drought tolerant gardens Archives

Fragrant and showy African plants for your hot, dry garden

November means fewer hot days in the Northern Hemisphere but in the Southern one, it’s Spring and plants are beginning to rise up toward the sun and bloom. Happily, many, particularly from South Africa, are suitable for our hot dry gardens.

One of the most fragrant South African flowers I know and love is the Freesia, a member of the Iris family. It blooms in Springtime and then the leaves die back to the ground. While often Freesia plants are grown in pots where they may flower year after year, in most of the desert Southwest the Freesia bulbs (also called corms) are planted in the ground. If you are brave try simply leaving them in the ground. Some people prefer to dig the bulbs up and replant. Properly cared for they will bloom again for 7 to 9 years. The hybrids come in many colors, but the white and yellow blooms seem to be the most fragrant. And–maybe best of all– they are very easy to grow: just stick the bulbs in a hole 2 inches deep, cover it and then water lightly. Come Spring warmth they bloom.

Another choice is the freesia-like Tritonia, originally found in Mozambique but now common in the Cape region of South Africa. It looks similar and is very tough. Many are very fragrant, especially after dark, but two, Tritonia Pink and Tritonia Cream are fragrance free.

Iris in a desert garden is unexpected

For a more showy plant in a garden border, choose Iris, a native of Egypt in northern Africa. Its flashy blue and purple and yellow flowers are surprising in any garden and moreso in a desert environment. In hot, dry climates they grow beautifully from rhizomes, a flat, lumpy and thick root-like structure. (Not a round bulb like the Freesia has.)

I recently planned to add Iris to my garden because, not only are the flowers a visual delight, Iris leaves remain upright after blooming and add structure to a garden border. But when I saw the price for one rhizome cutting I was surprised. Ok, they were rhizome cuttings from rare/unusual Iris, but–wow, they were much more than I anticipated. So I would advise you, if you already have Iris, split your own rhizomes, and replant so you have twice as many in late Spring. You might want to offer to swap rhizome cuttings with a gardening friend or neighbor to get different colors.

How to split Iris rhizomes

After you dig up the Iris rhizome, cut the leaves back to about 5 or 6 inches then divide the rhizome by pulling it apart at the joints. If it doesn’t break easily cut it into large pieces using a sharp, knife sterilized by dipping it in bleach and water.

Okay, now here is where planting Iris is different from most plantings. Do not use compost. Do not heap mulch around the plant. Do not plant it deep. Iris like it plain and simple. Just dig a shallow hole about ten inches wide by three or four inches deep and place the rhizome with a few leaves still attached on a low mound of desert soil in the hole. Then fill the hole with the TOP of the Iris rhizome still visible. Pro Tip: If the rhizome is soft and squishy, throw it out.

South Africa is the home of gladiolus

Yes. Those big, showy “glads” in American gardens come from the original ancestor in South Africa. And here are even more plants from there suitable for desert Southwest gardens.

Gladiolus These Gladiolus (Gladiolus dalenii) are a delicate version of the large, sturdy upright “glads” of summer. Our European-style upright ones are hybrids based on these South African natives. These bloom in Spring.

You may be much better off planting bulbs native to South Africa, such as the or the Watsonia borbonica, also called the Pink Watsonia or the Bugle Lily. It, too, resembles miniature gladiolus.

I wish I could tell you to plant Agapanthus, yet another South African native, but, sadly, they do not survive in desert heat.

In the next newsletter look for information about the plants from another Southern Hemisphere locale, Australia. Some of their natives thrive in our hot dry gardens.

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

Best native shrubs for relentless desert heat

Here we are in September with weather that used to belong to July. With weather this hot it is too early to plant shrubs and trees in your garden. Wait until the daytime high air temperature is 90 degrees Fahrenheit or less. That 90F temperature is a useful indicator that the soil has cooled off enough. Hot soil can kill a newly installed plant within days.

Now, however, is not too early to plan adding tough native shrubs to help minimize the effects of the blistering heat next year. (And it will be blistering hot next year. You can count on it, as the climate changes.)

While you may think “I need to plant big trees to cool my garden”, in fact, shrubs can definitely help by shading smaller areas and the lower sides of your home. Shrubs also keep the ground beneath them cooler and your overall garden at a lower temperature. The shade shrubs cast can create a haven for small wildlife like birds, lizards, bees and other insects.

So here are a few favorites, most are evergreen and all, but two, are native to the U.S. Southwest. (And those two are tough Aussies!)

1. Texas Ranger (Leucophyllum frutescens)

Also known Texas Sage, is a staple in desert landscaping due to its low water needs and striking silvery foliage. Imagine how glorious a hedge of these will look as this hardy shrub bursts into a display of purple blooms when the summer humidity gets high. It thrives in full sun and poor but well-drained soils, making it an ideal choice for low-maintenance gardens. Whatever you do, do not trim your Texas Ranger into a lollypop shape. It is naturally a loose, open, and graceful shrub that reaches up to 6 feet in height and will live for as long as 30 years. ProTip: trying to bring on blooms by watering the plant, won’t work. It takes the increased humidity of the monsoon for the Texas Ranger to flower.

2. Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis)

Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis) can be grown as a small, messy tree or multi-trunk shrub. But messy as it is, the Desert Willow is popular because it will survive on its own with no extra water or fertilizer required. Grows two to three feet a year and reaches a height of 15 to 20 feet and will live for over 40 years, if planted no higher than an elevation of 5,000 feet. It can be found in the wild in all the major Southwestern deserts from Chihuahuan to the Mojave to the Sonoran and the Colorado desert. As a desert native it needs little care and will produce red, pink, white, and purple flowers for months on end, but, I repeat, it is a messy tree dropping those long, brown seed pods for you to clean up. Now read about the next tree, a tidier hybrid of the Desert Willow.

3. Chitalpa trees (Chitalpa tashkentensis)

Chitalpa trees can grow as large, multi-stemmed shrub or a single-trunk tree. Unlike its cousin the Desert Willow, Chitalpa trees were created by scientists to be sterile and do not have those long, pointy seed pods. Their leaves are wider and create more shade. For that reason, the Chitalpa, like its cousin, is often planted as a street tree that blooms for months on end without supplemental watering. This hybrid thrives in endless sunshine and grows very fast to 30 feet tall. It’s said to live up to 150 years which seems a bit unlikely to me, but it you can be sure it will be growing where you plant it even after you are no longer gardening. Hummingbirds and bees love its pink or white orchid shaped flowers.

4. Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis)

Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis) has been an ignored shrub of the Sonoran Desert and Baja. The oil from the seeds was used for centuries by native Americans to treat skin conditions such as psoriasis and eczema. A few decades ago, young women who were advocates of natural skin care “discovered” it and the oil was added to many skin and hair care products as a hydrating agent as well as having skin health benefits. But, skin care aside, it is simply a nicely shaped, round shrub that grows to a height of three to six feet with gray-green leaves year ‘round with seeds that go from green to dark brown. Oil is relatively easy to express from the seeds. It is highly drought-tolerant and reputed to live for decades.

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5. Littleleaf Cordia (Cordia parvifolia)

Cordia parvifolia is a low maintenance plant which is not common in hot, dry gardens – but it should be. It is very drought tolerant once established. Ideally, it should be planted in locations with full sun and will produce large white flowers for months on end from early spring to fall with supplemental irrigation. This native of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts is a dense shrub with arching branches that grow up to 6 feet tall and wide, making it suitable for hedges or as a standalone plant. You may have to call around to garden shops or plant nurseries to find it and you may end up finding it at a native plant nursery. In a pot it is disappointing, but plant it in the ground and this shrub with its white flowers becomes a beauty.

6. Feathery Cassia (Senna artemisioides)

Feathery Cassia, a native of Australia, is smaller shrub with feathery leaves that can tolerate very high temperatures. Known for its wispy, gray-green foliage and bright yellow flowers, which bloom in late winter and early spring, this plant provides seasonal color while maintaining year-round interest. Its flowers are also very fragrant attracting bees and other insects. Feathery Cassia grows up to three to four feet tall and wide, making it suitable for smaller spaces or as a border plant. It thrives in full sun and well-drained soils, needing little water beyond what falls from the sky once it is established.

7. Lantana (Lantana camara)

This native of the African tropics and popular in Australia, has spread around the world because it thrives in hot climates and blooms with colorful flowers for months on end. In the U.S. Southwest the Lantana camara, the upright version of this shrub, can become an attractive hedge. (In places like the damp U.S. SouthEAST it has become an invasive plant to be eradicated if possible.) Please note that for a hedge or a taller shrub you want to get the Lantana camara, not the low-growing, mounding Lantana montevidensis, also called trailing Lantana. Planted densely, as shown in the photo, the upright version will grow to 6 feet tall and as wide as 5 feet and can be trimmed into a tidy hedge. And as for flower colors — they seem to be endless! Mix them up.

8. Creosote (Larrea tridentata)

Why no photo for creosote? When doing research for this post, I asked the artificial intelligence ChatGPT for a list of native desert shrubs suitable for residential gardens to see how its list compared to mine. The first on its list was creosote. What?? Creosote is basically a weed in most Southwestern deserts. In Tucson there are actually neighborhoods with acres and acres of creosote “forests” dense with volunteer plants that are about 5 feet tall. They provide privacy to homes built in the back of the property decades ago, but no one planted the creosote bushes; they just grew. Creosote’s one claim to fame is that it/they can live for centuries. It’s true. New plants spring up from the roots of the older ones forming an ever-widening circle of creosote. One creosote circle in the Mojave was dated to 10,000 years old! Maybe one day ChatGPT will “read” this and realize that it gave bad advice. Don’t plant creosote.

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

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!

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

Hot Days, White Nights, How Design a Moon Garden
Australian Plants for a Desert Garden
Cover up that naked wall
Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
Five fragrant plants for your garden
Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
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

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

2 desert style lawn replacements and a confession about travelling online

I’ll start with the confession: I sometimes take “drives” around cities and towns on Google, using Google’s street view. It gives me a chance to look at how people garden in places I may not have visited. I also look for examples of lawn replacements where green grass in front yards has obviously been removed and drought tolerant plants installed instead.

