Brad's Tropical Paradise

It's August 26th and it looks like the heavy rains are over for the season here in the desert. That means that the ground is soft, and it won't be very long until it's September, which is planting season for annuals and bulbs here. Unfortunately, this type of weather brings out nasty, stinging, red ants. I call them all Fire Ants, but an expert of mine corrected me and gave me the correct description. I have forgotten the actual name of these tiny red ants that sting so badly, but all I want to do is to get them out of here. At the risk of sounding like a commercial, sprinkle Amdro all over your garden. Go to Home Depot, spend about twenty bucks, and be sure to get granules. Then sprinkle it all over your garden, like you were sprinkling parmesan cheese on spaghetti. Be generous. I've been doing it for twenty years here at The Tropical Paradise and only missed one season, when I was unable to do much, because of an accident. And wow, what a difference when I...

I don't have any bougainvilleas here at The Tropical Paradise anymore. I got rid of the one I did have, not because it was doing poorly, but because it was doing too well. I had planted it in the right place, and had given it everything it needed, and it rewarded me year after year with fantastic blooms. But bougainvilleas grow like wildfire, and have nasty thorns. After a few years of getting badly torn up trimming them, I decided that I had had enough. So, this photo isn't my bougainvillea. It belongs to a reader in Phoenix who was asking me about the yellow leaves, and what to do. So I thought it would be good to review what to do to make your bougainvillea look its best. • Plant it in full sun, and then neglect it. The hotter the better. If it's on a watering system, after the plant has established, turn the water off there. You can go spray it with the hose every once in a while, but too much water will not only keep bougainvillea from blooming, it will ju...

One of the best investments I ever made was having artificial turf installed. It's been here for eight years, and still looks great. So, I highly recommend it. But there are a few tricks that you need to do to make it look more real. Luckily, they're easy. • Don't try to keep it perfectly clean. A few stray leaves on it is part of what makes it look real. I've seen artificial turf that is so clean that it looks, well, artificial. I have a small rechargeable blower that I use every once in a while, but that's all it needs. • Make the contours natural. I've seen artificial turf enclosed in a perfect rectangle, or some other perfectly geometric shape. Avoid that. It looks ridiculous. Make the edges flow as if it were the normal edges of where grass stops. • Avoid the temptation to do a putting green. Unless you really want your yard to look like a Miniature Golf Course, stay away from a putting green. It's what most people think of when they think of ar...

When I first started planting miniature palms and cycads, they were pretty low to the ground. But as they grew, and got taller (being, uh, big miniatures), the space around them started to look a little empty. And after a while I found that I really didn't want to just stuff more palms and cycads in, so I started experimenting with companion plants. It's near the end of August here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, so my lesson here is that if you want to plant aloes, snake plants, etc., they do best with shade. This is right up against the east-facing wall of my house, so it only gets morning sun, and then in the afternoon, it's in complete shade. I would show you how these plants looked on the other side of the yard, but they all died. Maybe a few are hanging on, as I'm still experimenting. The really good news about these little plants is that they are easy to plant, and many of them create *pups*, so you get more. Whenever I see a pup (and I don't mean Macinto...

Here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, we get summer thunderstorms, which can be quite severe. They don't last very long, but the rain comes down very hard. And while rain is welcomed in the garden, flooding isn't. If you have a typical suburban house, like I do, you are part of the flood control of the valley. And that means that your yard should hold a certain amount of water. Your property was designed that way, by law. Here at The Tropical Paradise, like most homeowners, I have changed around a lot of things in the yard. But I have made sure that the original way that the water is held, and flows, has remained the same. This view of the backyard shows how the water stands just after a heavy rain. It flows, of course, away from the patio, and towards the the southern edge of the yard. There the water sits until it's high enough to start its journey along the side yard. From there it goes into another holding area in my courtyard. When the level of the water gets high e...

