Your Yard, Evonne
Thanks for walking the yard with us. This is everything we talked through on site, written down so you have it in one place. Most of it is care and timing you can do yourself. In a few spots we've added planting ideas, with a couple of options each so you can pick what fits.
The backyard comes first, then the front. Nothing here is a to-do list for this week. A lot of it is seasonal. The timing is called out in each section so you know when to act and when to wait.
The Backyard
The Chinese Elm
This tree is in a tight spot between the house and the AC units, and it's a fast grower. Three things will keep it healthy and keep it from becoming a problem.
Find the root flare
The root flare is where the trunk widens out and the first big roots leave it. On most planted trees it ended up buried a few inches too deep, and that slowly chokes the tree. Pull the soil and rock back from the base of the trunk until you can see the trunk flare outward and the top of those first roots. Don't pile anything back over it. Bare flare is the goal.
Build a water well
Once the flare is exposed, shape a shallow basin around the tree. Think of a low ring of soil out near the edge of the canopy, not right against the trunk. When you water, the basin holds it in place long enough to sink instead of running off across the gravel. Keep the flare itself dry and above the water line.
Prune it so it grows away from the house
Chinese elms want to spread. Yours is close enough to the wall that it needs a little steering each year.
- Remove anything heading toward the house or the roofline. Cut those limbs back to where they meet a larger branch, not to a stub.
- Lift the lower canopy. Take off low limbs over the AC units and the walkway so there's clearance underneath.
- Favor the branches growing out and up on the yard side. That's the shape you want to encourage.
- Keep it modest. Never take more than about a quarter of the canopy in one year. Best time is late winter, before new growth pushes.
A Shade Tree for the Corner
A tree tucked into the corner where the west and north walls meet will throw afternoon shade back across the patio and the yard, which is exactly where you want it in a Phoenix summer. Any of these three will work. They each give you something a little different.
Chinese Elm
The fastest way to real shade. Broad, weeping canopy, small leaves, and a graceful shape. Keeps most of its leaves through a mild winter.
Gets big. Plan on 35 to 45 feet wide and tall. Give it distance from the walls and plan on the same yearly steering prune as your existing one.
Tipu
Very fast, wide and flat-topped, with a cloud of yellow blooms in late spring. One of the biggest umbrellas of shade you can grow here.
Also the largest of the three. It drops leaves for a few weeks in a cold snap, and the roots are vigorous, so keep it well away from patio slabs and the block wall.
Red Push Pistache
The best-behaved of the three. Moderate growth, a rounded 30 to 40 foot canopy, new growth that comes in red, and real fall color. Deep, well-mannered roots.
Deciduous, so you get shade in summer and sun on the patio in winter. Very tough in heat once established.
Training It Into a Tree
Your orange jubilee is big enough to be shaped into a small multi-season tree instead of a mound. It's a simple process, but the first cut is the one that matters.
- Find the central leader. Look into the middle of the plant and find the single largest stem that's growing straight up. That's the one you're keeping.
- Remove every other stem at the base. Cut them as close to the ground as you can. This feels drastic. It's supposed to.
- Strip the lower growth off the leader. Take side shoots off the bottom third or so of the remaining stem so it starts to read as a trunk.
- Watch what it does. It will push new shoots from the base. Rub or snip those off as they appear so the energy goes up into the leader and the canopy.
Do this either at the end of September or at the end of winter. Those are the two windows when the plant can take a hard cut and bounce back quickly. Don't do it in the middle of summer.
Same Timing, Simpler Job
The yellow bells aren't going to be tree-formed, but they'll bloom harder and stay fuller if you give them a real prune on the same schedule: end of September, or end of winter. Take them down by a third to a half, cut out anything dead or crossing, and leave them alone in between. Constant light trimming just removes the wood that was about to flower.
Lining the Wall, and What Goes Under It
This wall takes the full afternoon sun and radiates it back into the yard well after dark. A row of shrubs in front of it cools the wall, softens the whole back of the yard, and gives you privacy from the two-story neighbors. Two native options, both built for this exposure.
Hopseed
Fast, upright, fine-textured, and fills in quickly. Reaches 10 to 12 feet if you let it. Bright green all year with papery seed pods in summer. The quicker of the two to become a screen.
Arizona Rosewood
Slower and denser, with dark leathery leaves and clusters of white flowers in late spring. Reaches 10 to 15 feet. Once it fills in, it's about as tough and permanent as a hedge gets here.
Either way, plant them every 3 to 4 feet along the wall. That's closer than the tag will tell you, on purpose. It gets you a solid screen in a couple of seasons instead of five. Both are native, both handle the heat without complaint, and both need very little water once established.
