years old and the walk ways are shady. Two new additions to this garden are an expanded cactus and succulent garden and a whimsical installation of model trains and model historic buildings in what was once an ignored corner of the garden. Both USA Today and TripAdvisor recommend this public garden. I do, too.

Saguaros at Tucson Botanical Garden
Shady pathway Tucson Botanical Garden

The San Antonio Botanical Garden is 38 acres of surprises. Rather than focus on drought-tolerant plants, the goal of this public garden is to showcase the wide variety of plants and eco-systems in Texas. Among the things you will see is the dramatic Lucile Halsell Conservatory complex with its towering glass buildings. There are also old residences surrounded by historic plantings. And contemporary displays of plants. And a bird-watching station. And a culinary garden. And…, well, it’s Texas so there is more, much more.

Plan your visit to the Phoenix Botanical Gardens at night! From June through September there are ‘Flashlight Nights’ that let you see the gardens after sundown. Each of these nights has special events and snacks for desserts, too. The exhibitions of plants and the indigenous people of the Southwest are favorites of mine. The trails through the Gardens aren’t consistently shady so nighttime visits are best. Check the website for dates and times.

patio space with desert plants at the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden

When I lived in Los Angeles, my go-to public garden was not the large L.A. Arboretum, but the much smaller and shadier Descanso Gardens, tucked back in the hills above Glendale. Originally it was a commercial garden with camellias and roses grown for sale. Now camellias and roses make up only two parts of Descanso Gardens. There is also a Japanese Garden with a tea house, a lilac garden with blooms in Spring, a small drought-tolerant garden, an Oak woodland with soft-underfoot trails, a little train for children to ride, and an art exhibition near the original home on the property plus a cafe for lunch under the pergolas near the entrance. (And the glorious poppy, below, is just for a beauty of it.)

poppies at Descanso Gardens

Historically, plants have not always been the primary focus of gardens. The ancient gardens of the Roman, Persian and Chinese empires always placed the enclosing architecture, the water features and the buildings as the most important elements of that protected, outdoor space we call a garden. Plants were more like ornaments in those gardens. The Getty Villa in Malibu and the Chinese Garden at the Huntington Gardens are both examples of the ‘architecture-first’ gardens. And both these gardens are also noted for their art collections. So if you go to California this summer, visit either or both of these for a more-than-gardens experience. I recommend lunch at the Getty Villa overlooking the Roman garden, below, and Pacific Ocean. The food is good; the view is better. And it’s always cool!

outer peristile at Getty Villa in Malibu
garden fountain at Getty Villa

Now about Sky Islands

Sky Island is the common designation for locations over 5,000 feet in elevation in mountains that rise up steeply out of hot deserts. Up there it’s cool — 20 to 30 degrees cooler than the land down at the foot of the mountains. Both Mt. Lemmon near Tucson and Mt. Charleston near Las Vegas are sky islands. Hiking and camping are comfortable experiences during summer months when you are that high up. And you can simply ignore your garden for a while. Stay cool!

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

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

Fixing that neglected side yard

It’s long. It’s narrow. And a home’s side yard is usually given little attention. Perhaps the original builder or an earlier owner spread a layer of rocky mulch on the soil and added a few stepping stones along the unused passageway from the front to the back of your home. But often it is not even considered part of the garden.

I have to confess that I ignored my current home’s side yard. A previous resident had, in fact, covered the 10 foot wide strip with reddish brown rock mulch. No stepping stones, however. There are pockets of grass where baby Mourning Doves huddle together and, in another corner, one rugged, volunteer Lantana plant survives. On one side of this passageway is a 6 ft. tall wood fence and on the other, the pale, sand-colored stucco wall for my living room. No windows — thank goodness.

Then, one day this last summer when it was once again 110 degrees fahrenheit outside here in Arizona I realized how much cooler that side of my home–the south side–would be if I planted something tall and shady there–a tree that was very drought resistant and wouldn’t die in relentless 100F+ heat.

Two drought tolerant trees for shade

My first thought was to install a Palo Verde tree in late October or November, when Fall planting season starts. I love this Arizona native’s brilliant yellow blossoms in April but once the flowers are gone, it would only provide a light screen effect with its leafless branches. Not much help countering the blasting sunlight in summer.

Then, I thought, what about another favorite of mine, the long-blooming Chitalpa (Chitalpa x tashkentsis)? Its branches would be ladened with pink flowers for months on end. And Chitalpa trees have leaves to cast more shade than the Palo Verde. Better yet, they grow fast and are so tough that in Las Vegas and Tucson they’re planted as street trees.

But I had to face reality: the passageway is only 10 feet wide and both the Palo Verde and the Chitalpa should be planted a minimum of 15 feet away from the side of a house.

