Tag: hot gardens. drought tolerant gardens

From Down Under to the High Desert: Australian Plants for Your Hot Garden

While winter still grips the northern latitudes, the “Land Down Under” is basking in the peak of summer heat. It’s the perfect time to look to Australia—the native home of the acacia, eucalyptus, and kangaroo paw—for inspiration. These plants are the ultimate survivors for hot, dry desert climates, offering a “plant and ignore” lifestyle that every busy gardener loves.

If you’re planning your springtime planting, consider adding these low-maintenance, drought-tolerant beauties to your landscape.

1. Acacias: The Soil-Building Beauty

The Acacia family is a desert gardener’s dream: they love the sun, require very little water, and—as a hidden bonus—actually fix nitrogen in the soil, improving its quality for neighboring plants.

acacia in bloom

Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha): Australia’s national flower and the inspiration for the country’s green and gold colors.

Other acacias that thrive in our Southwestern gardens:

  • Cootamundra Wattle (Acacia baileyana): A fast-growing multi-trunk tree that brings a burst of fragrant, bright yellow blooms in mid-winter—a cheerful “genetic memory” of the Australian summer.
  • Prostrate Acacia (Acacia redolens): Need to cover a slope? This shrubby groundcover spreads up to 12 feet wide, thrives in poor soil, and features puffy, ball-like yellow flowers.

2. Eucalyptus: The “Dr. Seuss” Shade Tree

If you want shade and you want it now, Eucalyptus trees are your best bet. Famous for their whimsical, Dr. Seuss-like shapes, these rapid growers need almost no fertilizer—though an occasional dose of chelated iron can keep them looking vibrant.

  • Cider Gum (Eucalyptus gunnii): A hardy giant that can soar to 70 feet, showing off silvery-blue leaves and beautiful tan-and-green peeling bark.

    Other Eucalyptus that thrive in our climate:
  • Coral Gum (Eucalyptus torquata): Reaching 35 feet, this variety features light green leaves and exotic flowers that look like tiny Oriental lanterns.
  • Silver Dollar Tree (Eucalyptus cinerea): A floral arrangement favorite. Keep it trimmed back to maintain the iconic round, silver leaves; otherwise, they eventually turn long and green as the tree matures.

3. Natural Companions & Color Accents

kangaroo paw

Looking for the perfect partner for your Eucalyptus? Try the Kangaroo Paw (Anigozanthos). These perennials look like unassuming tufts of grass until they shoot up 2-foot spikes topped with fuzzy, tubular flowers.

  • The “Bush Gem” Series: Hybrids like  ‘Bush Gold’ and ‘Bush Ranger’ are the sturdiest options, resistant to pests and a magnet for hummingbirds.

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4. Echoes of the East Coast

If you miss the white birches of the Eastern U.S., the Australian Paperbark Tree (Melaleuca quinquenervia) is a stunning desert substitute. It features weeping branches and thick, light brown bark that peels away in papery layers.

  • Pro Tip: Use the peeled bark to line your wire hanging flower baskets—it’s both functional and beautiful!

5. The Bottle Brush Debate

Not all “indestructible” plants are created equal. While the Red Bottle Brush (Callistemon citrinus) is a common sight along California freeways, we prefer its more sophisticated cousin: Perth Pink.

Callistemon Perth Pink bottlebrush
  • Perth Pink Bottlebrush: While the standard red can look a bit “utility,” the Perth Pink variety offers hot pink blooms that are absolute showstoppers. It thrives in xeriscape gardens and, while sometimes harder to find, is well worth the search.

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Follow the 90 degree rule for planting

Fall is definitely the best time to plant in hot, dry Western gardens. It’s actually a good time to plant in much of the world, because, after all, Fall is when Mother Nature sows seeds.

But not just any Fall day will do. In the desert southwest, including parts of Texas and California, you should wait until the average daytime temperature drops under 90F before you plant.

The issue isn’t only the air temperature, but the temperature of the ground. The soil, especially native soil, is far too warm now for the roots of transplants to grow. Between the dehydrating effect of the air temperature on new leaves and the “cooking” effect of the hot earth on the roots, new transplants may not survive very long even if you water them frequently.

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How to protect your transplants

Clematis in bloom
The Clematis jackmanii in my backyard.

However, if you just can’t wait to start gardening again after a summer hiatus, you may be able to protect your transplants by placing a piece of tile or broken terra cotta pot over the root zone, thus keeping it cool.

I did this with a Clematis Jackmanii, a plant not commonly found in a hot, dry garden. I planted it by a trellis in a very sheltered corner with a broken piece of pot over the root zone. It grew and bloomed then over winter it died back. The following spring it rose from the seemingly dead to climb the trellis and bloom again. To see other climbing plants for hot dry gardens, to here.


You could also add shade cloth to help reduce the temperature.

Should you avoid planting in native soil?