When I bought my house in Glendale, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix), I wanted to get back the Tropical Paradise feeling that I remembered from living in Santa Barbara. But, uh, Phoenix isn't Southern California! Yes, you can buy plants here that do well in Southern California, and you can plant them, but really, all you get to do is to see them suffer, and die. And that's especially true of ferns. So, the most successful *ferns* that I have here aren't ferns at all, they're cycads. And if you've never heard of them, that's not surprising. Most of the people I've met have never even heard the term. It's a group of plants that give a ferny, small-palm-tree look, the most common of which is called a *sago palm*. Many people have heard of sago palms. They're not palm trees at all, they're cycads. In the photo, by the way, the cycads are Dioons. Stay with me on this. When I first learned what a cycad was, I found myself entering a strange world of...

I have to admit that I was reluctant to add *desert plants* to my Tropical Paradise. Really, I am trying to create a feeling of an oasis here, I don't want cactus, and stuff like that. But I am really liking the way agaves look. But before you rush out and buy agaves, you have to do your homework. Many get way too big, and get out of control. Like the cycads that I have here, the agaves are miniatures. The agaves you see here are (in the foreground) Agave Parryi, and behind it, next to the dioon edule cycad, is an Agave potatorum cv Kichijokan (syn. Agave verschaffletii), both of which grow very slowly, and stay fairly small. Like cycads, they prefer to live on a slope, where water can drain away quickly. They also like a little shade, although they can thrive in areas where the cycads would get sunburned. But be careful! Agaves are dangerous, and sharp! I took this photo by walking back well away from where people are supposed to walk. If you plant an agave anywhere where pe...

Summers are ridiculously hot in Phoenix. Really, I can't imagine how kids can play here. I grew up in Minneapolis, where summer was the most pleasant season to be out. Here, in the Phoenix, Arizona area, it's the time to be in. And so the best way to enjoy a summer day in Phoenix is to be looking out of a window of an air-conditioned building. It's early afternoon on August 15th, and not only is it terribly hot out there, this is the *monsoon* season, so it's humid, too. I've tried sitting outside, but even in the shade, and it's pretty miserable. But here is my view to my backyard, which is just nice to look at. This view is facing due east, so there is no glaring sunlight after noon. I have a patio cover, as all homes in Phoenix do, and so I can leave the blinds up all afternoon. In fact, I don't even have a cover on the sliding glass door. I have visited many people in Phoenix, or in California, whose backyards are either a mess, or are made invis...

If you live in the Phoenix area, like I do, or Palm Springs, or anywhere that gets over 100 degrees, yes, you can grow sago palms (cycas revoluta) out in full sun. And yes, I've seen them here in my neighborhood, growing for years and years, but they always look like they're suffering. Their leaves get yellow with brown spots. They're getting scorched! All of the water, fertilizer, etc., in the world won't help these plants out there in full sun. They need a little shade. Now, don't get me wrong. Sago palms can take the heat. They can live in full sun. But they flourish with a little shade. Drive around your neighborhood and look at the ones that are doing well. They're usually tucked up a bit under overhangs, or they are facing east (and only getting morning sun), or nearby a tree that gives dappled shade, which is the best for them. The sago palm pictured is in Encanto Park in Phoenix, and it's gotta be over eighty years old. It's planted in g...

If your sago palm ( cycas revoluta ) is sending out new plants from its sides, you're in luck. This is a sign of a robustly healthy mature plant that is absolutely bursting with life. And now you have to make a decision, should you cut off the plants (called pups), or leave them on? And if you do cut them off, when should you do it, and how would you be able to root them as new plants? The first question is a matter of taste. Personally, I like to see the trunk of a sago palm, so I would cut the pups off, even the little ones. They really are doing no harm to the mother plant, but they sap energy, and besides, I like the look of a cycad trunk, neatly trimmed. To remove them, just use a sharp knife, or saw. There is no need to paint over the *wound* or anything. It will heal over on its own. The time to do this is not really all that important, but there is only one time when you shouldn't, which is while the plant is flushing, which is what this one in the photo is doing....

