Brad's Tropical Paradise

Euphorbias do great in the Phoenix, Arizona area, both in the ground and in pots. I'm sure you've seen them around, they look like a bunch of green stick plants. But Fire Sticks are way cooler, and so I'm growing them here, from cuttings. But there is a trick to it, and you have to careful - these plants produce a nasty, burning sap when cut. If you Google Fire Sticks you will see that they look a whole lot better than what I have here so far. In fact, the cuttings are bland and green, and you will need to get new growth to see the orange tips (the fire). Once established, euphorbia grows well. So well in fact, that the cuttings that I have here came from a property where the plants were trimmed and bags were filled with them. So, if you have someone who has euphorbia in their yard, they will need to trim it, and you will need to ask for cuttings. Like a lot of cactus, these plants root easily from cuttings. And like cactus, the conditions have to be just right - n...

If you're not growing night-blooming Jasmine (commonly called Arabian Jasmine) in the Phoenix area, you're missing out on a lot of beauty, and fragrance. They are easily found at your local Home Depot, and you can get a one-gallon plant that will do great. As always with tropical plants, plant it in a hole filled with good potting soil (buy the good kind - it will cost more than the plant, probably!) and give it a place where it can get a little shade once in a while. These are not full sun plants in Phoenix, although they can take a lot. If you're gonna plant it in a pot, get a big one. Be sure to get the right kind. Night blooming Jasmine has white flowers, not pink. Or you could just sniff a flower right there at Home Depot to be sure it's the right kind. Believe me, you'll know, those tiny white flowers have an amazing smell! And when you get that plant home, and grown, it will send that wonderful fragrance out at night. It's kind of amazing.

Spiders are a gardener's friend. They are not pests. They catch flying insects like mosquitos, flies, etc. So while I consider a spider web in the garden to be unsightly, I also know that my friends the spiders are trying to tell me something - I have too many flying insects around. It's July 23rd, and I haven't seen many mosquitos lately, but I'm sure that there are still some around. And yep, there are flies! For the mosquitos I spray a general-purpose bug killer (I like Bug B Gone, mostly because of the name, which I think is funny), which I mix up in one of those one gallon pump-pump containers, and then I walk around the around the garden, aiming low. I'll use a capful in a gallon for the backyard, and then the same for the courtyard. I try to spray it in areas that I really can't see - which is where bugs like to be. I also put out one of those fly-trap things (I buy whatever looks interesting at Home Depot) in my side yard. Yeah, I know that they m...

I just love the look of tropical plants at night at a resort. It's called uplighting, and it's an art form in and of itself. And so when I started planting in my backyard, I also did some research on lighting for the best effect. I went to the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale one evening and just wandered around. And every time I'm somewhere with beautiful lighting on tropical plants I look to see how they do it. And it's all about the art of uplighting. Uplighting isn't something that most people think about. After all, most of the lights we use send the light down, like our lamps, or lights on the street. And if your main concern is to light up something, like a stadium, you need to have the lights above. But in a garden, you can have the lights below. I'll tell you what I have. Uplighting a cycad. My garden has two 100-watt low-voltage light transformers. They're behind my tiki bar on the patio, and I just turn them on and off with a simple...

Yes, you can grow Elephant Ears in the Phoenix, Arizona area. I've had them here in Glendale (a suburb of Phoenix) for many years, and they all started from tiny sprouts that a friend of mine from Los Angeles gave me. I planted them all over the yard (I'm experimenting mostly!) and while most of them failed, shriveled up and died, many did survive, and they continue to grow. I've drawn some conclusions, and this is what I know so far: • Plant them in the deepest shade you have. This one is shaded not only by the house, but by an olive tree above it. They love heat, but they hate sun! In the wild, these are understory plants. • Give them water. A lot. I use an automatic watering system here, and I also give my Elephant Ears extra water, by hand. You can't overwater them, they're practically water plants! • Give them fertilizer. I give them slow release dry fertilizer, both Osmocote and those ordinary plant spikes that you get at the Dollar Store, and I mix M...

