When you have to jackhammer the “soil” to plant anything, when your garden gets only 12 inches of rainfall a year, when you live in a desert, you just know gardening isn’t going to be easy. And yet, despite these conditions in Tucson, Arizona, which I recently visited for the annual Garden Writers Association symposium, gardeners still coax plants from the earth, and beautiful gardens still exist.

Tucsonans are also blessed with great natural beauty in the stark yet majestic landscape that surrounds them. Perhaps more than gardeners in gentler parts of the world, Tucson gardeners feel the push and pull of embracing the wider world by keeping open views to the mountains, while simultaneously holding it at bay with enclosing walls, creating irrigated edens within.

At least, that’s what I mused on while visiting this homegrown garden on tour in Tucson. It belongs to Lorien Tersey, who operates a small farm business, DreamFlower Garden, on her less-than-one-acre property, growing vegetables, herbs, flowers, and landscape plants for market. The front and side yards contain her personal gardens, including this simple side-entry space with potted plants, where the old adobe house positions straight-edged, white walls against the cobalt sky and mountain vista glimpsed over a low wall.

Don’t you love the name DreamFlower Garden? I bet this honeybee is feeling it.

Lorien’s front garden is pretty spare, as one might expect in a desert garden…

…but even so there’s color and form, with architectural Opuntia backed by a yellow-flowering sub-shrub of some sort.

Around the side of the house, a shady porch promises a cool respite from the intense sun. Red chile pepper lights strung around the door seem to say, “Welcome to Arizona!”

Thirstier tropical plants are grown here, closer to the hose, like this orange hibiscus…

…and this bog container garden with cattails.

The ‘Macho Mocha’ mangave on the wall likely doesn’t ask for much, so long as it has some protection from the full sun.

I’m fond of the industrial look in my garden—why else would I have a steel-pipe planter and several culvert-pipe planters? So this rose-against-steel combo naturally appealed to me.

In back, pomegranate trees were bearing rosy fruit…

…and this unknown-to-me vine was blooming against corrugated-steel siding (love!).

Rows of zinnias added confetti-like color, perhaps destined for market bouquets.

Desert plants like cholla and opuntia edged the border between garden and alley, providing that all-important sense of place.

Next up: The artful desert garden of Keith and Helga Zwickl. For a look back at the garden of Alan Richards, with its colored walls, click here.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.