Most recently I “drove” around Tucson, Arizona and El Paso, Texas and, instead of lawn replacements or dry, sun-baked lawns, I saw a lot of non-gardens in front of homes. What I consider non-gardens are front yards with a random bush or two here or there, nothing seemingly planned or cared for. These spaces may have rock mulch, but as often as not, they don’t. And they are not native plant gardens either. Lawn replacement wasn’t even an issue in those places.

Both cities have low annual rainfall –10 inches for El Paso, 12 inches for Tucson–which puts them both clearly into a desert climate category with most of the rain coming during the summer monsoon.

With a little planning, however, non-gardens can be transformed into attractive spaces that will please the eye and increase property values.

Full disclosure: These examples below are lawn replacements. Instead of starting with non-gardens these homeowners removed thirsty front lawns temporarily creating “non-gardens”.

Here are two examples I particularly like. Neither require much maintenance at all after they are established. (And for 4 more landscaping ideas for hot gardens, go here.)

Lawn Replacement garden #1

decomposed granite front lawn replacement hot gardens

These homeowners stripped out the grass and planted a border of non-thirsty desert plants in a curving shape around a plot that looks like bare earth but is in fact decomposed granite. The decomposed granite protects the underlying soil from erosion during heavy rains and is excellent for weed control.

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

Among the plants in this border near the house are several varieties of Agaves plus Lantana with orange blooms. Lantana flowers for months on end and needs very little water. The Agaves can survive with almost total neglect.

In the foreground are Aloe, iceplants (Delosperma) and a lone clump of Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) in bare soil that once had wood mulch on it. The bare soil looks washed out and uneven in contrast to the decomposed granite surface.

Lawn replacement garden #2

This second garden is also drought tolerant, although it definitely needs more watering than the one above.

Drought tolerant garden in late summer hot gardens net — This garden is new within the last 3 years. Wisely, the ground is covered with organic mulch.

Despite the fact that many of the plants are desert natives, they give the impression of being abundant in an almost “English garden” style with mounds of green plants with leaves of contrasting colors and shapes. Because this photo was taken in late summer only a few blooms are left on plants. Among the plants are the almost leafless Palo verde trees (Parkinsonia x), deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens), and the Mexican Bird of Paradise (Caesalpinia mexicana) with its long-lasting orange blooms.

The garden design also includes berms, shallow “hills” created artificially, to give more privacy to the home. One good thing about creating berms is that in the process of building up the pile of earth you can add nutrients all the way through to the old bare earth below. These berms are covered with wood mulch to provide both cover for the bare soil and food for the plants. The homeowners have chosen a light color decomposed granite for the paths. It also comes in a variety of other colors.

Here is a second view of the home. I’m not sure what the plant in the front by the rock is, but it looks as if it is failing.

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

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

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

Before and After: A surprising drought tolerant succulent garden

Just after I earned my Master Gardener certification I saw a low water usage succulent garden while visiting Long Beach, California. It really stood out because most of the gardens in the area, less than 3 blocks from the edge of the Pacific Ocean, showed a strong tropical plant influence. Well, tropicals with roses.

Naples Island garden — **Many gardens near the ocean in Long Beach used to be filled with tropical plants and roses. A small patch of grass as a “front lawn”was common.**

Back then there were no significant water restrictions and most homes had small lawns in front. Long Beach today has some of the most rigorous water restrictions in Southern California and it shows in the changed gardens.

A couple of weeks ago I was back in the same neighborhood and saw that drought-tolerant succulent/cactus garden again and took a photo thinking that I would show the change and maturation of the plants over the years. At home on my computer I looked closer and recognized that many plants in the garden now are almost entirely different from the ones back in 2003.

I realized that I had always thought of drought tolerant succulent gardens as being “eternal”–requiring almost zero upkeep and lasting forever. Not true–as this garden in its 2 incarnations shows:

Succulent garden BEFORE 2003:

This garden in 2003 had the tropical giant bird-of-paradise (Strelitzia nicolai), on the left, but most of the other plants are drought tolerant succulents and cacti. The reason I never published this photo on Hot Gardens is because of the many New Zealand Flax (Phormium tenax) plants. These upright grass-like plants seem to simply die in hot, desert-like conditions which is too bad because they come in many sizes and great colors ranging from red to green to black and some nifty striped ones. Agave plants make up another important upright feature in this garden.

SUCCULENT GARDEN AFTER 2018:

The giant bird-of-paradise plants are still in the garden, but now they have tall trunks leading up to the leaves at the top. Gone are the blue-green iceplants (Delosperma) that lined the sidewalk as are the New Zealand Flax plants. The Agaves have survived. And there are some tall tree-like plants in the parking strip that appear to be new. (Sorry I don’t know the names of them.) It is, in a way, the same garden only different. And to be honest, I really like the 2003 version of this garden much better.

Read our 8 most popular newsletters

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

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