Desert in bloom: Jack’s backyard part 2

What a dif­fer­ence two years makes! Jack­’s desert oasis con­tin­ues to boast col­or, shade and com­fort. But look at how every­thing has filled in as it matured!

Notice the mesquite tree and how the green leaves pro­vide shade and back­ground for the col­ors through­out. The green from the tree, and sur­round­ing plants, add a soft­ness and shade to the land­scape. Col­ors from pot­ted plants and bloom­ing plants real­ly pop against the sooth­ing backdrop.

Jack­’s design bril­liant­ly relies on a lot of desert plants, so almost every­thing works with the cli­mate — mean­ing less work to keep every­thing thriving.

One casu­al­ty from the orig­i­nal design: a Queen Palm. As Jack says:

One has lived and I cut the oth­er down…my nurs­ery has quit stock­ing them as they freeze too eas­i­ly and suf­fer from the heat. They need to be on the coast in South­ern California.

Best of all, every­thing works togeth­er in scale. From the begin­ning, Jack left space for the plants to mature. (Com­pare this “after” pho­to to the begin­ning land­scape.) That’s one of the most dif­fi­cult dis­ci­plines for begin­ning a gar­den — resist­ing the urge to fill in the space NOW, only to have to cull good plants lat­er because of crowd­ing. Jack avoid­ed this by plan­ning for the space at the yard’s inception.

Tip: ask your local nurs­ery how long it takes for a plant to reach matu­ri­ty and for them to “fill in”. You can also check the tags on the plant as you shop. Then take a mea­sure out to the gar­den and space plants accord­ing to their full antic­i­pat­ed size before you dig.