Week 9: San Diego Garden Inspiration for a Phoenix Yard

“I should like to spend the whole of my life in traveling, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend at home.”

-William Hazlitt

That says it well. I do love both traveling and staying at home. But sometimes, especially when it’s getting warm (that’s a euphemism for roasting) here, a day or two in cooler temperatures is good for one’s sanity.

We’ve looked forward to exploring the West since we arrived in Phoenix, but somehow never got around to it. So we finally decided to take two days to ourselves and drive to San Diego and back. We stayed in La Jolla, ate a delicious dinner, walked the beautiful streets, saw the Pacific Ocean, and then made our way home again. The slight chill in the air made me appreciate the warmth in Phoenix.

As far as gardening goes, San Diego is something like Shohei Ohtani. (Sorry for mixing Padres and Dodgers in a simile.) What I mean is: San Diego is a gardening unicorn. It’s a combination of things that almost never exist together. Ohtani is both an outstanding hitter and a great starting pitcher. No one else even does both, let alone well.

San Diego showed me desert plants (aloe, agave, cacti) growing next to tropicals (palms, birds of paradise) growing next to English cottage plants (delphinium and foxglove in full bloom). Agave and delphinium should not be happy in the same place. They just shouldn’t.

But they are.

What this told me was that the people who have desert plants in San Diego have them because they want them. They have other choices and still choose desert plants. In other words, people genuinely like these plants. Maybe I can try a little harder to appreciate their virtues.

I saw several examples of stunning aeonium displays. A succulent where the leaves grow in perfect rosettes — the plant itself is the flower. How cool is that?

And then there was the wacky — aloe grown as a tree.
Aloe. As a tree.

And then there were the simply charming details — the kind that make you stop and smile, or rethink every gate, archway, and vine in your yard.

We enjoyed our little break and came home with multiple garden ideas. But perhaps the most inspiring thing of all occurred on the way to San Diego, passing through an area known as Devil’s Canyon. This involves traversing a mountainous region where the elevation climbs over 4,000 feet. The thing is, they’re not so much mountains as rock piles. Four‑thousand‑foot‑high rock piles.

I’ve heard it described as lunar, and that’s not far off. But I didn’t have to look too hard to see that plants are thriving there — ocotillo (grrr), cacti, succulents. A whole variety of plants growing in a place that looks like it shouldn’t support anything at all.

My takeaway is that if plants can grow here with no one watering them, my garden dilemmas in Phoenix must not be so big after all.

Once more unto the breach,
🌿 Ruby