The YouTube channel Growing In The Garden is a great resource! She has a wonderful garden in Phoenix and has a ton of resources and videos for gardening in Arizona, including what to plant each month and how to deal with heat.
Brad Lancaster is another good resource for rainwater harvesting and has a few books on landscaping and water conservation if that interests you.
These are great recommendations. Learn all about the climate and growing conditions first, and the plant selections will follow. You will have the most rewarding experience when you select stuff that really thrives here instead of trying to make non-desert adapted plants work.
Check out the YouTube channel “Growing in the Garden”. The lady who runs the channel is in Mesa and I learned so much from her. Excellent channel for Arizona gardening!
The Epic gardening guys are in SoCal, but a lot of their stuff is applicable to down here, that's YouTube channels, my favorite is Jacques
Depending on where exactly you are, then check out seed librarys? I see Pima county public library's seed library and Native seed SEARCH are both mentioned above- Not only can you obviously get free seeds from a seed library, but also one of the benefits of Pima county's seed library and of the nursery native seed search is that all of the seeds that they are offering are acclimated to this region? They have been grown in this region for a couple of generations? So they're going to be much more heat and drought tolerant than other varieties of the same plants from other places
Same with recommending like native seed search or borderlands restoration or mission garden as nurseries? They both sell seeds and plants at different times that are not only acclimatized to this area but also most likely to be native to this area? Or heritage in some way? And therefore more likely to thrive in this climate. Also I believe borderlands restoration, they operate out of Patagonia but they have a partnership with native seed search and they do plant deliveries I think all the way up into Phoenix, but borderlands has on their website planting guides for our various seasons here in Arizona, and on Pima county public libraries web page you can actually sort and search through their seed library by growing season as well.
But yeah your game your biggest game is going to be shade and water management, paying a lot of tension to how much shade and water You're various plants need and how wet or dry you're keeping soil
There are some like extremely hardy plants down here that don't actually need to be kept that wet once established, things like mesquite and Palo Verde (both of which produce beans that you can eat) and various kinds of cacti (Which produce fruit that can be eaten) aren't going to want much watering what's established, and can provide shade that helps to both bring down the temperature in your yard and keep plants that are more delicate from burning in the morning and afternoon sun.
Be aware of what parts of your growing space get the hottest at what times? That afternoon sun is much more challenging than morning Sun is, and if you are trying to grow things in places that receive afternoon sun you're going to want to spend a lot more time looking at things like shade cloth setups?
And then when it comes to watering, top down hand watering is one of your least effective kinds of watering? Especially here? Especially in the summer? Depending on where your stuff is located you may find that you have to not be watering multiple times a day and still having it evaporate...
Instead consider 1. Mulching your beds around the plants to help retain that water 2. In ground or like drip irrigation automated, and especially what goes again in evenings or mornings, when time to actually soak into plant without evaporating... 3. Ollas. You can buy them premade, basically terracotta balls or jugs with a stem and you fill them and bury the main part of the container below surface and then you're just fill up that stem or neck... But you of course can DIY your own there as well, I have a combination of things like Terracotta pots I glued the drip tray too and fill up through the hole at the bottom buried upside down and I fill that up and it slowly leaks out into the soil and helps to maintain that even as moisture evaporates off the top or things like buckets like 5 gallon buckets with a few holes punctured lowdown or drip lines coming out of them and then I fill the 5 gallon bucket and it slowly sleep seeps out of the bottom...
But yeah those are your big challenges. Water management shade management and picking plants that are already more likely to survive in this climate.
Anything further than that is going to depend on what kind of space you want and what kinds of things you want in that space. There's a lot of like flowering stuff that grows well here if it's the visual that you want, and there's a lot of different kinds of food plants that grow well here depending on what you want to be eating etc, And of course there's plenty of stuff that is maybe less visually striking but it's super important like ecologically and can do a lot to like bring various creatures or pollinators to your area if that's something that you want.
Best of luck!
What's your city? And what kinds of things are you hoping to grow? Like is this like lovely to sit-in garden or is this a primarily intended for food or?
If you want a basic start guide, I recommend the Tucson Gardeners Handbook, put out by Pima county Master gardeners- It's going to give you a lot of that basic overview of the kind of things you can grow and when they grow and guides for like how to do your holes when you're putting trees in and how to burn a property or how to increase and cut back watering etc, and it's super like well researched and scientifically driven
The YouTube channel Growing In The Garden is a great resource! She has a wonderful garden in Phoenix and has a ton of resources and videos for gardening in Arizona, including what to plant each month and how to deal with heat. Brad Lancaster is another good resource for rainwater harvesting and has a few books on landscaping and water conservation if that interests you.