If you've been gardening for a while, you know that it starts out with hopes that things will grow - and then you spend a lot of time cutting stuff! My Elephant Ears, like my Cannas, grow like wildfire. And I had been in the habit of chopping away at them with a curved saw, and just generally making kind of a mess, until a friend of mine sent me a Japanese Gardening knife. It has a serrated edge, is incredibly sharp, and a slight curve. You use it by placing the blade where you want the cut to be and pulling quickly forward. On fibrous plants, it cuts like a knife through butter, and gives that nice clean "surgical" cut that I like so much. It cost $9.99 and the only thing it says is "Japan" on the handle. The cardboard blade cover has Asian writing, so I have no idea what it says. I just know that it works great.

I got a new iPhone recently and am finally figuring out how to do videos. I created this one mainly for my friends on the Facebook Cycad page, but it also shows some other plants, and of course my good little wiener dog, Macintosh! Here it is, I hope you enjoy it:

If you want beautiful Cape Honeysuckle, with those gorgeous orange flowers and that beautiful deep green tropical foliage, you have to make it ugly, at least temporarily. I call this "cutting down to the nubs". Most people would never dream of doing this, and if their gardener did it to one of their plants, they would probably have a fit. And that's why most people end up with scraggly-looking cape honeysuckle that barely flowers. Luckily, I can do this myself, and I do. This plant has been here for over twenty years. Normally it's kept trimmed to just under the window, so I guess it's about 3-4 feet tall. Now, of course, it's just nubs. I first learned about this when I was going to ASU. No, I didn't study horticulture (I was an art major) but I was one of the people who noticed when the beautiful hedges around the art building were merciless cut back to nubs. Typical of people who knew nothing, we were outraged, and there was some talk of maybe...

Although I've been looking after these plants in my courtyard for a friend of mine for over a week now, I hadn't realized until yesterday that one of them, which I had been watering consistently and was getting rattier and rattier, wasn't actually planted in its pot. During the trip here, it had just been kind'a plopped into a pot so it's roots were stranded above the soil, and it needed some emergency care. So I'm soaking the roots. To do this, you just fill a bucket up with water and put the plant in it. I will let it soak like this for a few hours, add some fresh potting soil to the pot (which is supposed to be delivered to me this morning), give it a good trim, and water it in well. Of course, you don't want to leave a plant like this in water for days, as it would rot the roots, but for a couple of hours this will help hydrate the roots as an emergency measure. I'll let you know how it goes.

Fish fertilizer is great. Plants love it. It's organic and safe. It's inexpensive and you can buy it at your local Home Depot. But I don't use much of it, and I'll tell you why. To say it stinks is an understatement. Just opening the cap makes me want to retch (sorry about that!). And the smell lingers. If you use it on your garden, your garden will smell like rotting fish for days. Plants love that, people really don't. And, of course, it's irresistible to my dog, who has lived here with me in the Tropical Paradise for ten years and never, ever digs. Unless I use fish fertilizer. Then that awful smell, which must be absolutely heaven to her, is more than she can resist. So I did it once in the backyard. Once. But this summer I am plant-sitting some potted plants. They're out in the courtyard, and in pots that are way too high for my dog to get into. So I looked under the sink and got out the fish fertilizer, which I haven't used for years. Yep, s...

This Canary Island Date Palm (Phoenix canariensis ) is in a park nearby me in Glendale, Arizona. To me, it's the most beautiful palm tree there is, and the reason that I don't have one here on my property is that they are absolutely gigantic. So I keep mine in local parks, for convenience, and the city takes care of them! If you do have a large property, this plant is magnificent. And if you're new to learning about palm trees, compare it to the ones around it, which are common fan palms. I like to describe date palms as looking like feather dusters and fan palms looking like, uh, toilet bowl brushes (sorry about that!). Maybe it's because I like sago palms so much that I like Canary Island Date Palms. In fact, some of my friends have told me that they had seen a giant sago palm somewhere, and it usually turns out to be one of these palms. Of course, most palm trees, and cycads, look pretty much the same at the garden center, so it's wise to go look at them...

Mulch is any type of material that helps to hold in moisture in the soil of your garden. It can be fine gravel, rocks, bark, that sort of thing. And you can buy bags of it at Home Depot. But if you have trees, you can get your mulch for free. I've been doing it for years. I have two olive trees, one in the front courtyard and one in the backyard. The one in the backyard drops its leaves all of the time and all I have to do is to blow them up into the garden. But sometimes I want even more mulch, and I wander out front with a reusable shopping bag. To my amazement, I've seen people carefully sweep up the free mulch that falls from their trees, put it in plastic bags, put it in the trash, and add to their local landfill. Then they drive over to Home Depot, buy bags of mulch, and then throw away the plastic bags. - sigh - Anyway, all you gotta do is to scoop up the mulch, put it in a bag, and then distribute it over the garden. The leaves are dry, so it's best to g...

