I started my desert wildflower garden just over three years ago. I didn’t really know what to expect at the start, except that I was sowing native wildflower seeds, so they should grow well in the desert. Although I love my wildflower garden, there have been difficulties along the way. How to distinguish wildflowers from weeds? Should I set boundaries? What do I do when the plants die? How to water a wildflower garden? Wildflower or Weed? It can be difficult to tell what is an invasive weed and what is a wildflower, especially when they are just young sprouts. My best advice is to let it gr ..read more

Several planters filled with a home-brewed desert plant potting soil One of my pet peeves is recipe websites that make you scroll through pages of useless stories prior to getting to the ingredients and instructions. So I am going to start with the recipe and follow with the explanations. 5 parts fine compost 2 parts perlite 1 part native desert soil (clay) 1 part sand Compost, native soil (clay), sand, and perlite are stored for use in the garden. A 1/2″ soil sifter is used to remove rocks.Native Desert Soil (Clay) Although native desert plants typically grow in 100% native desert soil (whi ..read more

Overpruned hedges sprout new shoots over their dying carcass Although it is nice to see green space around town, the typical pruning practices in the Greater Phoenix area are disasterous. There are several common practices that I want to review: formally shearing shrubs, overpruning, cutting back to the ground, and trimming all species. Formally Shearing Shrubs Formally sheared olive tree A formally sheared shrub or tree is one that is cut into a geometric shape (box, cylinder, sphere) by cutting the tips of the leaves and branches off. This is an old-fashioned practice from Victorian gardens ..read more

In 2019, I moved from an apartment into a house in Tempe. Now I had a yard of my own to take care of. There was no grass and no pool. The front-yard was mostly gravel with a few palm trees, an olive tree, and an oleander hedge that was overgrown with weeds. In the back-yard there was emptiness, except for a couple of small plants from Lowes that the previous owners had quickly thrown in. There used to be grass in the back yard but it had long since died and was replaced with an excessive amount of gravel. Later, I discovered a total of 8 dead tree stumps buried in the sea of gravel. Many of th ..read more