This area along the eastern edge of the artificial turf (the *lawn*) has been a problem for a long time. Because of the slope, water had been undermining this area for years, and a depression had happened. And it was very unfortunate as it was where a lot of people like to walk up to as it's where the spring flowers are planted, including freesia and iris. The water is good for the flowers, but having an area that was unstable for people to stand on wasn't. So I trimmed back the *grass*, and put in some flagstone. At first, it was just that big chunk in front, which looked ridiculous. Then I *flanked* it, by adding more flagstone along the sides, just to make it look like a bump-out. Now I'm doing the fun stuff, which is what creating a focal point is all about. I also like to call a focal point like this a *walk-up-to-it*. And there is a very sturdy place to stand, which is the most important part. After that, it's all about giving people something to look at, an...

Now that I've fixed the main problem, which was the sinking of this edge of the artificial turf, I am starting to integrate it into the garden. I call this *flanking*. This is where flagstone becomes a big jig-saw puzzle. As you can see, I've made some progress with the left flank, starting by finding pieces of flagstone that look good along the front edge, and then filling in the spaces with what I call *key stones*. Right now I'm not convinced about that very left edge, may put in another key stone there. The goal here is to create a solid walking space that also has a visual clear indication where you shouldn't walk, which is what the bigger stones are about. The flagstone is just laid dry, and I will walk on it, and insure that everything is secure, and no *teeter-totter*. Grout will have to wait until later, and it is really just decorative, anyway. If the flagstone isn't sitting correctly, no amount of grout will help. And here it is this afternoon. Bo...

When it rains here in Phoenix in the summer, it comes down HARD. On the news, they call it monsoons. They are violent thunderstorms that dump a LOT of water FAST. So, one of the things I've always kept an eye on here is drainage in the yard. In fact, when it rains I always get an umbrella and check to see that everything is draining properly. This is a typical suburban house, which was designed to hold a certain amount of rainwater, and then the have the water flow safely around the house and into the street. So certain areas of the yard become temporary lakes, until the water flows away. And the area you see where I put the flagstone I had noticed was becoming more and more of a problem every year. It's at the bottom of a slope, but the yard itself tips just enough that this area had become a *swale*. And that meant that it was slowly depressing. Just going under the artificial turf and adding more sand, or gravel, wasn't going to help in the long run, it needed to b...

If you have a quiet, peaceful garden, I really can't recommend a dachshund. But Macintosh, the good little wiener dog, has been living here for eight years, and my garden, and life, wouldn't be the same without her. And she lives peacefully, and quietly, here. Dachshunds are stubborn. Luckily, I am more stubborn. Dachshunds are diggers. Luckily, I knew how to discourage that right from the start. Dachshunds bark a lot, and they chew up things. But not Macintosh, the good little wiener dog. If your yard, and your world, looks like the aftermath of World War III because you own a dachshund, and you have just given up any chance of sharing a nice world with your dachshund, I would like to share with you some of the things I've learned. • Accept that a dachshund is a dog. As much as I love her, she is not a *fur child*. I've been around dogs all of my life, and believe me, what works for them is not the same as what works for people. Unfortunately, if you can...

The plants are the stars of my garden, but I do share it with animals. But it is a select list. That list includes my dog, hummingbirds, beetles, worms, that sort of thing. The list does not include stinging ants, or mosquitos! If you're wondering what you can do to suppose wildlife in your neighborhood, plant something. Just about anything will help the local fauna. Here in the desert, many insects, such as butterflies and bees, visit just for the water. And they get it served up just the way they like it, on leaves and flowers. I do use pesticides, but very selectively. This time of the year, mid-summer, is the time that attracts mosquitos. So I spray some *Bug-B-Gone* in places were mosquitos might live. Believe me, you don't need a *green pool* or standing water to attract mosquitos. The ones that sting, and carry disease, are mature females that need your blood. They like to *hang out* in wet, shady areas, in bushes, underneath trees. In the springtime I scatter *A...