Some climates are great for indoor plants, but Phoenix isn't one of them. Climates that are humid, and that allow you to keep the windows open for much of the year, are best. Unfortunately in Phoenix, air conditioning is a necessity and it tends to dry out plants very quickly. But if you're fortunate enough to have a greenhouse, like a friend of mine does, there is a neat treat to do, and it's the same thing that fancy resorts do - cycling. A greenhouse will allow you to keep your plants healthy, or to allow them to regain their health after being in your house. The trick, of course, is to just move them back and forth. This takes some effort, and some ability to haul stuff, but my friend, who is an engineer, does it all of the time. In fact, the centerpiece on his dining room table is always a orchid in bloom. He has several, and cycles them into the house when they're at their best, and back into the greenhouse to recover. Of course when you visit, you would neve...

In spite of their common name, sago palms (cycas revoluta) aren't really palms at all. They just kind'a look like them. And the way that they grow is a little strange, too. So if you have one that has lost all of its leaves (usually caused by transplanting bare root) don't panic. What you are waiting for is a flush. Sago palms, like all cycads, don't grow continuously, like palm trees. They send out a bunch of leaves, usually only once a year, in a big hurry. It's actually fun to watch! The sago palm that I planted here last September looked more like a fire plug than anything else for months and months (it's July now). And then a few days ago I noticed a tiny bit of green appearing - that's a flush! If you've transplanted a sago palm and it seems to be doing nothing, don't worry. Cycads grow very slowly, except when they're putting out leaves, at which time they grow so fast it's ridiculous. Then after the leaves have grown (a flush...

OK, I'll admit that I'm a snob on the subject of landscaping. And if you wanna show everyone how rich you are, and that you have good taste, you need to get some cycads. You may not be familiar with the term cycad, but you've seen the plants. You've seen them at every luxury resort that has a tropical, or semi-tropical climate, from the South of France to Hawaii. And for hundreds of years they have been a quiet symbol of wealth and good taste. And once you learn to recognize them, then you'll be seeing them everywhere - from James Bond movies to the backgrounds of movies filmed in Beverly Hills. The most common cycad is commonly called a sago palm (Cycas revoluta ). It's similar to the one in the drawing above, which is also a cycad, an Encephalartos Longifolius. Both plants show wealth and good taste, but the Encephalartos is usually many times more expensive than the cycas. It's kind of like the difference between a Rolls Royce and a Cadillac. Both ar...

As a Graphic Designer, one of the things that fascinates me is seeing the things that the average person doesn't really see, but instead feels. A great example of that is seeing big, beautiful pots with healthy plants at luxury resorts. These two pots, which I am babysitting for a friend, are examples of how to do it right. They are very tall - they come up to my hip, and I have a 32" inseam, are ceramic, and beautifully glazed and textured. They are pretty much works of art in their own right. Planted in them are euphorbia, which is an excellent choice as they have an sculptural quality themselves, never look ratty even close up, and have the bonus of tiny flowers. Of course, many times people get it wrong, and they're really better off not having any pots in plants at all. And here are the most common mistakes I see all of the time: • A whole bunch of tiny pots. Don't do that. Not only does it look terrible, but it's difficult to keep plants healthy in ...

The cereus monstrosus , or what I like to call a curiosity cactus, is a great choice for growing in pots in the Phoenix and Los Angeles area. It really is a cactus, but it has no spines. You can rub your hands on it. Don't worry, go ahead. I do it all of the time whenever I see one of these plants. They require very little water (in fact, the danger to them is over-watering), and in my opinion, they're just kind'a cool. And I really don't like cacti very much! But wait, it gets better! Like all cacti (cactuses?), you can break off a piece and replant it. So if your plant has gotten too big for its pot, or has started leaning over, just dig it out and cut it up. This is how you do it: • Cut the plant so that you have a good, clean, green piece with a nice top. If the top is damaged, it will grow, but it will just look terrible. And you don't even need clippers for the smaller pieces, you can break it with easily with your hands. Set them aside for a day or tw...