I have to admit that the Clematis was not planted in purely native soil. In most of the Southwest the soil is alkaline and lacking many of those tasty chemicals that hungry plants need. Realizing this, I made sure the Clematis was installed in a flower bed with super-enriched soil made mostly of organic mulch. And remulching twice a year is a must with our poor quality dirt which leeches all the good chemicals out of the mulch into the dirt within months. “Poor dirt” returns to being “poor dirt” rather quickly.

Another approach is to plant in raised beds, but those large wooden or metal boxes can become rather expensive. So, consider going to Amazon to find grow bags for a more affordable solution.

They come in small, medium and large and are good for growing almost every type of vegetable or herb. You can fill these bags with soil you buy at the garden center or mix native soil into the bag with commercial potting or top soil. And all the good, nutritious chemicals in the growing mixture end up feeding your plants — not dissolving into the surrounding soil.

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Prickly Pears may save us all

Well, I’m late with this, but according to a five-year study at the University of Nevada Reno, those ubiquitous prickly pear cacti (Opuntia) can become a new source of bioenergy feedstock to replace fossil fuel. This cactus also does double-duty as a land-based carbon sink removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in a sustainable manner. Just like trees do.

This is especially important because, according to a biologist at Saguaro National park as the climate in Arizona and around the world is changing prickly pear cacti are becoming more common. They really like the new weather conditions and poor quality soil is no problem for them. So add a prickly pear to your garden to help with the changing climate. And keep in mind that prickly pear jam is delicious!

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

Success with Potatoes and how to grow them in a hot arid garden

In a recent post I whined a little bit about not being able to grow leafy green vegetables or tomatoes in a hot dry garden. I even gave examples of a couple of failures and recommended focusing more on the fruit trees that thrive in desert-like climates.

Well, this post is about Success with Potatoes.

Potato plant in pink pot Hot Gardens
This potato plant is a year and a half old and still producing potatoes regularly, even though insects have found the leaves to be tasty.

And for evidence I offer my niece’s pot garden.  She and her husband — actually he is the one who does most of the gardening–planted potatoes in a 8 gallon pink plastic pot a year and a half ago at the suggestion of an English friend.  Much to their surprise, it has been producing potatoes for them continuously.  They have never pulled the plant up; the potatoes seem to rise to the surface where they harvest them.

During this time the potato plant grew big and healthy in its pot in a semi-shady location. Then under the scorching 110+ degree (F)  (43 Celcius) heat earlier this year,  the plant faded back only to revive when the heat cooled back down into the 90s.  Of course, it was tucked back into full shade when the weather really heated up. And they have 2 water monitors in the shape of butterflies in the pot. I suggested they might want to double pot to help control water evaporation.

Potato plant in pot with water measurement Hot Gardens
In addition to the potato plant they grow peppers. The red leafed plant at the lower left is a seasonal addition to the patio. It will not survive hot weather.

When I wrote about the green vegetable failures I mentioned that hydroponic systems were so expensive that they seemed impractical for growing vegetables in desert-like conditions. But for potatoes and other root vegetables, like carrots, there are some very affordable systems, among them a grow bag I found on Amazon. Some have little doors near the bottom to allow you to harvest the potatoes while leaving the plant undisturbed. That seems to confirm my niece’s experience of the perpetually producing potato plant.

So here’s to potato salad year ’round from your shady patio garden!

BLUE UPDATE
In the previous post about the blue bottle garden I asked readers what they thought about the garden. The responses were not positive which was my initial reaction, too. But different people have differing ideas of beauty. I will post some more attractive lawn replacement gardens soon.

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

Hello hot gardeners!

Aloe blooms in February
These South African aloes are among the early bloomers in a desert garden: their colorful spires rise above a fairly mundane looking plant in February.

Let me start by introducing myself.  My name is Carol Lightwood and I am a Master Gardener who earned my official state certification in Clark County, Nevada.  More specifically, in Las Vegas.

Shortly after completing the lengthy Master Gardener certification program in 2003 I launched the Hot Gardens website to help newcomers to the Las Vegas Valley understand the challenges of gardening in a desert climate. (ProTip: don’t plant pansies!)

Gardening conditions in the Las Vegas Valley and elsewhere in the U.S. Southwest states are horrible! Poor soils and, in Vegas, only 4 inches of rainfall annually. Since I loved having a beautiful garden, I began by planting Mediterranean plants that I knew  were drought tolerant from my years of living in Southern California. With considerable soil improvement, some care and water, most of them thrived in my enclosed patio garden. And I continued experiments with plants that could create the illusion of a lush garden with very little water.

For years I wrote a monthly newsletter about techniques and tips for best gardening results in a hot, dry garden. And hot, dry climates are expanding these days as the earth experiences climate change.The readership for the Hot Gardens site now includes gardeners from Australia, India, South Africa and the countries on the Arabian Peninsula as well as Spain, Canada and the U.K. So I decided to start giving gardening advice again and will be posting to this blog every so often.

I’d love to welcome you as a subscriber!  Sign up today.