So, a tall, skinny tree was called for–like an Italian Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) which I know grows in Los Angeles and the Mojave desert. I haven’t seen many of them here in Sonoran desert gardens. A friend in Vegas planted a wall of them but looking at her garden now, maybe that is not the solution–especially when I check the price for 5 or 6 trees. I’ve been told that they suffer from red mites and if not watered deeply they will die.

Thanksgiving and cooler weather arrived and I stopped thinking about shady trees for my side yard. But in that doldrum week between Christmas and New Year, I began to consider it again.

Tough shrubs are a shady solution

Shrubs, I decided. Big, leafy, drought tolerant shrubs–maybe 5,6 or 7 feet tall–planted like a wall of shade next to the house. They will never grow tall enough to shade and cool the roof, but drought tolerant shrubs could block some of the blasting sunlight heating up the stucco. (Yes, Yes, I know I wrote about shrubs to cool concrete block walls last January. I’m now following my own advice.)

lantana hedge in Pasadena

Texas rangers (Leucophyllum frutescens) and upright Lantanas (Lantana camara) immediately came to mind. Both bloom often throughout the year, usually after some rain falls.

With some strategic trimming colorful Lantanas, like the ones in a hedge in Pasadena, can be encouraged to grow to 5 feet high. The Texas Rangers, however, I plan to leave untrimmed. I hate what commercial “gardeners” do to these beautiful, loose shrubs: whacking them into a lollipop shape with most of the lovely purple flowers cut off.

I’ll plant in February when we have had more rain and the soil is beginning to warm up. Now to figure out what to do to my back yard where a neighbor’s small tree died last year. It shaded both our yards and cut off the view from two homes behind us. Maybe that’s the right place for a Palo Verde or Chitalpa. I’ll let you know.

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

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

For goodness sakes, cover up that naked wall

Okay, you removed that thirsty grass in your front yard. You’ve also planted a tree or two or three around your home, shading at least part of your yard and the house, reducing the temperature. But off to the edge of your property–if your home is like most in the U.S. Southwest–is a dreaded gray concrete block wall.

That wall, if left bare, is a heat magnet. Nakedly exposed to direct sunlight the concrete absorbs heat during the day, even on cool days. Then after sundown, the wall releases the heat into the air creating a pool of warmth surrounding your home — just when you’re trying to cool things off at days end. And as the climate changes the wall-heater effect will only grow more intense. So what’s a smart gardener to do?

4 ways to help walls keep their cool
pomegranate fruit on bush

Plant shrubs in front of the wall. In one of my gardens I planted a row of the “Wonderful” variety of pomegranates (Punica granatum). These fast growers will reach a height of 6 to 10 feet. You may want to keep them trimmed to match the wall height because they can reach twice that height. Pomegranates need very little water. A special bonus with pomegranates is, of course, the fruit you can harvest in the late summer. In Fall the leaves turn a lovely shade of yellow before they drop. If you do not harvest the fruit you will have shrubs with bright red “ornaments” on them during the holidays. To see other shrubs for hot dry gardens, go here.

pampas grass hiding a wall

Plant tall grasses in front of the wall

On another wall in the same garden, a previous owner had planted Pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana). After a summer’s growth Pampas grass will be 8-10 feet high plus another 5-6 feet of seed plumes. And it does all this with little need for irrigation or fertilizer. By mid-winter, this perennial should be cut back to 18 inches tall. Be sure to wear gloves and a long sleeve shirt when you cut it back because the leaf edges are rough and serrated. It will re-grow to the same height in the following summer. 

Avoid planting the variety of Pampas Grass called Cortaderia jubata which is a highly invasive weed. Given the right conditions — usually by a stream — it will self-seed and spread wildly forcing out native plants.

privet hedge deergrass skirt

If you want to avoid Pampas grass — and many people do–another choice would be Deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens) which grows to about 2 feet tall during the summer. It too grows seed plumes in Fall, but they are more modest in size than the ones of Pampas grass. While Deer grass will not cover up the entire height of your wall, it can be a base plant used with other shrubs. Unlike Pampas Grass it does not need to be trimmed back in winter. Needs very little water. To see other ornamental grasses for hot dry gardens, go here.

Install trellises along the wall

Trumpet creeper campsis radicans

Plant climbers on the trellises–like a Trumpet Creeper (Campsis radicans) from the eastern U.S. It is a self-attaching vine with bright yellow and orange blossoms.

This vine can grow as much 40 feet in one year! Because it is such a vigorous grower and can become invasive, it is best planted in a large container beside the trellis or arbor. It is tolerant of a variety of soil conditions and of heat and cold. Needs moderate water in summer.

To see other fast-growing climbers and vines for hot dry gardens, go here.

