Brad's Tropical Paradise

I resisted getting a dog for a long time, because in my experience they don't mix well with gardens. the decision that I finally made for my miniature Tropical Paradise was to get a miniature dog, a tiny little dachshund. It has been quite a challenge, and it has cost me a fair amount of time and money, but I'm glad to have her here. I have done a lot of things to accommodate my dog, and the first one was to have a doggie-door installed. My dog is so small that this door doesn't present any kind of security hazard, but I can't recommend one for a bigger dog, as those can be big enough for bad guys to fit into. Well, skinny bad guys. You will also see that I have added steps below the door. My dog is a dachshund, and has a very fragile back, which gave me quite a scare a couple of years ago, as her back legs were paralyzed for over a month. She got better and I made sure that her world was as safe as I could make it. If you are going to do this, do not be tempted...

To me, there is nothing more soothing than the look and sound of palm trees. They are the first thing that you think of when you imagine an oasis, and just the sight of them seems to cool down a hot day. Here at The Tropical Paradise in Glendale, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix), I have created my own little oasis in the desert. Like any good oasis, the best ones are mirages, and it takes a few tricks to make this illusion work here in the desert. The first thing that you have to do is to think small. Whatever you do, you don't want to plant full-size palm trees right next to your patio. Your neighbors a mile away will enjoy the swaying palm leaves, but you will be staring at a telephone pole! So, here is the best trick I learned - when I first started experimenting with tropical plants, I was introduced to cycads. They aren't palm trees, or ferns, but they kind of look like them, they stay small, and they give a wonderful tropical feel to a miniature space. The most common ty...

I installed a new brass hose connector to the hose bib in the front courtyard just now. This is a Gilmour Brass 4-way connector , which I ordered on Amazon. It was considerably more expensive than the Orbit one that I had purchased at Target, but what caught my eye is that the handles are brass, not plastic. This sits out in the sun in blazing heat, and the plastic just breaks. Hopefully this will last longer. There are two hoses connected this - one that reaches all the way to the backyard, and one for the front. On the far right is the battery-powered timer, which I have turned back on for the season, beginning with 20 minutes every seven days. As the weather warms up, I will leave the duration the same, but move it up to every four days, and in the hottest days of the summer, it will come on daily. Then it goes back down and then completely off during the winter.

The Phoenix, Arizona area is a great place for daffodils. I have several types here, and this one, which is a grandiflora, started blooming at the beginning of January. There is nothing special that you need to do with daffodil bulbs, just put them in the ground - preferably around September, give them a little slow-release fertilizer, and they will start blooming in early spring. This plant has been in the ground, and blooming, for several years now. When the blooms end, I cut off the stalk, but I leave the leaves alone until they have died back, as they are necessary to put energy back into the plant for next year's blooms.

Like most houses in the Phoenix, Arizona area, there is a wonderful view of the backyard because of the sliding glass doors. This side of the house gets good shade because of the combination of the eastern exposure and the overhang from the patio. I don't have any type of covering on this door at all. And it's my favorite view. I have visited many homes in Phoenix and in California and it just makes me cringe when I see the backyard being used for storage of junk, or dead grass, or, uh, doggie droppings. This is the view that you want to see? I do have a space along the side of the house for garbage cans, miscellaneous junk that I know I'm gonna use someday, but the view to my backyard from here is meant to be enjoyed. I like it here.

Here at The Tropical Paradise, I'm experimenting mostly. Even though my garden seems like a success, most of what I have tried has failed. But, it doesn't show, and I have a poor memory for failure so I just keep experimenting. I have been successful growing some dwarf snapdragons from seed, enough that I needed to cut them back a bit, so I thought that I would try rooting some cuttings. Here they are in a tray in little pots made from the bottom of paper coffee cups. The other plants, by the way, are alyssum. As you can see, the leaves are curling back, which shows they they need water, but they have only been in the pots for a couple of days. From what I've read, you should mist them regularly, and I am. I tried rooting begonias and cyclamen, and they didn't work. But I never give up. I'll let you know how the snapdragons do. Update 2-25-2012 - I finally pulled these little guys up. Even after all this time, they still didn't have any roots. I dug out...

It's January 20th here at The Tropical Paradise and all danger of frost is over. This has been the mildest winter that I can remember - although I guess mostly I remember the big freezes of 2007 and 2010! The coldest it got this past winter was in November of last year - and the temperatures have been well above freezing for the lows ever since. The canna will need some heavy trimming - but it's nice to see it get through the winter without getting knocked down. The lettuce has been growing very nicely - the reason that it's so stubby is that I have been eating it. As soon as it grows back I have another salad! This is the first year that I and my winter visitors have really gotten some good use of my backyard in the winter. As you can see, the morning sun comes pouring in, and even though the air is chilly, the sun feels good. I don't really miss the old palo brea tree! There is a place for trees that grow like weeds and have nasty thorns, but not in my backyard....

The palm tree that I have here in a corner of The Tropical Paradise is a Mediterranean Fan Palm (Chamerops humilis ), which is a great palm tree for this type of space, and does well even in climates that get much colder than here in the Phoenix, Arizona area. It is unaffected by frost. Google it and you will probably find pictures of Med Palms with snow on them. Mediterranean Fan Palms are very slow growing, so buy the biggest one that you can afford. They grow in a bushy shape, so leave them alone, don't try to keep trimming the offshoots. I've seen them around town where there have been constant and futile attempts to trim them up into individual trunks, and they look terrible. Find a nice large space for them to grow in, and leave them alone. They can take the hottest sun and the coldest freezes that Phoenix has to offer with no problem at all. Even once in a while I wander up there to take out some weeds or fronds that have gone brown, but mostly this palm tree takes...

