hotgardens

Thank You!
The Nevada Master Gardeners recommended the Hot Gardens website in their newsletter.

Gardening in a dry, hot climate is always an adventure. Too much sun. Too little water. And soil that has almost nothing going for it. Your desert garden, however, can be much more than sizzling hot rock mulch* scattered with pines and scrawny bushes.

Create a Mediterranean Garden

You will find that it is definitely possible to create a Mediterranean-style retreat around your home with fast-growing, leafy green trees and palms in garden rooms. You can enjoy shady havens surrounded by green hedges and fabulous drought-tolerant flower borders.

Plant a Desert Style Garden

Further away from your house, you can plant a drier, more desert-like xeriscape garden with cactus, ornamental grasses, acacias, mesquites and other desert plants. Better yet, you can do it all while using water wisely.

Happy gardening!

Tour a gorgeous
private garden

View a remarkable private orchard garden, hidden behind sheltering walls in the American Southwest.
__________________

What should you do in your garden this month? Read month-by-month practical advice for desert gardens.
__________________

Take an online tour of four remarkable gardens
in Santa Barbara.
_________________

* How hot is rock mulch? Did you know that when the outside air temperature is 100 degrees, the surface temperature of the rock mulch in the sun around your home, particularly on the south and west sides, may easily be over 150 degrees? The new artificial turf, being promoted as water-wise, may also be hotter than 150 degrees. But your lawn will remain relatively cool in the low 90s. If, however, you don't want a lawn, consider planting a water-wise ground cover, such as the low, spreading shrub, Acacia redolens or Lantana to help reduce the temperature of that super-heated rock mulch.