The Learning Garden Tour

Hi, I’m Cricket, the host of GardenVariety.Life. I’ve enjoyed showing you some amazing gardens on the Virtual Garden Tour, and I hope to show you many more in the coming weeks. Today, I would like to take you on a little tour of my garden here in North Phoenix. Since moving here from Seattle in 2006, I’ve made a lot of changes as I’ve learned to garden in the desert. I’ve also taken a lot of pictures along the way, so the only hard part of telling you the story of my garden was narrowing down which photos to use. Our garden is a family space where my children have been growing and learning, which is why I like to call it the Learning Garden. Not only has it been a part of our homeschool experience when the kids were younger, but it has also been a learning place for me. Here is a tour of my garden through the last 10 years, begining with what it looks like today so you can get an idea of how much it has changed through the years.

This is our garden today.

We were putting a bat house up so we decided to take some photos too. This is a view of the west part of the garden.

Facing the southwest side of backyard.

View from the Southwestern corner of the sport court.

Enjoy A quick video tour of the front yard

We moved in Ten Years ago

In 2006 the front of our new home consisted of a simple arrangement of palms elephant food, and loads of lantana.

Our backyard was basically Texas sage, bougainvillea, and more lantana. Oh, and lots and lots of rocks.

At first I tried just putting stuff in the ground and expecting it to grow like it did in Seattle. I quickly learned that I knew nothing. Through lots of research and the wonderful forum on the Phoenix Permaculture Guild website (Now Valley Permaculture Alliance), I started to realize I needed to do things differently. I started with making small gardens with recycled concrete in out of the way areas, trying to work in between the existing plants.

Every season my imagination grew bigger and so did my garden. We planted Willow Acacia trees at the top of the slope at the north perimeter of the garden so that we could have more privacy from the 2 story house next behind us. I also wanted some more vegetable garden space so we built three 3 X 8 raised beds in front of the trees.

Those lasted for about a year until one morning I discovered my neighbors down the street had removed their back patio. As the landscapers were loading the broken concrete into the dump truck I quickly called my husband to see if we could use it to build raised beds. He said yes (though I don’t think he knew what he was getting into at the time.) I asked the workers to dump it all in my driveway. They looked at me funny, but that is exactly what they did. The next weekend, for our 19th anniversary, we rented a Bobcat and started digging.

If this looks like a great big puzzle to you, you’re right. That’s what it feels like putting it together.

Slowly, we dry-stacked a 2 foot high wall at the base of the slope of the perimeter of the north and west walls. I had to wait 6 months to find more concrete to finish the west wall.

We back filled the wall with topsoil and compost and immediately planted.

Everything was growing and thriving.

Here you can see the wall finished in the background and the newly planted fruit trees under planted with herbs, flowers, and vegetables where there used to be Texas sage and rock. The new patio and arbor are on the right.

The kids love harvesting! It’s always fun to take an empty basket out to the garden and come back with it full.

The microburst

Then in July 2014 a Microburst took out the Willow Acacias and wreaked havoc on the rest of the garden. I was in Wyoming when this happened. Taylor said it sounded like a train came through. Needless to say I was sick when I saw the pictures he sent.

The rest of the yard had only minor damage, but it still wasn’t pretty.

Losing the trees made us feel so exposed. I quickly planted bamboo a pomegranate, and some peach trees to someday fill in. Lots of veggies too, of course. The benefit was that we had more light and things took off.

In 2015 we added four raised wicking beds on the sport court along with a fence and trellis.

We added bees for pollination and honey. Read more about bee keeping.

Chicken coup to the left was made out of our old playset that used to have swings and a slide. Check out my post on how we made it.

Our Garden

Both the front and back yards produce a lot of fruit and vegetables and a beautiful environment to just be in.

Some specifics about our garden.

Water

Everything is on drip irrigation. I followed the examples of Vynnie McDaniels and the Master Gardener Demonstration garden to lay my irrigation out. It basically is a 1/2 in black poly tube with emitter tubing every 6-9 inches that runs perpendicular to the 1/2 in tube the length of the garden. Kind of like a giant comb. It is on a timer that varies throughout the year.
The Wicking beds are watered from the bottom up so that the plant roots “wick” water up. They use about 52% less water. I’m still experimenting with the right soil mix. My beds are made from recycled scaffolding planks.
We also have 3 rain barrels, which I use to hand water pots.
All of the garden is heavily mulched with free mulch from tree companies. My last batch was very thorny, so I recommend checking the truck’s contents before accepting the dump. Tidy Tree is a very good choice. As is Integrity Tree Service. You can call and get on their list if you are in their area.

Fruit Trees

6 pomegranate (Wonderful)
4 peach (3 Desert Gold, 1 Bonanza Dwarf)
1 Apple (Dorsett Golden)
2 Nectarine (not a good producer for me, don’t know variety)
2 Apricot (Katy)
2 Plums (Santa Rosa, ?)
5 Fig (don’t know variety)
1 Lemon
1 Orange (Naval)
1 Mandarin
1 Loquat
1 Guava (white)
1 Pineapple Guava

Vines

5 Grapes (Red Flame)
3 Passionfruit (Fredricks Purple)

Here is my list of plants that perform the best for me year after year.

Rosemary
Marjoram
Peppermint
Pineapple mint
Artemsia Powis Castle
Mexican Oregano
Lemon Thyme
Lavender (all kinds)
Chiltepin
Chile Pequin
Sweet Potato (all kinds)
Lemongrass
Kale (fall/spring)
Swiss Chard (fall/spring)
Lettuce (fall/spring)
Cilantro (fall/spring)
Pumpkins
Beets (fall/spring)
I’ito Onions
Garlic
Onions
Yellow pear tomatoes
Jerusalem Artichokes (sun chokes)
Hibiscus Sabdariffa

Near Future plans

I hope to install an outdoor washing machine to route the gray water to my garden. I already dry my clothes on the line outside, so it makes sense and is much cheaper than running a gray water system from my existing washing machine.
We also want to build a Cobb oven for baking bread.