Keith and Helga Zwickl welcomed us to their Tucson, Arizona, garden during the Garden Writers Association symposium a couple of weeks ago. I really enjoyed this garden, not only for its stunning collection of cacti and succulents, but also for its creative and often slyly humorous homemade garden art.

The Zwickls have spent nearly 3 decades creating this garden. It flows around their house and blends with the native plants growing in the rolling foothills of the Catalina Mountains, whose rocky slopes can be glimpsed above the airy desert trees and tall saguaros. The garden wows right at the entry, with a beautifully planted island bed in the driveway/parking area. A vase-shaped ocotillo anchors one end of the bed, surrounded by variegated American agaves, barrel cactus, and cholla. The ever-present, deep-blue desert sky adds its own color to the scene.

I felt lucky to visit the garden in early morning, with morning rays caught in the spines and hairs of these tough desert plants.

Just look at these Tricocereus hybrids, glowing golden in the morning sun.

Trickster coyote, slinking past variegated American agaves. This is a metal silhouette created, I think, by the owner.

He also constructed this metal saguaro, complete with a mockingbird perched on an arm. Keith told us that he wanted a big saguaro in his garden but didn’t have 75 years to wait for it to mature to this size. So he made one instead!

A wider view of the front garden. Those are the Catalinas in the background.

Keith is a plant collector and a plant rescuer; he showed me one barrel cactus that had been decapitated by “kids with a machete,” which he brought to his garden and nursed to recovery. It’s easy for a collector’s garden to be a bit of a jumble in terms of design, but Keith uses repetition of plants effectively to give it rhythm and continuity. He also has an eye for contrasting forms.

Keith telling us about his garden.

The rear garden is a narrow space along the back and side of the house, woven through with paths and rocky cactus and succulent beds.

Airy trees offer filtered shade.

A small deck is elevated in a back corner, offering views of the garden and the wild greenbelt behind the house.

More of that sly humor is evident in this barbed-wire barrel cactus, which echoes the shape of the real one behind it.

Planted cowboy boots are good for a grin too.

‘Queen Victoria’ agave

Richly hued amaranth adds annual color.

The pool garden along the side of the house is another spot for annual color, with swaths of bright zinnias and tithonia.

Tithonia

Zinnias

Butterflies were attracted to the zinnias…

…and so was I.

A wider view reveals a riot of colorful zinnias and more metal animal art—this time a family of javelinas.

Oh, and look what the Zwickls have on their pool deck—a metal, fairly lifelike rattlesnake. Boo!

Most of the “fanged” occupants of the garden are, of course, the spiky plants, which you do have to be careful of as you explore the garden. But just look at that fascinating pattern of spines—like white stars.

Spiny ocotillo branches are used to make a screen for the A/C. A living ocotillo (yes, it’s alive even though it looks dead; ocotillo leafs out after a rain) grows at left. I think that’s a piece of a saguaro skeleton leaning on the fence at right. Doesn’t it look like a dinosaur bone?

Here’s an actual saguaro skeleton standing tall in the front garden. A closer inspection revealed a support network inside: metal rings and rebar to hold the thing up. I guess that Keith found and reassembled this saguaro skeleton, much as dinosaur fossils are displayed in museums. It is beautiful, sculptural, and a ghostly memory of an ancient plant.

Another plant on the way out—a dying agave, growing more colorful as it fades away following the exhausting work of pushing up a bloom stalk.

One of the many prickly pears (Opuntia) in the garden.

Docents were on hand to offer us prickly pear lemonade, which is a delightful thirst slaker, let me tell you. One of the ladies offered to show me how to peel a tuna—the fruit of the prickly pear—from which they make the lemonade. Here she is making a vertical cut on one side of the tuna.

The skin just peels off.

The cherry-red fruit is slipped out of its skin…

…cut up, and made into a refreshing drink.

Yum!

For a look back at the DreamFlower desert garden of Lorien Tersey, click here. Up next: Part 1 of my visit to Tucson Botanical Gardens.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

When you have to jackhammer the “soil” to plant anything, when your garden gets only 12 inches of rainfall a year, when you live in a desert, you just know gardening isn’t going to be easy. And yet, despite these conditions in Tucson, Arizona, which I recently visited for the annual Garden Writers Association symposium, gardeners still coax plants from the earth, and beautiful gardens still exist.

Tucsonans are also blessed with great natural beauty in the stark yet majestic landscape that surrounds them. Perhaps more than gardeners in gentler parts of the world, Tucson gardeners feel the push and pull of embracing the wider world by keeping open views to the mountains, while simultaneously holding it at bay with enclosing walls, creating irrigated edens within.

At least, that’s what I mused on while visiting this homegrown garden on tour in Tucson. It belongs to Lorien Tersey, who operates a small farm business, DreamFlower Garden, on her less-than-one-acre property, growing vegetables, herbs, flowers, and landscape plants for market. The front and side yards contain her personal gardens, including this simple side-entry space with potted plants, where the old adobe house positions straight-edged, white walls against the cobalt sky and mountain vista glimpsed over a low wall.

Don’t you love the name DreamFlower Garden? I bet this honeybee is feeling it.

Lorien’s front garden is pretty spare, as one might expect in a desert garden…

…but even so there’s color and form, with architectural Opuntia backed by a yellow-flowering sub-shrub of some sort.

Around the side of the house, a shady porch promises a cool respite from the intense sun. Red chile pepper lights strung around the door seem to say, “Welcome to Arizona!”

Thirstier tropical plants are grown here, closer to the hose, like this orange hibiscus…

…and this bog container garden with cattails.

The ‘Macho Mocha’ mangave on the wall likely doesn’t ask for much, so long as it has some protection from the full sun.

