Growing the Southwest Garden: Regional Ornamental Gardening
(eBook)

Grouping Information

Book Cover Information

Hoopla Extract Information

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    [year] => 2016
    [artist] => Judith Phillips
    [fiction] => 
    [coverImageUrl] => https://cover.hoopladigital.com/hbg_9781604697049_270.jpeg
    [titleId] => 15240236
    [isbn] => 9781604697049
    [abridged] => 
    [language] => ENGLISH
    [profanity] => 
    [title] => Growing the Southwest Garden
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    [pages] => 304
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                    [name] => Judith Phillips
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            [0] => Climatic
            [1] => Desert
            [2] => Gardening
            [3] => Nature
            [4] => Regional
            [5] => Southwest
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    [synopsis] => Plant selection and garden style are deeply influenced by where we are gardening. To successfully grow a range of beautiful ornamental plants, every gardener has to know the specifics of the region's climate, soil, and geography.



Growing the Southwest Garden, by New Mexico-based garden designer Judith Phillips, is a practical and beautiful handbook for ornamental gardening in a region known for its low rainfall and high temperatures. With more than thirty years of experience gardening in the Southwest, Phillips has created an essential guide, featuring regionally specific advice on zones, microclimates, soil, pests, and maintenance. Profiles of the best plants for the region include complete information on growth and care. Part of the Timber Press Regional Ornamental Gardening book series, this book is ideal for home gardeners in Arizona, southwestern Colorado, southeastern Nevada, New Mexico, western Texas, and southern Utah. Judith Phillips has spent more than forty years gardening in the Southwest and is still adapting. She is the owner of Judith Phillips Design Oasis, an ecosystem-inspired garden design and consulting service. She has designed thousands of residential gardens in New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona, and has also been involved in public projects from habitat gardens at wildlife refuges and parks, to healing gardens at hospitals, courtyard gardens for townhomes and an historic inn, and outdoor classrooms for elementary schools. As a part-time faculty member in the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of New Mexico her class focuses on native and climate-adapted plants for arid landscapes, hopefully inspiring a new generation of ecodesigners. Introduction: The Changing Southwest

 The arid Southwest has always been a place of extremes. We are home to some of the oldest continuously occupied human communities in the world and to the first commercial venture to launch civilians into space. We love extreme sports: snowboarding, white-water rafting, climbing 14,000-ft. peaks, and spelunking deep into subterranean caverns. And we are masters of an extreme sport we don't need to leave home to enjoy: gardening. National Weather Service maps often show record daytime high temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona, while Alamosa, Colorado (scarcely 450 miles to the northeast as the crow flies), boasts the national nighttime low. Both are very dry; Phoenix in large measure due to the extreme heat, Alamosa because of its position in the rain shadow of the high peaks that surround it. While the positions of these places haven't changed in countless human lifetimes, the number of people who live in them or visit to enjoy their natural wonders has increased dramatically.

     

 In many ways, Phoenix and Alamosa represent the changing Southwest, always a rugged landscape visited by adventurers and settled by hardy souls who saw the potential and were enticed by living on the edge. Urbanization has buffered some of the extremes and amplified others. While we live in air-conditioned comfort and turn on the tap when we're thirsty, the acres of hard surfaces-streets, parking lots, rooftops, and driveways that absorb heat and repel rainwater-have created heat islands in an already parched landscape. On the northern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, where I've spent much of my life, climate extremes are leaving their mark. Our average 6 in. of rainfall has decreased by half some years, while hotter summers have increased the rate at which moisture evaporates. Like the meander of a phantom stream, dryness ripples through this place. The soil is parched deep below the surface and some plants now live rainfall to rainfall, as insecure a lifestyle as a family living paycheck to paycheck. 



 Shifts in the plant community and the wildlife it supports have been palpable for some time now, but change seems to be accelerating and intensifying: desert grass remains winter gray through several summers, awa
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/15240236
    [pa] => 
    [series] => Regional Ornamental Gardening
    [subtitle] => Regional Ornamental Gardening
    [publisher] => Timber Press
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