Warts and All, My (May) High Desert Garden

My High Desert Garden

My garden is ornamental landscaping. I tried (for a few years) to grow some food but It is expensive and hard fought here. The amount of water required for edibles is staggering and water is permanently in short supply.

I have clay and sand for native soil and neither is friendly to the plants I knew when I moved here, annums and eons ago.

Rather than fighting nature and climate I adapted. Why fight when you can partner.

People are sometimes shocked when they see my garden and assume it requires an enormous amount of water. They fail to realize the green is largely sedum, succulents, native plants and other xeriscaping . Almost everything I grow is drought tolerant, I don’t have a flush toilet or other water wasters and collect every rain drop or snow flake that hits my roof.  I’ll contrast my water use with anyone in the neighborhood.  I’ll bet I use less.

As time has passed the challenge of gardening has increased. We have moved into drought and increasingly unpredictable weather with wild extremes. We had a serious freeze in the early morning hours of May 15. Three days ago we had a nasty hail storm that flattened, shredded and filled my rock gardens with ice. Last summer we had two floods so severe a stretch of our road washed out.

As I said I don’t combat nature. It is what it is. I still do darn well with my landscaping I think, but you be the judge.

Last summer I promised a video tour of my garden. I never got it “presentable” enough to want to show it. Hell with that. Here is my early garden with most of the plants barely an inch tall but the bones show. It is decent when picked up, swept up and groomed. Maybe I’ll get there this year? 🙂

Enjoy the tour.

I’ll try to do another walk through when the big bloom starts. Here are a few close ups of what it looks like at the moment:

(pre hail)