For the unexpected — Kool Deck your wall

Paint your concrete block wall with “Kool Deck” or another heat-reducing finish normally used on pool decks. These finishes come in a variety of colors so you can give your garden walls a custom look.

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

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

Where to get free or cheap trees in L.A., Phoenix, San Diego and…

The push for increased tree planting in cities around the world swells with each disruptive weather event. Whether it is reflected in nation-drowning floods in Pakistan or wildfires sweeping mountainsides bare in California, climate change has arrived. And ordinary people are saying: “We gotta do something.”

In response to clamor from citizens to “do something”, several U.S. Southwest city mayors have begun to set goals for the number of trees that should be planted in their communities. And they have enlisted the aid of organizations–usually utility companies–to help them by offering free or discounted small trees.

Before I go into how to get free trees locally, however, I want to answer a basic question.

Why plant trees?

Tree planting in cities has gone on for decades, mostly for aesthetic reasons. People like living and walking along tree-lined streets. There are now two other reasons to plant a tree at your home.

A street lined with Palo Verde trees that bloom brilliant yellow in April.
  1. As I wrote in the previous post, trees can become green canopies, natural umbrellas to cool hot city streets, sidewalks and other hardscape. It is a simple mechanical process: tree leaves blocking, reflecting or minimizing sunlight means cooler air and a cooler landscape underneath.
  2. There is also a chemical process that occurs when a new tree is planted. As they grow, trees absorb carbon dioxide, a gas that is a major contributor to climate change. Trees are carbon capturing plants that remove CO2 from the air and keep it stored in their leaves, trunk and branches. Less CO2 slows climate change. And the oxygen plants emit is the breath of life for people like you and me.

Trees planted for both these reasons make the world a pleasanter place for humans.

Ok. Now for those free trees

In Los Angeles, the Green New Deal identifies a goal of planting 90,000 trees. To reach that goal an organization called City Plants will deliver up to 7 free trees to your door. You have to plant them yourself but they provide instructions.

Crape myrtle

Don’t have space for another tree? They will also plant a street tree in front of your home or business, including obtaining the proper city permits.

City Plants also offers many “Adopt a tree” events for same day pick up of one fruit or shade tree. Check their website for details.

So who is picking up the tab for all this? The LA Dept. of Water and Power.

In Phoenix the goal is to plant 5,000 trees every year to increase the citywide tree canopy to 25%. It’s currently around 10%. Working in conjunction with Salt River Power and Trees Matter, Phoenix residents can take home 2 free desert native trees — mesquites, palos verdes, desert willows–after attending a Zoom meeting about planting and caring for trees.

San Diego, sadly, has discontinued their rebate program. I hope it will be restarted in 2026. Under this program homeowners received a $35 rebate from San Diego Gas and Electric for each tree purchased up to a total of 5 annually. And–happy news for renters and condo owners–you don’t have to plant the tree in the ground. Put your 1 or 5 gallon starter tree in a big pot on your balcony or patio and you qualify for the rebate.

Chines pistache tree hot gardens

In Tucson, the goal is an ambitious Million Trees planted by 2030. Trees for Tucson, a part of the environmental organization, Tucson Clean and Beautiful, is selling locally grown trees for $30 each. You will have to plant the tree yourself.

A better tree deal comes from Tucson Electic Power. You can order up to 3 starter trees through the TEP website for $5 each. They will send you an email about where and when to pick up your tree to take home and plant.

Like San Diego, Albuquerque uses a rebate program to help homeowners plant new trees. The ABQ Tree-Bate plan will pay a homeowner 25% of tree planting costs up to $100 as a rebate on the water bill. Better yet, the rebate can cover tree maintenance expenses and irrigation installation as well as the tree you plant from the city’s authorized list. Be sure to check the website before you rush out to buy a new tree.

And San Antonio, which really isn’t in a desert but I’m including it anyway, gives away free fruit trees at various special events around the city. (If you want more info about growing fruit trees in the desert go here.)

Big goals but not involving homeowners

El Paso also has a goal of a Million Trees planted, but is working through a non-profit organization which solicits cash donations and does the planting itself. I couldn’t find anything about free or almost free trees for homeowners.

Another example of a non-profit soliticiting donations and doing the planting is Las Vegas where the mayor wants the city to plant more than 60,000 street trees by 2050 to provide shade and bring temperatures down in areas most impacted by the urban heat island effect. Nothing on the website about tree planting assistance for homeowners.

Now about those huge national and international tree planting organisations

I am suspicious of some of the organizations who will for a dollar or two or more promise to plant a tree on your behalf somewhere around the country or around the world. You may not be helping who you think you are. Some are commercial tree growers who plan to harvest the “tree you paid to have planted” in 15 to 30 years. “Your tree” may well become a roll of bathroom tissue! These people are not restoring permanent forests!

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

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

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.

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

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

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

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.

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

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