Brad's Tropical Paradise

It's spring, and the pods are starting to reappear on my dwarf date palms ( Phoenix roebellini ). I'm no expert in botany, but I've always thought that these pods always looked a little weird. The good news is that they are perfectly natural and it is a sign of a healthy plant. The pods open and little tiny white-yellowish flowers appear. After a while the fruit appears (I guess they're dates), it all dries up and just hangs there, all brown and scraggly. In my experience the best thing to do is to leave it alone until it's all finished and then trim them off. If you try to cut the pods off while they are still growing, it will make a mess, I know! If anyone walks up to you and confronts you, asking you the name, you can say that they are inflorescence - although I doubt that anyone will. Just "clusters of flowers" will do.

The dwarf date palm,  Phoenix roebelenii , is my favorite palm tree. It gives a wonderfully tropical feel to your backyard and is easy to grow. Unlike its big brother, the full-sized date palm  Phoenix dactylifera , it won't turn into a telephone pole in your yard. So, at eye level, as you can see in the photo (the wall is six feet tall), you see nice green fronds, not just a brown trunk. I've had these here for over fifteen years, and here are some suggestions. • Buy as large as you can afford. Trees like this, with several feet of clear trunk, will be hundreds of dollars, so you don't have to go to that extreme, but get at least a 5 gallon or a 15 gallon container. By the way, these palm trees don't produce multiple trunks, so when you see them growing in groups, it just means that two or three plants were originally planted in the container. They look nice in groups, or alone. Since they don't produce multiple trunks, you don't ever have to worry about ...

I am really enjoying my latest project at The Tropical Paradise, which I am calling Trilobite Reef. It started with a replica of a trilobite that I got online at Paleoscene.com . I spoke to the owner, Glen, about  my intention to use it as a garden sculpture, and he cast it out of a tougher material which should hold up better outdoors. It gets to over 100 degrees here, so even then I have it in a fairly shady area. Once I placed in in the area that I am now calling Trilobite Reef, I started to add small plants, and to my surprise, started to get an *ocean floor* tableau look. I have even added seashells and sand. And since it's right up by my patio, I can keep an eye on things, trimming as necessary and making adjustments. This morning I found that the mint was looking pretty bad, so I moved it elsewhere. In a miniature garden, there is no place for anything to look bad. This is a design project, and requires more than just plants. The star of the show is, of course, the tri...

Here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, a tropical look can be achieved, but it's only an illusion. This isn't Hawaii, or a greenhouse! Most plants that grow well in the tropics will die if you plant them outdoors here in Arizona because of our extreme heat, and also because of how cold it gets in the winter. But there are a few tricks that you can use to *cheat it* and give the illusion of a tropical paradise. • Get some miniature palm trees. You can find dwarf date palms (Phoenix roebellini) just about anywhere around here, and they are fairly inexpensive. That's the best place to start. Plant a few of them around your yard and you will instantly have a tropical look going. • Get some cycads. The most common one is a *sago palm* ( cycas revoluta ). Cycads give a nice illusion of a ferny plant, but unlike ferns, they won't die here in the desert. Don't bother buying ferns. They just won't grow here, no matter how much water and care you give them. The air is...

After a recent trip to The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum , I became fascinated with using sculpture in the garden. If you really didn't notice the sculpture on your last visit, well, it's probably just because they do it so well there that it's not a distraction, it just adds to the visual interest. Of course they have a pretty much unlimited budget to have bronze sculptures made, but mostly it's a question of good taste. They have it. Most garden designers don't. Unfortunately, when most garden designers add sculpture to a garden, it's some hideous weird thing from Home Depot, a pink flamingo or a gnome. That's part of the reason that I didn't even consider sculpture in a garden before. But now I'm thinking about it now. Good design in the garden with sculpture should cause a double-take, if it's seen at all. Remember that your plants are the stars of the show. That's a haworthia there in the photo, with ice plant growing around it. And...