It's January 14th and the first daffodil blooms are now really beginning to open. I have lot of different varieties here at The Tropical Paradise, and not all bloom this early, but they will soon all be blooming, and will continue to do so, throughout March. By April the heat of the desert here will be returning and the blooms will fade. As you know, you should never, ever, cut back the leaves of a daffodil until they have started to turn brown, as they need to give energy back into the bulb for the next year. And they will return, as this one has, year after year.

There are a lot of cycads that do well here in the Phoenix, Arizona area beside the common sago palm, which, although it is beautiful, is, well, common. If you already have a sago palm or two, my recommendation is to plant a dioon edule cycad. I've have two types of dioon edules here in The Tropical Paradise, the one you see here, which is dioon edule, var. edule , and also dioon edule var. palma sola. Dioon edules have a pleasing blue-green color and an interesting recurve in the fronds. The difference between the two varieties is only visible with the new growth. Var. edule leaves begin with a bronzy color, whereas the var. palma sola leaves begin as bright green. That's a palma sola frond sticking in the picture at the far right, by the way. The leaves really are the same color, and look the same when mature. My personal experience is that the palma sola tolerates our full sun better, so that is the one I prefer, and I have more of them. The cultural requirem...

I visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum last week and got a lot of good ideas for the garden. I'm a Graphic Designer by profession, so design and layout means a lot to me. The correct layout of your plants really shows them off, poor layout just makes them look sad. The good new is that the cultural requirements of your plants (how much water, sunlight, etc. they need) will encourage good design, which is to keep similar shapes together. This area of The Tropical Paradise  gets a lot of sun and has sandy soil so it's a natural for desert shapes. I personally don't have a taste for cactus, which seems wildly out of place in a *tropical* garden, but aloes and agaves seem to work just right. The first thing that you have to consider is that it shouldn't be all manicured and swept up. A Tropical Paradise isn't, and neither is a desert area. Your garden is not your kitchen floor and you shouldn't treat it that way. And remember that everything counts visual...

January is not too late to plant daffodil bulbs here in the Phoenix, Arizona area. If you have a time machine, it would be best to go plant them last year in September or October, but you can still plant them now in January. It's tempting to buy them all grown and blooming, and I saw a lot at Lowe's yesterday, but all you are going to get out of that is to watch the blooming end and the leaves die back. Better to get some fresh bulbs, prepare a planting area in a sunny spot, and watch them grow. The small blooms, like paperwhites, are in bloom now, and will be fading soon, so it would be best to get a larger variety, like King Alfred, that blooms later. Your daffodils will bloom and grow until it just gets too hot here, which begins about in April. Plenty of time! Also, keep in mind that your daffodil bulbs can stay in the ground all year, and they will multiply, and you will have even more next year! The blooms in this photo are starting on January 9th from bulbs that ...

My big idea of starting annual flowers from seed is pretty much of a dismal failure, so I went to Lowe's yesterday to find some nice plants to fill in the area in front of the dioon spinulosum cycad. Originally, I had planned to have the lettuce there, but the slugs ate every plant! Darn slugs. Anyway, I choose a couple of nice small cyclamens. They are very expensive, so look for them in small pots at Lowe's. There's a red blooming one and a white blooming one. The best way to choose a good one when you choosing a plant is to find one that has a lot of buds, but not a lot of flowers in bloom. The flowers that are in full bloom now will just fade away, but the buds will open soon after you plant. But be sure to get at least one flower in bloom - to be sure that you got the right color! Cyclamens are great here in the Phoenix area - they do great in the cold. Well, as cold as it gets here. In addition, I got a six-pack of begonias. I have never tried them in The Tro...

Here in The Tropical Paradise I've experimented with a lot of plants and the successes thrive while the failures disappear, both from the garden and my memory. Here is a hyacinth that I first planted in 2008, coming back up for another show in 2012. Unlike my daffodils, the hyacinths didn't bloom and grow as large as when they were new. But they do keep coming back! According to my records, the hyacinths are in full bloom by mid-February. After they bloom, let the leaves die back naturally and turn brown, then trim them off. As soon as I see a bulb begin to emerge, I give it a nice drink of Super Thrive and Miracle Grow, and some dry slow-release plant food. They wake up hungry, so be generous!

My earliest-blooming daffodils are grandifloras that I got at the local 99-cent store a couple of years ago. A flower that is a grandiflora just means that there are multiple blooms on each stem. These are smaller than my King Alfred daffodils, which I prefer, but are still nice, and they bloom a whole month earlier. I see by checking back on my records that they were in full bloom on January 9th of last year, so they should be opening up pretty soon! Below them you can see the alyssum which I grew from seed this year. The idea is for the alyssum to spread out like a *carpet of snow* (which is the variety's name) around the base of the daffodils. Rocks serve two functions in my garden. First of all, they look nice, especially around blooming bulb plants, and secondly, they help to remind me where the water and electrical lines are!

Daffodils do well here in Arizona. I have many different varieties here that all bloom at different times, some as early as January, some much later. And I have long since lost track of where they all are so I am surprised and pleased when some start growing where I didn't remember planting them! Daffodil bulbs can be left alone in the garden to naturalize and multiply. So, the two I planted in 2009 (which came from the local 99-cent store) will be eight this year. And that means that you can dig up a few and replant them elsewhere if you want to. This isn't absolutely necessary, but it's a great way to expand your garden. To transplant them, be sure to dig deep. You want to get the whole bulb, not just cut off the top leaves. This group that I transplanted a couple of days ago had been planted at the base of a palm tree before the Cannas went in. They were not only hidden by the Cannas, but shaded as well, and had no chance to bloom in that spot. So I dug them out an...