I’m fond of the industrial look in my garden—why else would I have a steel-pipe planter and several culvert-pipe planters? So this rose-against-steel combo naturally appealed to me.

In back, pomegranate trees were bearing rosy fruit…

…and this unknown-to-me vine was blooming against corrugated-steel siding (love!).

Rows of zinnias added confetti-like color, perhaps destined for market bouquets.

Desert plants like cholla and opuntia edged the border between garden and alley, providing that all-important sense of place.

Next up: The artful desert garden of Keith and Helga Zwickl. For a look back at the garden of Alan Richards, with its colored walls, click here.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Following up on my overall impressions of Big Bend National Park, today I’ll take you on a tour of the sights. Our first morning we drove up into the Chisos Mountains to hike the Chisos Basin Loop Trail. At an elevation of 4,500 feet over the desert floor, and with twice as much rainfall as down by the Rio Grande, the Chisos Basin is a surprising microclimate, with trees like alligator juniper, drooping juniper, Arizona cypress, pines, and oaks. Grasses grow in profusion here too although, as you can see, this area is also suffering from prolonged drought.

Havard agave and juniper

Here’s an agave that bloomed and then died. Its bleached bloom spike still stands…

…unlike this one, which has toppled over.

Mexican feathergrass

I don’t know what these pretty, white seedheads are. Anyone recognize them?

We spotted a few Carmen white-tailed deer in the Basin.

Carmen deer live only in the Chisos Mountains and in nearby mountains in Mexico, isolated here after the last Ice Age, as the surrounding country warmed and turned into a desert.

The Window View is a much-photographed spot.

As the day heated up and the sun grew intense, we spent time driving the park roads and ended up at a boat launch along the Rio Grande. Although signs prohibited it, we couldn’t resist strolling across an ankle-deep section of the river to stand on Mexican soil.

Santa Elena Canyon straddles the border with Mexico. This is the Mexican side of the canyon…

…and on the right is the U.S. side.

The next day we drove to Boquillas Canyon to hike, where I spotted huisache (Acacia farnesiana) in full bloom.

The flowers look like yellow pom-poms.

Just inside the canyon, a steep sand dune beckons the adventurous (and fit) to clamber up the deep, slippery slope, which you almost have to do on all fours. Only my husband made it to the top, along with a father and son from Belton, Texas.

Strategically placed along the trail, little beaded scorpions and roadrunners and carved walking sticks are offered “for a donation for the kids of Boquillas,” with only a collection cup and the honor system. We understood, from prohibitive signs in the parking lot, that Mexicans from the town of Boquillas, visible just across the river, were selling these trinkets to tourists, even though they risk deportation 100 miles away by the U.S. Border Patrol if caught. The signs advised that buying would only encourage the illegal trade and possibly result in the seller’s deportation and confiscation of anything you bought. What a sad situation. Before 9/11, the border between Boquillas and the U.S. was open, and the tourist trade flourished. However, the border crossing was officially closed after 9/11, destroying the Mexican town’s livelihood. According to Wikipedia, most of the residents have had to abandon Boquillas.

The day grew warm, but we headed next to the park’s hot springs, along with more tourists than we’d seen anywhere.

Apparently a dip in a hot pool sounds good even on a hot day. Volcanoes created Big Bend millions of years ago, and there’s still enough heat under the earth’s crust to warm the spring-fed pool.

This nondescript, upright shrub was alive with a deep humming.

Its branches were covered in pretty, purple flowers…

…and hundreds, maybe thousands, of busy honeybees. Does anyone know the name of this desert shrub? This is guayacan (Guaiacum angustifolium). My thanks to David R. for the ID.

Above, the mud nests of cliff swallows adorned the stratified cliff wall along the river.

This would be a fascinating place for a geologist.

Fresh, green mesquite leaves

Back on the road, we spotted Big Bend bluebonnets (Lupinus havardii). They are much taller than the bluebonnets in central Texas, as befits of place of such extremes. In case you’re wondering, all varieties of Texas bluebonnets are officially Texas’ state flower.

Because of the drought, the bluebonnets and other wildflowers were sadly sparse. In wetter springs I’ve heard the desert floor can be colorful.

We left Big Bend on Saturday for the town of Marfa via FM 170, which leads through Big Bend Ranch State Park, the largest state park in Texas. The scenery along the narrow, twisting highway, which climbs through ancient volcanic mountains, was as good as anything we saw in the national park. We stopped to hike Closed Canyon, a narrow slot canyon carved by occasional flooding that leads to the Rio Grande. There had been a thunderstorm the night before, but by the time we arrived the water was gone and a flash flood unlikely, so we hiked in, noting that should water rush in, there would be no escape up the smooth walls of the canyon.

The kids particularly enjoyed this hike. The canyon floor steps down along the way, with increasingly higher drops. Unsure we could get back up, we eventually turned around and hiked back to the car, wondering how the canyon ended: was it a box canyon or open at the end? I found the answer online when I got home: it’s open all the way to the river, but steeper drops near the end may require use of a rope.

Another ocotillo in bloom

Check out those wicked thorns.

The tubular flowers are sure to attract hummingbirds.

A last look back at Big Bend country.

To read my first post about Big Bend and the impact of the drought, click here. Next up: Terlingua’s ghost town and the Starlight Theatre.

By the way, my blog Digging is a finalist for Best Gardening Blog in the Readers’ Choice Awards at About.com. I’d love to have your vote. You can vote once a day (it’s on a 24-hour cycle) until March 21. So vote early and often! Thanks for your support! (And thank you to Pamela Price for the vote graphic.) Click to VOTE.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.