Ice plant is a succulent, like cactus, which just means that it stores a lot of water to help it through dry times. If you've ever driven around Los Angeles or San Diego, you've see a lot of ice plant by the freeways, and even down by the ocean. It doesn't require a lot of water and it is virtually maintenance-free (until it grows too well and you need to get rid of some). Ice plants like humidity, but they don't like being overwatered. Here at The Tropical Paradise, I am experimenting with all types of ice plants. This fairly coarse-textured one I grew from cuttings that were given to me by a friend here in Phoenix. Once it gets growing, it's really happy. It does best in areas with a little shade, but not too much, and sun, but not too much. And they love being around the mister heads, as you can see in the photo. I've had this type in the ground for a couple of years, and while it grows well, and roots easily from cuttings, it's never flowered and its...

My most recent visit to The Boyce Thompson Arboretum really inspired me to get some ice plant. That's the ground cover with the yellow flowers that are just behind me in the photo. There are lots of different types of ice plant, with different sizes of the leaves and different flower colors. From a design standpoint, I decided to go mostly with the yellow flowers with the medium green leaf. But I also got some other textures and colors, just to keep it interesting. Keep in mind that while ice plant is pretty tough, it's not a plant like a cactus that you can put out in full sun and forget about. In addition to a slightly higher elevation than here, The Boyce Thompson has a lot of dappled shade because of the trees. It's an arboretum, after all! Ice plant is sold in flats, and if you have a large area to cover, it's probably the most economical way to go. I bought a whole bunch in small containers at Baker's Nursery, which is just north of Thomas Road on 40th...

Gardening here in the desert makes you appreciate shade. When I bought a house, I insisted that the back yard face east. That way, you get morning sun, but the house itself shades the yard in the afternoon, in the hottest part of the day. That's the easy part about understanding shade in your garden - the sun comes up in the east, goes over your house, and sets in the west. Here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, it can be uncomfortably hot even in the early morning, and brutally hot by late afternoon. But there is another aspect of shade that you have to consider - how the sun moves from south to north as the seasons change. The shade that you see in the picture is coming from a north-facing wall and patio in April. In the winter that shadow was much longer, because the sun was farther south. By mid-summer, that shadow will be much shorter, as the sun moves towards the north. In the middle of the summer, that is, after the summer equinox, the shadow will get longer as the sun begin...

The area by the dining room window is *prime real estate* for my tropical plants. This area gets good afternoon shade from the house (this is morning sun that you are seeing) and excellent coverage from the water sprayers and misters. This area has evolved and expanded from the first planting in 1995 of the dwarf date palm ( Phoenix roebellini ) at left, which now has about six feet of clear trunk. Behind it are Elephant Ears ( colocasia ) which were planted as tiny bulbs taken from a friend's garden in Los Angeles. They like it here! The little cycad is a zamia (coontie), which does well in this area as it likes a lot of water, unlike most cycads. In front of it are ordinary begonias, which I planted last winter, and are doing well. To its right is an African Mask plant ( Alocasia amazonia ) which is an experiment for this year. I was encouraged to try it as the Elephant Ears are doing so well in this area, which is fairly shady and consistently wet. Directly at the tip is a col...

It's the first week of April here at The Tropical Paradise and I am finally making some progress on my coleus garden. Trying to grow coleus from seed has been a miserable failure and I have been waiting for the nurseries to start bringing in the coleus. Coleus are pretty frost-tender so you can't expect to buy them when the weather is still cool. This is what I found at Summerwinds nursery here in Glendale, Arizona. It's called Dipt in Wine and I think that it is just stunning. There are lots of varieties of coleus, so you can get what you like. I bought three of them, took cuttings from them all and then planted them in various shady places around The Tropical Paradise. They say that they these new varieties are sun-resistant, but they don't mean Phoenix, Arizona in the summer! Reading the tag - ignore that is says "Sun" - not in Phoenix! The numbers are for the lowest temperature that it can take (in F).