Garden Photos

This barrio-area landscape remodel began as a job to look at a few pots and evolved into a project that involved planting three courtyards, fabricating 4 steel trellises, and planting up over 30 substantial custom-picked pots.

Scott Calhoun framed views of the mountains with succulents, and clustered interesting cactus species both in the ground and in raised steel planters.

Back in 2004, when my wife and I bought a studio space for my business with a blank slate garden, I was pretty excited. I’m just saying that having unfettered creative control is, well, awesome!

They hired us to do the design and we drew a circular seat wall, stock tank veggie garden, and lots of succulent plantings that were easy to care for.

Zona Gardens designed and planted extensive container gardens in nearly every patio nook. The containers hold mix of sturdy cacti and succulents and a few potted annuals to lend color in the cool season.

The garden has a pollinator focus and plants such as black dalea hum with activity in the fall. Trees include desert willow and blackbrush acacia.

The south-facing fence has warmed and nurtured a pair of Mexican fencepost cactus that are among the most handsome specimens on Tucson’s east side.

A curving gravel path and offset ocotillo panel fencing provide a secret passage to the rear garden.

In this central Tucson backyard, we used circles to concoct a curvaceous plan: we began with a cylindrical rainwater cistern, a circle of turf, a raised circular cacti and succulent bed, with an adjacent circle pattern pavers.

In the back we created a deer grass oasis around a stock-tank style fountain and salvaged mesquite tree. The back yard is watered by graywater from the Michal’s outdoor shower.

Beginning with a very-much-alive ocotillo fence to screen an adjacent construction site, we planted two varieties of Texas ranger, Texas firecracker bush, beaked yuccas, and mesquite.

We augmented the pine with Chinqaupin oaks, white orchid trees, ocotillo, deer grass, superb penstemon, sandpaper verbena and pale-leaf yucca.

In a narrow rectangular space, we created a geometric grid of flagstone, ‘Silver Falls’ dichondra, interspersed with bear grass and rain lilies.

We fashioned as simple courtyard planting using Sonoran plants like desert willows, yellow orchid vine, bamboo muhly, slipper plant and grape ivy.

Taking cues from what is probably the world’s most famous blue-walled garden, Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, Morocco, this central Phoenix courtyard uses silvery leaves and blue walls to make a design statement.

Wildlife attracting plants such as desert willow and palo verde trees to help create an equilibrium with the existing cactus-heavy plantings.

To break up the long rectangle of the backyard, we used a French curve-shaped steel border to separate a gravel patio from planted areas.

I put a small stock tank fountain in the center of the garden, which effectively divided the garden into quadrants. In those quadrants I planted gorilla’s armpit, Texas tuberose, partridge breast aloe, and Angelita daisies.

Around the koi ponds I planted bull grass, Chihuahuan orchid shrub, and a variety of penstemon and agave species. Although the garden has a pool and koi ponds, the plants that surround those oasis areas require very little water.

This site was blessed with a surfeit of large rocks, some as big as VW vans.