Brad's Tropical Paradise

If you're like me, you like to have plants around you. I just feel better in a garden, with things growing. And mostly I like green plants. That is, I like foliage gardens. Flowers are nice, but they're not really the most important thing to me. Don't get me wrong, I like flowers, but flowers come and go, while foliage is always there. If you choose a plant with ugly foliage just to enjoy a flower every once in a while, in my opinion you've made a mistake. Of course it would be wonderful if you could have plants with wonderful foliage and wonderful flowers year-round, but unless you live somewhere like Hawaii, that's just not possible. I live in the Phoenix, Arizona area, where it can get very hot in the summer, and having foliage just seems to make my backyard feel cooler. It isn't, of course, it just feels that way. Most of the plants that I have here either don't flower at all (like the cycads) or they flower briefly and I cut the flowers off (like...

You've seen sansiverias, usually in buildings, in restaurants, that kind of place. But they grow great in the Phoenix area, and are easy to care for. When I was a kid they were called "Mother-In-Laws Tongue", but nowadays they're usually called "Snake Plants". And they come in lots of different variations, not just the common ones you usually see (although those are still my favorite). I had never heard the word sansiveria until I got some cuttings from a friend of mine a few years ago. I stuck them in the ground, and in pots, and they grew. Yesterday I moved some of them out of the pots they'd outgrown, and out of the garden, where they had become crowded, and planted them in my big pots on my patio. It's an east-facing patio, so it gets morning sun, but otherwise it's shady. And that's what sansiverias like. They don't do well in the hot sun, and they're really not happy without a little sunlight. They're tough plants, ...

If you have a beautiful garden that either just disappears into the darkness at night or (worse still!) is lit up like a stadium, you should consider uplighting. I visited the fanciest resort here in Phoenix when I started considering lighting my garden. I knew that I didn't want "stadium lighting", but I also wanted to make the area safe for people to enjoy at night. Glaring lights, or lights that blink on and off, just give me a headache to think about. And so I figured out how to do uplighting, with spotlights. Uplighting means that the light is pointed away from people, and towards the plants, and walls. Done correctly, it makes the plants look fabulous, as if you were in a resort, and the light bounces back gently giving people enough light to see to walk. I'm a graphic designer, and a believer that a design can be both practical and beautiful. If you want to see proof, visit any resort. They have to be beautiful, of course, but they also have to be safe. ...

If you're like me, and put lights in your garden over the past twenty years, you need to upgrade with LED lights. I finally installed my last one yesterday, and I'm very happy with them. And no, it's not just because it's the latest thing, they really are better. No, nobody is paying me to say this, I just like them. And doggone it, gardens look great with this kind of lighting - I just hate to see a beautiful garden ruined at night with "stadium lighting". The number one reason I like the LEDs is that they're not hot. My old landscape lights were burning hot, and it always worried me to have something that hot next to my plants, and especially the mulch, which is dry. I'm no good at math so I didn't try to figure out anything. I just knew that the LEDs consume less electricity than the old lights did, so I replaced all of my lights. And luckily for me there's no need to learn what brightness in lumens (or whatever), I just bought the ...

If you're like me, and most people, doing boring repetitive exercise for fitness and weight loss is just awful. Walking on a treadmill is something that I'd only do if it was some type of punishment, and I had no choice. Someone would have to stand next to me, forcing me, saying something like "we have a failure to communicate". But getting your body moving is the best thing that you can do for fitness and weight loss, and one of the things that I dearly love to do is to take care of my garden. Now calm down here, I'm not running laps around my garden, I'm just doing the regular small maintenance that it needs. I'm not chopping down redwoods, or hauling firewood, I'm simply moving gently. Today I trimmed some fountain grass, and it meant sustained movement for about a half-hour, including bending, stretching, and some carrying. I filled two large garbage bags. In addition to the movement, it got me away from the computer, where I'm sitting rig...

Having an automated watering system here in the desert is absolutely essential. It gets to well over 100 degrees for several months, and trying to go out there, lugging a hose is a recipe for disaster. I've known people who've tried it, and no matter how dedicated they are, they fail. In the summertime the watering system here comes on daily for twenty minutes. And in the Phoenix area, summer starts early, and stays long! But an automated system isn't something that you just set and forget. I inspect it every day, and a couple of days ago I found that a careful inspection wasn't necessary, there was water spraying all over the place. The trunk line had developed a leak. When I took a look at where it was leaking, or rather spraying up into the air, I found that the entire section there really needed to be replaced. So I took a deep breath, moved some rocks out of the way, and made the decision to replace about ten feet of trunk line. Luckily, I had enough spare t...

If you've seen some mosquitos in your garden, it's perfectly natural even if you or your neighbors don't have standing water. And by standing water I mean those nasty little places where water accumulates and sits, and mosquito larves turn into those little blood-sucking insects we all hate. I was just in the backyard a few minutes ago, enjoying my coffee, when I got bit. Pesky skeeters! And no, I have no standing water, nor do my neighbors. There are no "green pools" around here. But that doesn't keep mosquitos from visiting my garden. And the reason is simply that they fly. Mosquitos aren't the biggest insects in the world, but they get around. The adult ones are looking for blood. Mosquitos hate being in the sunshine, so if at all possible, avoid the garden on cloudy days (like it is this morning). Wait for a sunny day, and after you've put on a generous amount of sunscreen, stay in the sunlight. I learned that as a kid in Minneapolis - the...