Category Archives: Challenges of Gardening

Amazing Micro-Environments in the High Desert

‘Gentle Giant’ in the garden of Lois Brandt
Yesterday I posted a photo of a rose in my yard, covered with snow from the night before.
My mom lives less than a mile from me, but her yard is much warmer than mine. I was quite surprised to see that she still had hybrid teas blooming [...]

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Rose ‘Bees Knees’ in the Thanksgiving Snow

Miniature rose ‘Bees Knees’ under a Thanksgiving snow
Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in Bees Knees, Challenges of Gardening, Miniature, New Mexico, Roses, Snow | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Mermaid 2009

Rose ‘Mermaid’
This is the rose that was almost destroyed in Albuquerque’s “100-year Snow” in December of 2006. Although it is not yet as tall as before the storm, 2.5 years later, ‘Mermaid’ has returned to its full glory in terms of quality and quantity of blossoms!
Patience does pay.

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One Albuquerque Garden: A Private Oasis

Thanks to the owner of this garden for allowing me to photograph it and use the photos here. All photographs were taken May 4, 2007. Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.
This is a very small city garden, but is artfully arranged to utilize a variety of plants. Roses are the featured plant throughout [...]

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Large-Flowered Climber: Royal Sunset

Royal Sunset is an oldie but goodie for the desert Southwest. It has dark green, leathery, disease-resistant leaves, large flowers that can have great form (especially for a climber!), a nice scent, and color to knock your socks off. To top it all off, it has long, shapely buds.

It takes about three years for this [...]

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2007′s First Hybrid Tea

The first hybrid tea bloom of the year is always exciting in the high desert. One never knows exactly when to expect it, nor what it will look like. What have the late cold spells and especially the prolonged high winds done to the buds? Have thrips already damaged the bloom (for those of us [...]

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Death and Rebirth in the Desert

The desert and the native plants growing there never cease to amaze me.
Prickly pear cactus is a native plant used in a lot of landscaping in Tucson and the Sonoran Desert in general.
Yesterday I saw this large piece of prickly pear that had been broken off its main stem and roots by a late freeze [...]

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Another Challenge: Late Hard Freezes

This weekend I am in Tucson, located in the Sonoran Desert of the southwest, rather than the high Chihuahuan Desert in which Albuquerque is located. Many years ago I lived here for seven years, and although many things about the city have changed, the plants have remained pretty much the same. Palm trees, which do [...]

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Wind: Another Challenge in the Desert Southwest

New Mexico is the only place I have ever lived where Spring is not my favorite season.  And that is because of the high winds that are a staple of Spring in the high desert.
Gardeners here learn very quickly to keep their plants well-hydrated, at this time of the year as much for the winds as [...]

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Why Hope Springs Eternal for Gardeners

In the first post of this blog, I bemoaned the effects of the freak snow storm in late December on Mermaid, the climbing hybrid bracteata that was the largest rose in my yard.
Spring 2006:

After The Big Snow of December 2006:

The cleanup was not completed until early March, and Mermaid had to be sawed off at [...]

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