The trick to growing exotic plants in Arizona

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The trick to growing exotic plants in Arizona is potting soil. Here in my garden in Glendale, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix) I like to say that the plants aren't really planted in Arizona, they're planted in holes dug out of Arizona that were filled with potting soil.

My friends know what I want for Christmas, for my birthday, just to cheer me up. Potting soil. Over the years I've lived here, I have no idea how many hundreds of bags of potting soil I have used. And it really doesn't matter if it's the good stuff (Miracle Grow Moisture Control) or the cheap stuff from the dollar store. I can use all of the potting soil I can get.

So there you go. The clay soil of the desert is really only good for native plants. I dig a hole, remove the native soil, put it away in a pot that I can use if I need to build up a slope somewhere, pour in a generous amount of potting soil in the hole, and that's where the plants live.

Potting soil.

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