Replace the dead tree
The tree that didn't make it in this bed can be swapped for a red push pistache. It's the right tree for a spot against a west wall: heat tough, deep rooted, and it won't push on the block. Same planting rules as the corner tree. Root flare at grade, water well around it, deep and infrequent soaks.
If you like hibiscus
San Marcos hibiscus is the one to plant here rather than the tropical kind. It's in the same family, with the same big open flower, but it comes from Baja and takes our sun and heat far better. Tropical hibiscus tends to scorch and sulk against a west wall. This one won't.
Winter Pruning and Keeping the Bugs Off the Fruit
Prune it in winter
Wait until it has dropped its leaves. Once it's bare you can see the structure, and that's when it can take a heavy cut without stress.
- Cross branches. Anywhere two branches rub or cross, remove the weaker one.
- Branches hanging down. Anything pointing at the ground comes off. Fruit on those ends up in the dirt anyway.
- Long, lanky growth. Those whippy shoots that took off last year won't hold fruit. Cut them back hard or remove them.
- Suckers at the base. Take them off at the ground unless you want a multi-trunk shape.
Pomegranates fruit on new wood, so a hard winter prune sets you up for a better crop, not a smaller one.
Leaf-footed bugs
These are the long, narrow bugs with the flared back legs. They pierce the fruit and leave sunken, rotting spots. Two ways to keep them off, and you can do both.
- Bag the fruit. Once pomegranates have formed in spring and early summer, slip a mesh organza bag over each one and cinch it around the stem. The bugs can't reach the skin. Cheap, reusable, and it works.
- Spray with kaolin clay. Sold as Surround or similar. Mix it with water and spray the fruit and foliage until it dries to a thin white film. Bugs don't like landing on it or feeding through it. It's just clay, so it's safe. Reapply after rain or heavy wind, and it rinses off the fruit at harvest.
Groundcover That's Safe to Graze
Anything planted where the tortoise can reach it has to be safe to eat, because it will get eaten. All three are on the Arizona Game and Fish list of favored native food plants for desert tortoises, and they double as good-looking groundcover for the bed along the wall.
Globe Mallow
A tortoise favorite. Soft gray-green leaves and orange, pink, or red flowers most of the year. Native, needs almost no water once established, and reseeds itself.
Mexican Evening Primrose
Low and spreading with pale pink flowers spring through summer. Evening primrose is on the tortoise list and it will happily carpet a gravel bed. Give it room, it travels.
Desert Honeysuckle
A bit taller, 3 to 4 feet, with orange tubular flowers hummingbirds love. On the tortoise food list, and a good anchor plant for the ends of the bed with the lower groundcovers in front of it.
If you want some grass texture in there too, deer grass, blue grama, and curly mesquite grass are all native bunch grasses on the same list, and grazing keeps them tidy.
Feeding and Watering the Lawn
Feed it monthly
Grass is the hungriest thing in your yard. Feed it once a month with an organic fertilizer high in nitrogen. Look for something built on feather meal, blood meal, or a similar organic nitrogen source rather than a synthetic quick-release product. Organic nitrogen feeds the soil life, and the soil life feeds the grass steadily instead of in a spike that fades in two weeks. A thin layer of quality compost raked in once or twice a year does the same job from the other direction and builds the soil under the lawn over time.
Water every third day, but longer
Same principle as the trees. Instead of a little water every day, run the lawn zone every three days for a longer cycle. You're trying to get water 6 to 8 inches down so the roots follow it. Roots that deep handle a 110 degree afternoon. Roots in the top inch don't. Use the screwdriver test here too: the day after watering, it should slide in easily to about 6 inches.
Water early in the morning, before sunrise if you can. Evening watering leaves the grass wet overnight, which invites fungus, and midday watering loses a lot to evaporation before it gets into the ground.
A few more things that matter here
- Mow high in summer. Keep Bermuda around 2 inches through the hot months. Taller blades shade the soil and slow evaporation. Never take more than a third of the blade in one mowing.
- Leave the clippings. They're free nitrogen. Bag them only if they're clumping.
- Aerate if the ground is hard. Lawns here compact badly. If water pools or the screwdriver won't go in, core aerate in late spring and top-dress with compost afterward.
- Overseeding is optional. Winter rye looks good but it competes with the Bermuda every spring as it dies out. If you overseed, do it in October once nights drop into the 60s. If you skip it, let the Bermuda go dormant and rest. Either is fine.
The Front Yard
Two established trees that need the same root flare and water well work, some seasonal pruning, and a shady bed that needs different plants.
