Xeriscape in Arizona

-
Xeriscape just means "dry landscape". But before you jump to the conclusion that a xeriscape has to be a moonscape, please take a look at The Tropical Paradise. This is a xeriscape garden in the Phoenix, Arizona area. I learned these tricks when I bought this house in the 90s by reading pamphlets and visiting the xeriscape garden at the Glendale Main Library, which is just a few blocks from me.

No, I didn't want cactus and goofy-colored gravel. Those sterile landscapes in Sun City are repulsive to me. I wanted to have a beautiful landscape that used very little water. This is the desert, after all. And, well, water costs money. So here is what I learned:

• Install a drip system. Mine is not elaborate, and it didn't need professional installation. You can get a starter kit at Home Depot. It's a low pressure system that feeds water discretely to your plants. Install it yourself and maintain it yourself. You don't need to do any digging, it's just a couple of inches under the mulch. I put rocks over the main line to help to remind me not to dig there.

• Get rid of your grass. Big waste of water. I installed the artificial turf that you see here underneath Macintosh, the good little wiener dog, over six years ago. Best investment I ever made. No water, no mowing, no fertilizer, no edging, but it's not just gravel, paving, or poured concrete. Have it professionally installed. When it's done right, it looks like this. When it's done wrong, it looks like badly-laid indoor-outdoor carpet.

• Use mulch. I am fortunate to have a tree that provides all of the free mulch I need now. But it started with buying bags of mulch from Home Depot. Trying to grow plants on hot, bare soil is an invitation to failure.

There. That's a xeriscape.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to tell if your cycad (sago palm) is alive or dead

-
Image
Cycads are strange plants. They're beautiful, and look like small palm trees, or large ferns. They grow very slowly, and can be very expensive, even common ones like "sago palms". But sago palms, in spite of their common name, aren't palms at all. They belong to a group of plants called cycads. They are wonderfully weird, and grow in strange ways. And sometimes they lose all of their leaves. Of course, if it were a palm tree that lost all of its leaves, you would know that the plant was dead. But it's not true of cycads. So don't dig that cycad up and throw it away! Not yet. If you've recently transplanted a cycad, and the leaves have all faded away, hang on. Take a look at the top center of the plant, at what I call "the pucker". There you will see some stubby, soft fronds, no more than an half-inch or so. At least that's what you should see. That means that the plant is still alive, and has dropped its leaves to focus on building r...
Read more

Rooting sago palm pups for more plants

-
Image
Once a sago palm ( cycas revoluta ) reaches a certain level of maturity, it starts to create pups. Like agaves, these are little plants that are exactly the same as the parent plant, only smaller. And yes, you can trim them off and grow them into new plants. This is how to do it. Cut them off from the parent plant with a sharp knife. If there are any roots at the bottom, try to save them, but chances are there won't be any. That's not a problem. The next step is rooting them. Douse the cut part and the bottom of the plant with some garden sulfur and some rooting hormone powder. Rooting hormone powder is pretty easy to find at your local Home Depot. I had to go to a real nursery to get garden sulfur. Anyway, the idea is to keep the little plant from rotting while giving it time to grow its own roots. Sago palm pups being rooted Bury them fairly deep in some free-draining mix. It should include volcanic pumice, if you can find it, and if not, you can use perlite. I ...
Read more

Growing sunflowers from Pennsylvania in Arizona

-
Image
It's October 21st, and I just received some sunflower seeds from a friend in Pennsylvania. Their season is ending and the season for planting here in Arizona is just beginning, and I'm kinda wondering if the seeds are wondering what's going on? It's spring again already? If you're new to the Phoenix, Arizona area, and are from back east it must seem kinda strange that fall and winter is our flower season, but it is. By springtime it will start to get so hot here that the flowers will die, and of course back east the season is just beginning.  Sunflowers growing in Peoria, Arizona, about a mile from where I live I've seen sunflowers blooming around my neighborhood of Glendale, which is a suburb of Phoenix, in the winter, and although I've never grown them I understand that they're easy to grow. I guess I'll find out - I learn best by doing! The seeds arrived safely, and it's my understanding that they were still connected to the spent flower (I do...
Read more