Photography by Richard Maack Tucson homeowners Denice Blake and John Blackwell

It takes years for some people to fall in love with the desert. But for Virginians Denice Blake and John Blackwell, it only took an afternoon. In fact, during their first visit to Tucson, the pair was so won over by its geography, history and Southwestern ambience that they made a quick decision to relocate.

The couple had traveled in the U.S. and abroad for many years, visiting locations they thought they might like to move to someday. “We’d never seen anything we liked better than Tucson,” explains Blake. That was November 1998, and by the following April they were Arizona residents.

Starting From Scratch
Desert gardening was an unknown adventure for the twosome, so Blake first visited University of Arizona’s Pima County Cooperative Extension for information. She also met with a landscape designer who drew up plans for their Sam Hughes Historic District property using desert-adapted plants.

When the designer was unable to begin installation for several months, “Denice jump-started the process, loading her VW bug with plants and installing them where he had suggested,” Blackwell remembers. The Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society’s sales of “rescued” plants are a terrific local resource for well-adapted plants, notes Blake. Many of the couple’s trees were obtained from Trees for Tucson, an urban forestry program that encourages planting desert-adapted trees in the city.
Over time, their landscape evolved from “nothing but debris and an Arizona cypress tree” to a garden that reflects the homeowners’ Southwestern vision of bright colors, local artwork and dramatic cacti and succulents.

This garden wall was coated with Fashioned Purple by Dunn-Edwards. A bed of decomposed granite acts as a ground cover for low-water-use plants.

Unlike many new desert gardeners, the pair decided against installing drip irrigation. “I purposely wanted desert plants that would survive on rainfall and an occasional hand-watering once they were established,” Blake explains. If you prefer low-maintenance landscaping, choose cacti and other succulents, she recommends. Because these plants store moisture in their tissues, irrigation can be infrequent. “We were away for a month recently when there was no rainfall,” she remarks. “I deep-watered before we left, and the plants did fine without supplemental irrigation.”

Rainwater Harvesting
The couple also integrated rainwater-harvesting methods into the landscape to conserve water and to reduce hand-watering. “During rainy periods, we watched where water came off the roof and then channeled it to plantings with swales,” Blake says. And, in the backyard, they dug a French drain—a trench filled with gravel—to direct rainwater from the home’s canales and water vegetation. The couple continues observing and reworking their water-harvesting system when it rains. Their efforts have paid off—according to Blackwell their household water bill is just $15 per month.