The DeVINE Design!

Hello blogger friends and anonymous desert gardeners,

Pictures taken from last summer at El Presidio.  Note that my older cameras were used. 

For my blogger friends, this post is an informational one and you may just glance or skim, but I promised myself that I would do some writing about the garden.  For you(anonymous desert gardener) who googled my website and found this place, welcome!  You'll absorb it all in and then leave in the night:) That's okay.  I've done the same thing.  I hope your garden endevours for this spring are exciting.  March has arrived and there is so much to get ready for!!! While it may be a little early yet to put things into the ground, garden centers all over town are gearing up for the big days ahead.   This month you'll find several interesting writes about xeriscape gardening and how to do it.  I'll be featuring several "top" places that had some fun with their landscaping and demonstrate to you that Tucson can be a wonderful place to landscape and garden. 

Solar lights hang from the top of the trellis and are mixed in with the Cats Claw

Today it's all about using vines in our designs.  Sometimes we want to drape a wall or building.  Sometimes we want to frame an entry. Or other times we'd like vines to just ramble around the ground and go wherever they please.  I used the Creeping Fig in such a manner and it's doing a good job on "creeping" up my palm tree and around the ground.  Vines add vertical dimension to the garden and pull the eye upwards and around your green space.   They also have the affect of softening the rough edges and make things like fences or brick walls fade into the background.

Here is our ramada at El Presidio.  We still need to add color to this structure, but there are solar lights above and A LOT of cats claw around the this area.  We placed Confederate Jasmine to climb up the sides and it is slowly doing so. 

Brighten an entry. Train woody vines like Bougainvillea, Wisteria, Trumpet Vine, or Lady Rosebanks to frame entryways or balconies.  The beautiful flowers will dress up an ordinary house.  I personally love the color of the bougainvillea bracts next to our stucco.  Gorgeous. You will need to fasten them and keep them in place with wires, eye screws, plastic ties etc to hold up the main branches.  

I use a free standing trellis to frame our small patio space.  In hot burning temps, this bougainvillea thrives and flowers.

Screens and boundaries.  For fast and quick ways to hide a fence or divide a space, use Cats Claw(considered a weed here).  The leaves stay on this vine all year round making it a popular vine to grow here in Tucson. BUT be careful as this vine can pull off paint or stucco from the building.  Other vines with fast growth are the popular Morning Glory and Passion Vine. They'll create an attractive windbreak or privacy screen in NO TIME!  It's just that in winter these guys go dormant.  I personally like something all year round.

                          Morning Glory at El Presidio.  A great vine that spreads FAST!!  Careful where you place it.

There are generally 3 ways homeowners like to use vines.  The first is by using a lightweight wooden or metal trellis(clematis, bougainvillea, etc) for plants to crawl up.  The second is by using a freestanding trellis, ramada, gazebo or arbor.  No matter what your use, vines inspire and let the eyes wander upwards. During this spring, think about ways you could use a vine or two around your place.  Last year during my garden journal series, I reported on several vines that many Tucsonans, including myself, use around our gardens. Click here to begin your fun from that series.  More tomorrow....

Editing Plants From Your Garden

Morning Glory twining amongst the Ficus

One of the most difficult things to do in the garden is removing a healthy and happy plant.  Last week during one of our gardening meets, I chatted with a fellow gardener who had mentioned that she had to remove several very healthy plants to open more space for her other plants.  We also spoke of the survival rate of plants we put into our ground here in Tucson.  Both of us came to the conclusion that about half to 75 percents of the plants survived while with some species, the survival rate was under fifty percent.  Those percentages equate to money lost and invested into our landscapes so one can only imagine how difficult it is to take out an older or extremely healthy plant from our garden.

The example I will share today is about our little Christmas tree that I put into the ground in 2008.  When I began taking over the grounds, I didn't have a lot of money to invest into plants so if people offered me a plant, I would take it and try it out.  A neighbor gave me her living Christmas tree and I thought....what the heck, let's try it.  Not only did it grow but it was very drought resistant.  I tried everything in my power to let it die on its' own.....and it wouldn't.  I then took the stance that the tree earned the right to keep that spot, but as the garden started forming in its' shape and size, the pine tree didn't fit at all with everything around it.  It stuck out like a sore thumb.  It was competing with a mulberry and fig tree which both were of healthy sizes.  If all three grew super large in the future, there would be conflict for space and root rights.  Today I had to make that tough decision and edit for the second time this year. If I pull a plant from the garden, I pot it and put it in my "nursery" until it recovers, but this pine was too large to pot.  It no longer is alive.
                                                          
I have deduced that this "editing" is common practice for gardeners through our discussions together. If you felt sad just reading that part, join the party.  It's not easy to let a plant go....especially when it has been around for awhile. However, it is necessary to do....perhaps a "necessary" evil to keep the balance proper on your own grounds.   As things grow, we don't always know what form they will take....we can imagine what they will look like, but they don't always work out that way:) Purchasing plants is expensive and when they die, we figure...darn, but let's try the plant in this spot.  But when a plant is thriving and doing well, why on Earth would you touch it? And that question doesn't have a right or wrong answer so please share what you would do in your own garden space:)