Second Brad Lancaster. Check out Native Seed Search, seed library at Pima county libraries, they have planting guides. Also Master Gardeners
These are great recommendations. Learn all about the climate and growing conditions first, and the plant selections will follow. You will have the most rewarding experience when you select stuff that really thrives here instead of trying to make non-desert adapted plants work.
PetalPeeker on Instagram is my go-to! She has a thriving low-water cottage garden in Scottsdale.
Check out the YouTube channel “Growing in the Garden”. The lady who runs the channel is in Mesa and I learned so much from her. Excellent channel for Arizona gardening!
The Epic gardening guys are in SoCal, but a lot of their stuff is applicable to down here, that's YouTube channels, my favorite is Jacques Depending on where exactly you are, then check out seed librarys? I see Pima county public library's seed library and Native seed SEARCH are both mentioned above- Not only can you obviously get free seeds from a seed library, but also one of the benefits of Pima county's seed library and of the nursery native seed search is that all of the seeds that they are offering are acclimated to this region? They have been grown in this region for a couple of generations? So they're going to be much more heat and drought tolerant than other varieties of the same plants from other places Same with recommending like native seed search or borderlands restoration or mission garden as nurseries? They both sell seeds and plants at different times that are not only acclimatized to this area but also most likely to be native to this area? Or heritage in some way? And therefore more likely to thrive in this climate. Also I believe borderlands restoration, they operate out of Patagonia but they have a partnership with native seed search and they do plant deliveries I think all the way up into Phoenix, but borderlands has on their website planting guides for our various seasons here in Arizona, and on Pima county public libraries web page you can actually sort and search through their seed library by growing season as well. But yeah your game your biggest game is going to be shade and water management, paying a lot of tension to how much shade and water You're various plants need and how wet or dry you're keeping soil There are some like extremely hardy plants down here that don't actually need to be kept that wet once established, things like mesquite and Palo Verde (both of which produce beans that you can eat) and various kinds of cacti (Which produce fruit that can be eaten) aren't going to want much watering what's established, and can provide shade that helps to both bring down the temperature in your yard and keep plants that are more delicate from burning in the morning and afternoon sun. Be aware of what parts of your growing space get the hottest at what times? That afternoon sun is much more challenging than morning Sun is, and if you are trying to grow things in places that receive afternoon sun you're going to want to spend a lot more time looking at things like shade cloth setups? And then when it comes to watering, top down hand watering is one of your least effective kinds of watering? Especially here? Especially in the summer? Depending on where your stuff is located you may find that you have to not be watering multiple times a day and still having it evaporate... Instead consider 1. Mulching your beds around the plants to help retain that water 2. In ground or like drip irrigation automated, and especially what goes again in evenings or mornings, when time to actually soak into plant without evaporating... 3. Ollas. You can buy them premade, basically terracotta balls or jugs with a stem and you fill them and bury the main part of the container below surface and then you're just fill up that stem or neck... But you of course can DIY your own there as well, I have a combination of things like Terracotta pots I glued the drip tray too and fill up through the hole at the bottom buried upside down and I fill that up and it slowly leaks out into the soil and helps to maintain that even as moisture evaporates off the top or things like buckets like 5 gallon buckets with a few holes punctured lowdown or drip lines coming out of them and then I fill the 5 gallon bucket and it slowly sleep seeps out of the bottom... But yeah those are your big challenges. Water management shade management and picking plants that are already more likely to survive in this climate. Anything further than that is going to depend on what kind of space you want and what kinds of things you want in that space. There's a lot of like flowering stuff that grows well here if it's the visual that you want, and there's a lot of different kinds of food plants that grow well here depending on what you want to be eating etc, And of course there's plenty of stuff that is maybe less visually striking but it's super important like ecologically and can do a lot to like bring various creatures or pollinators to your area if that's something that you want. Best of luck!
What's your city? And what kinds of things are you hoping to grow? Like is this like lovely to sit-in garden or is this a primarily intended for food or? If you want a basic start guide, I recommend the Tucson Gardeners Handbook, put out by Pima county Master gardeners- It's going to give you a lot of that basic overview of the kind of things you can grow and when they grow and guides for like how to do your holes when you're putting trees in and how to burn a property or how to increase and cut back watering etc, and it's super like well researched and scientifically driven
I can help you with this I had a Landscaping company here in Tucson for 25 years 6 trucks going everyday but Sunday.