Band-Aid Gardening

December 17th, 2019

   Gardening in Pennsylvania sometimes is a little hazardous, what with ticks and poison ivy lurking, slips on wet-clay slopes a threat in spring, sunburn likely in summer, and eye-pokes on hidden stakes possible anytime.

Typical Arizona… needled chollo cactus backdropped by needled saguaro cactus.

   But our kindred spirits in Arizona have it far tougher, risking bloodshed every trip into the yard.

   I’m just back from leading a tour to Tucson, Phoenix, and Sedona, Ariz., and I’ve never seen so many plants that arm themselves. Needles, spikes, thorns, and swords disguised as leaves are everywhere.

See a photo gallery of plants, scenery, and other sights from the Arizona trip

See George’s lineup of 2020 gardening trips

   Cacti of all shapes and sizes wield sharp, stiff needles that pierce even gloved hands.

   Bushy natives such as yucca and “desert spoons” grow in rosettes of narrow, upright blades that make them look like giant pincushions.

   The popular blue agave – used to make tequila – has even bigger, fatter sword-shaped leaves that have serrated edges in addition to pointy tips.

   And even many of the trees, such as the green-barked palo verdes and fine-leafed mesquites, come equipped with little hooked thorns on the branches to make you think twice about whether you want to prune them.

   I’d go through a box of Band-Aids every week trying to garden out there.

   You can’t really blame Arizona plants for being so threatening. They certainly don’t have it easy.

   They’re just trying to do what every other organism on Earth is trying to do – survive the hand they’ve been dealt.

   In the case of cacti – which grow everywhere in the Sonoran Desert that covers most of the Phoenix and Tucson regions of southern Arizona – those deadly needles are the main attribute keeping them from being eaten.

Saguaro cacti with their fat, barreled bodies and arms are the signature landscape feature of southern Arizona.

   That part of Arizona only gets 12 to 13 inches of rain a year – about a quarter of what we get. Worse yet, the rain comes mostly during two brief periods – late winter into early spring and the “monsoon season” of late summer.

   Cacti have figured out a way to deal with that by growing sponge-like interiors that soak up water when it’s available, then storing it for long periods.

   The iconic saguaro cacti with their barreled bodies and fat arms are particularly good at water storage – banking up to 30,000 pounds of water in a single decades-old plant.

   I read about one fellow whose car was crushed when he was shooting at a big saguaro to see if he could bring it down. He did. And he got crushed and killed, too.

   Saguaro cacti (pronounced “sah-WAHR-o”) can grow 40 feet tall and live for more than 200 years. They’re the biggest U.S cactus species, and they’re all over southern Arizona.

   We saw literally tens of thousands of saguaros growing wild in native Arizona landscapes as well as in roadside plantings and public and private gardens.

   Maybe none of them would be there without the needles to fend off the various wildlife that would love to suck them dry.

   Many other cacti – especially the pad-like prickly pear cactus – have edible fruits and fibers, making them key targets for everything from insects to birds to the pig-like javelinas that run rampant like our groundhogs.

I really liked the purple-padded version of prickly pear cactus.

   Arizona merchants do a brisk business selling human-targeted cactus products, such as prickly-pear candy, prickly-pear jelly, and prickly-pear margaritas.

   Needles are also useful for giving a bit of cooling shade to desert plants, plus most desert natives have developed glossy or waxy surfaces that slow evaporation loss. The pores (technically “stomata”) on most desert plants also open mainly at night to “breathe in” carbon dioxide when the air is cooler and more humid.

   You’d think all of the pointiness and spikiness would result in landscapes that shoo people away instead of draw them in.

   Strangely, our touring gardeners and I found just the opposite.

   The many needly succulents and other desert plants come in such a wide variety of colors, forms, and sizes that desert gardens have a peculiar beauty that’s very different from our palette.

   Arizona gardens are far more than green barrels of cactus and balls of tumbleweed as we Easterners imagine from old cowboy movies.

Muhly grass and Bunny Ears prickly pear cactus at Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden.

   If you ever get a chance to visit Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden, you’ll find garden after garden filled with blends of sporty pairings… feathery muhly grass next to masses of dwarf, thornless, “bunny-ear” prickly-pear cactus… colonies of snake-like euphorbias back-dropped by bladed, tree-sized yuccas… specimens of big blue agaves flanked by white-needled cholla cacti that glow like neon ghosts.

   My favorite of the desert plants is the purple-padded form of prickly-pear cactus.

   I was also partial to the bright golden balls of golden barrel cactus, the red-needled version of chollo cactus, and a type of agave with blunt tips called Queen Victoria that reminded me of a blue-tinted, football-helmet-sized Bloomin’ Onion from Outback Steakhouse.

Queen Victoria agave.

   Some flowers will do the desert as well, mainly ones that are drought-tough and quick to get their seed-maturing done while moisture is available (salvias, penstemons, gaura, zinnia, marigolds, and desert verbena, for example).

   Still, even without the far bigger range of flowering shrubs and perennials that we can do, desert landscapes can be surprisingly diverse.

   I just wonder if Arizona gardeners go through as many bandages as I would in that environment.