I actually have about a million garden tips! Tips and tricks and way to help you succeed is what I do.  It’s what this website, and my YouTube channel, and my Facebook group are all about!  Trying to boil all my tips into a “top ten?” Not as easy as you might think.

I am working to create a course for you, gentle readers. Something that is designed to help you succeed with your gardening goals here in our very unique region. I have been trying to distill all my years gardening here, and all the classes I have taken, and all the books I have read – not to mention the ones I have written! This is what I have for my top ten tips (and basics to dive deeply into) at this point.

So if you want to upgrade your landscape or start a garden in 2025, here are my top ten tips for success.

Why Garden?

Just in case you need to convince another member of the household, here are some reasons to garden.  It’s hard to find original words to say this. I believe I am quoting one of my books when I say that gardening is a force for good. A place for creativity in time and space. It is a way to surround yourself with beauty, so that you can walk in beauty (as our Native neighbors say).

A garden can have a specific function – it can provide food for you and your family. Maybe not entire meals. Maybe just a few herbs or spices for your meals. Just snipping some garlic chives or arugula leaves and popping them onto a purchased salad can still be an incredible feeling.

Gardening is a form of exercise.  Be careful that you don’t over do it when you start!

But best in my book, is that gardening puts you in touch with the natural world. Although we might forget it, walled up in our homes and offices and even in our cars, we are part of this natural world around us. In conclusion, gardening is good for your body and your soul.

Southwest Gardening is Unique

Here in the Southwest, just figuring out how to NOT kill a plant can feel daunting. Let alone a yard full of plants! Getting started with gardening can appear overwhelming – but it need not be so. Every plant starts as a tiny seed, or little cutting – and so your garden can start small as well. Gardening is an ongoing and dynamic process. A landscape is a static product.

Top Ten Garden Tips

Tip 1. Plan Your Space

The Seven Principles of Low-Water gardening says it is fine to have lushness and even lawn. Sorry that post was lost when the site was destroyed – have to put it back up! [honestly, I thought I had]. Rule 1 says its fine to have an oasis zone, or even a lawn, if it is used. Just put them close to the part of the yard you use the most.

Vegetables and herbs? Ideal to put them close to the door where you can pay attention to them. Other plants that are just for pretty can be further out in the yard.

Size matters. Don’t over plant. This is why you plan first and plant later.

That little baby bush or tree in a one gallon or five gallon pot may grow into a 20 foot tall and 20 foot wide monster. So don’t plant 6 of them within 2 feet of each other. Someone is going to end up dead.  Proper placement is important!

Tip 2. Water Wisely

Maybe this should be tip 1. Water and how you will apply it is critical to planning what you want from your space. Things that need more water need to be where you can easily keep an eye on them.

You also need to know that you can NOT simply add more water and trust that it will help a non-native like a hydrangea survive. Our humidity can be single digits, and wind will dry those fat leaves out in a heart beat.

Watering is a massive topic that I have and will come back to from many different directions.

Tip 3. Not all Light is Created Equal

Those cute plant labels that say “full sun” do not always mean full Southwestern sun. Our blazing sun can crisp non-native plants in a single summer day. Then there can be extra light bouncing off a picture window or a pool. Reflected light can be brutal. The light bouncing off the water of a pool can add too much to an already stressed plant. This is why I talk about “Poolscaping.”

If you have a few mature trees, that shade can be an ideal area for some shade lovers! Both light and shady areas can be celebrated and planted. I often advocate planting things in the shade under trees.

Tip 4. Start from the Ground Up

Soil. It all starts with good soil. What soil do you have in your yard? It might not all be the same either!

Learn about caliche. Know if you have any where you live. Instead you may have sandy soil. Or you may have clay suitable for making pots. Whether you’re working with containers or in-ground, appropriate and high quality soil is the key to plant survival.  Caliche 101 on my YouTube.

Before you run out and buy steer manure or any soil at all – you need to ask what plants you will be growing. Cacti and other succulents may not appreciate “Improved Garden Soil” from a bag.  That is why every article on my site includes soil preference for the plant. Legumes can be stunted with overly rich soil, and a vegetable garden growing European crops will need lots of soil help.

Tip 5. Plant for all Seasons

In the Southwest, we can have five (or more) seasons of colorful plants attracting hummingbirds, butterflies, and other pollinators every month of the year. And the seasons for vegetables! We have winter, spring, late spring, early summer, monsoon, summer, late summer, fall, late fall, and back to winter.

Why so many seasonal divisions? Because we can grow plants that did not evolve here, and sometimes the window of opportunity for planting is very narrow. Example, plant your sunflowers in early spring, your corn in late spring. Sometimes the flowering season can be short as well, but in general, the plants commonly sold in nurseries have a long blooming season, because that is what people like.  Brittlebush is one such long bloomer, our native desert zinnias are another.

Maybe it is easiest to start with something that grows anywhere – like bulbs. You can easily grow many bulbs in a single bed – under the lemon tree even! Start with winter bulbs, such as crocus (yes for saffron!), then narcissus and dafodils will bloom. Late spring is when the amaryllis and iris will burst into bloom. As one dies back, the next can take their place. Then, by monsoon season, the rain lilies (Zephyranthes) are in full glorious bloom.

The cleverest gardeners will use the same growing space at different times of the year, with winter and spring flowers dying back so that summer, and fall blooms can take their place.

Tip 6. Containers are Your Friend

Plants that don’t like Southwest soil, might happily live their life in containers. Like gardenias and camelias. For containers, start with fresh potting soil – not the soil in your yard.