A Real Prune, a Water Well, and Mulch
The oak is a good tree in a good spot. It could use a proper structural prune: remove dead wood, thin out crossing and rubbing branches, and lift anything hanging low over the yard or walkway. Late winter is the right time. Keep it under a quarter of the canopy in one year.
- Expose the root flare. Pull soil and rock back from the trunk until you can see it widen out and the top of the first big roots. Leave that bare.
- Dig a water well. A shallow basin out toward the edge of the canopy so water sinks in instead of running off.
- Mulch the well. Two to three inches of wood mulch across the basin. Keep it pulled back a few inches from the trunk so the flare stays dry and open. Mulch against bark holds moisture where you don't want it.
Then water it the same way as everything else: deep, out at the drip line, and infrequently.
Root Flare, Irrigation Out to the Drip Line, and Fixing the Last Prune
The mesquite gets the identical treatment as the oak: expose the root flare, dig a water well, mulch it, and keep the mulch off the trunk. One extra step here is the irrigation. Right now it's watering close to the trunk. Move the emitters out toward the drip line, as far as the sidewalk lets you. Mesquite roots go where the water is, and you want them spreading out, not circling the trunk.
Clean up the stubs
The last prune left a lot of short stubs, a few inches long, all over the canopy. Those won't heal over. They die back, invite rot and borers, and sprout weak water shoots. Go through and cut each one back properly.
- Cut as close to the parent branch as you can without cutting into the branch collar, the slightly swollen ring where the stub meets the branch. That's where the tree seals the wound.
- Don't leave a few inches behind. If it's a dead stub, it comes off entirely. If it's live, cut it back to a branch or bud, not to open air.
- Small, dead, only a few inches long: gone. That's the rule for every one of them.
Late winter is best for this too, but dead stubs can come off any time of year.
The Oleanders Want More Sun Than They're Getting
Oleanders are sun plants. Under the mesquite and against the house, they're never going to fill in. Rather than fight it, swap them for shrubs that are happy in shade and still handle a Phoenix summer. Japanese privet is our first pick. Dwarf myrtle is a good lower alternative.
Japanese Privet
Our first choice for this bed. Glossy dark green leaves, dense, evergreen, and perfectly content in shade. White flower clusters in spring. Grows 8 to 10 feet but takes shearing well, so it can be kept as a foundation hedge at whatever height you want.
Dwarf Myrtle
Smaller and tidier, 3 to 4 feet, with fine aromatic leaves. Takes part shade and stays neat with almost no work. A good choice if you want something lower that won't crowd the windows.
One Hard Reset a Year
Both of these get the same treatment on the same schedule. Wait until the end of winter, once the last real cold has passed and new growth is about to start. Then give them a real cut back. Bougainvillea and lantana both bloom on new growth, so a hard prune means more flowers, not fewer.
- Dead wood first. Anything brittle, gray, and leafless comes out completely.
- Then the old woody stuff. Thick, bare, non-productive stems can be cut back hard to a lower branch or near the base.
- Then the long and lanky branches. The whips that took off last season. Cut them back to where they join something sturdier.
What's left should look a little bare and a lot smaller. Within a couple of months it'll be fuller and blooming harder than it was before. Don't do this in fall or midwinter, since a frost on fresh cuts sets them back.
More Sweet Potato Vine, and a Line of Ruellia
Sweet potato vine
What you have near the door is doing well, and you can do a lot more of it. It doesn't have to stay in pots. Planted directly in the ground in this area it will spread into a lush, bright groundcover through the warm months. Comes in chartreuse, deep purple, and bronze, and mixing two colors looks great. It will die back in a hard frost and come back from the roots, or you can replant it each spring. Cheap, fast, and forgiving.
Ruellia along the walkway
You've got one ruellia on one side of the walkway. Fill out that whole area with it and run it along both sides of the walk. It stays 2 to 3 feet, blooms purple from spring through fall, takes full sun, and needs very little water once established. Planted about 2 feet apart it fills into a soft continuous border within a season. It's one of the easiest plants in the valley to keep looking good. Cut it back by half in late winter and that's the whole maintenance list.
If you'd rather it stay lower and tighter, ask for the dwarf form, sometimes sold as 'Katie'. Same flower, about half the height.
That's the whole list
None of this has to happen at once. The pruning is on a calendar, the planting is best in the cooler months, and the watering changes can start today. Work through it at whatever pace makes sense.
If you'd like help with any of the planting, you can read about how we do it at thegardennerd.org/garden-nerd-planting-services. And if you have a question along the way, send us a photo and ask.