Lush florals, reimagined for the desert.

A cottage garden in the desert sounds, at first glance, like a contradiction in terms, especially when Valley backyards are more typically shaped by heat, sun and limited water. Yet for Gilbert resident John Miller and his partner, Kyle, the concept works, thanks to containers and an abundance of lush florals more commonly associated with temperate climates. The result isn’t a literal translation of an English cottage style, but a looser, more local interpretation that keeps the layered, informal feel while recognizing the harsh realities of the Sonoran Desert. 

Born and raised in Michigan, John got an early start in horticulture while working all four years of high school at a greenhouse, where he learned basic gardening principles from seasoned gardeners. “In those years, I would bring home plants from work all the time and began to curate my own garden at my parents’ house,” he says. “During this time, I fell in love with growing flowers in containers, in particular. Not being able to grow outdoors during the winter was a main motivating factor for moving to Arizona, where I could grow flowers year-round.” He began his desert life in Tempe, where he attended Arizona State University and graduated with a degree in horticulture, later moving to Gilbert after meeting Kyle.

When John first moved in six years ago, the backyard was mostly a blank slate. “We had a grass yard with a 10-foot-by-20-foot cement slab in the middle, which I use as my display garden now,” John says. The patio display evolved over time and expanded to its current state, which John views as a never-ending process.

“I take it season by season and alter things that I liked or disliked the previous year,” he says. “Cottage style is all about seasonality and layers. It is less structured than a desert-style landscape, and more colorful.” 

Accomplishing this takes a great deal of advance planning to change out the selection of plantings over time as the seasons change. “Because we do everything in pots, we always have flowers blooming in the main display area,” he adds. “This requires a lot more work and preparation, since we need a section of our yard dedicated to our ‘prep garden,’ which is basically where we have the next season’s flowers getting rooted and growing out. Once they get added to the main display, they will be ready to put on a show.” John and Kyle grow a variety of flowers themselves, but due to limited space, they also purchase some from local nurseries.  

A revolving selection of containers is key to John’s cottage style. “We like to term it as playing ‘musical pots,’” he says. He uses terracotta vessels almost exclusively for their durability, despite being more expensive than plastic, which tend to become brittle over time in the summer heat. The display garden consists of several large, tiered plant stands, with the largest pots and tallest plants in the back for overall height, graduating down to the smallest plants to fill out the bottom rows. 

“We create a mini microclimate when we clump the pots together. They help shade each other and protect the plants’ roots from the sun,” he adds. Because the main patio display is in full sun, John waters as often as twice a day in the heat of summer. 

The garden’s lush color palette also evolves with the seasons. “Adding colors that represent the seasons gives the landscape a sense of seasonality that is sometimes missing in warmer climates like Arizona,” John says. “We love using color palettes for each season, such as pastels for spring, warm peachy tones for summer, autumnal shades for fall, and soft, cool tones for winter.” While the spring palette is John’s favorite, due to its embodiment of the English garden aesthetic with its striking burst of tall delphiniums and foxgloves, he also looks forward to designing around other seasonal favorites, such as lisianthus in the summer, celosia in the fall and ornamental cabbages in the winter. 

John’s favorite thing about living in Gilbert is that he and Kyle can garden year-round—not just for themselves, but also for private clients, where they share the workload planting in-ground seasonal flower beds, in addition to containers. The pair operates a flower garden installation company that came about as a direct result of sharing their lush plantings on social media. 

“I found that there was an interest in the floral displays I was creating and posting on my social media because of the cottage style aesthetic, which is so rare in hot climates,” he says. “I wanted to make flower gardening an art form, where structure, uniqueness, color-matching, etc., were all emphasized. Thus, the business manifested itself organically over time, and I get to provide a service to people where I get to share the things I love most.” 

John’s advice for aspiring flower gardeners is to embrace trial and error, while learning through experience. “Green thumbs are not given, they are earned.”