This is also true for many vegetables. A bunch of five gallon pots filled with potting soil will grow a nice winter garden of greens, carrots, beets, radish, and some herbs like cilantro – without the back-breaking effort of a garden “bed.”

Containers make wonderful additions to the front porch, the back patio, and even placed among garden beds. If you live in an apartment or townhome, containers are a wonderful way to have a garden that can move when you move.

Tip 7. Be Somewhat Thrifty

I love my local nurseries, don’t get me wrong. But buying all of your plants from a nursery all at once is an expensive way to fill a garden. If you have patience, you can propagate a huge range of plants from seeds, cuttings, or divisions.

Seeds are especially the way to go when it comes to desert legume trees, like mesquite and acacia. They are happiest grown from seed and not getting their tap root disturbed. Oaks, on the other hand, are a great investment. They grow well from pots.

Look for local seed swaps, plant swaps, and Seed Libraries. I know that both Pima and Cochise Counties in Arizona have seed libraries where you can use your library card to check out seeds and use ‘em up. They ask that you donate some back from what you grow – if you can.

Tip 8. The RIGHT Mulch Can be Your Friend.

Natural mulch from organic components (like cedar bark) is wonderful for your garden. Rock mulch – not so much.

Organic mulch helps shade the soil and reduce evaporation. Thus it cuts down on water use. Rock mulch may retard some evaporation, but it also retains heat, and that can be hard on plants – not to mention adding to our city heat load. Rock is also prone to debris and weeds.

Best mulch of all is the debris that falls off the plants. If you let it fall into a “plant well” a sort of soil moat around the plant, then it can shade the roots and decay into helpful nutrients for the plant to use. Plus birds adore organic mulch.

Tip 9. Plan to Grow Vegetables – BUT Only if You Eat Vegetables

Do you really eat vegetables?  Maybe your should just grow some herbs that you will use occasionally.  And if you never do, at least they look pretty the rabbits and other pests rarely bother herbs.

If you do grow vegetables, grow climate appropriate vegetables. Tomatoes are not good in our high heat and low humidity. Pick something else.  If possible, grow something that will that keep on giving you a crop – not one and done. Broccoli, you get one head and maybe a few florets. Squash however, that’s a plant you get lots of vegetable from. If you’re new to growing vegetables, choose ones you can harvest more than once.  I wrote a whole book on this topic.

Tip 10. Don’t be Afraid to Prune – but Learn When!

Cutting back the plants you have lovingly nurtured may seem counterproductive, but for many plants – particularly shrubs and trees – pruning is essential to their health, appearance and longevity. Pruning can remove old, dead and potentially diseased stems. Pruning also encourages fresh new growth and flowering, and helps to maintain the shape of the plant. Sometimes “pruning” is digging up and dividing beds of plants at specific times of year.

It’s important to prune plants at the right time, so do your research. Some plants should be pruned in winter (roses), others right after flowering (autumn sage).  I try to mention when with every post – or things that need attention in each monthly “Calendar.”

Tip 10 and 1 /2. Keep Track

Keep track of what you do and when is very helpful. Starting a garden is an ideal time to create a gardening journal.

Save plant labels and seed packages too – so you can track what works and what didn’t. Your journal can include a pruning calendar and a fertilizing calendar. I created a fertilizing guide for you and some of you purchased it (Thank you!). It will be part of this class I am creating.

Do Ask! and Come Back Often

This Gardening With Soule site covers many aspects of growing – and some of the many plants that people commonly grow, plus some not so common.  Yep – it’s a big wide open space to post articles on so many different topics!  Since I grow things for multi-use, including for the birds, butterflies, and myself – I do have a site where I write about using the bounty of the region.  You may have seen a link or two to that site – Savor the Southwest (.net)

The feedback I get from you readers (and watchers) is various. I have had requests for help with houseplants (like Orchids, and African Violet). I got questions about specific species of plants themselves (like desert goji or Poinsettia), and more on basic care in the Southwest (Palm Care). I got a question about scientific names – hence last weeks post on The Names of Plants.

If you don’t see it – ASK! Ask below. Ask on Facebook. Ask on YouTube. Ask in the Desert Gardening Community. Respond to any Substack newsletter with a question! If it survives, ask me on TikTok.

It’s Gardening with Soule, and soul, in the land of El Sol.

Thank you for reading today.
– Jacqueline

More Tips – pages of them!

The Month By Month Guide offers tips for your landscape (yes even lawns and roses) in every month of the year.  I have a few copies left and am offering them to you – my loyal readers. When you buy from me you get a signed copy!

From the review:

“A great reference book is key to successful gardening in the region where you live. Arizona, Nevada & New Mexico Month-by-Month Gardening takes the guesswork out of gardening for anyone residing in the Southwest. With this book, you’ll know what to do each month to enjoy a thriving garden all year, from January to December. Chronologically organized, this guide is full of critical gardening when-to and how-to advice, along with illustrated step-by-step instructions.

The book’s author is Jacqueline Soule, a Tucson-based gardening expert. She knows this arid region inside and out, and she’s written several articles and books packed with her gardening advice. Arizona, Nevada & New Mexico Month-by-Month Gardening showcases Soule’s expertise in one easy-to-read guide.”

Profits from the sale of this book go to the Horticulture Therapy non-profit Tierra del Sol Institute.   Recent price increase, due to the US Postal Service price increase in July 2024.  It is now $30.

Legal Notes

© Article copyright Jacqueline A. Soule // Gardening With Soule. All rights reserved. You must ask permission to republish an entire blog post or article. Okay to use a short excerpt but you must give proper credit. You must include a link back to the original post on our site. No stealing photos.