Greetings from the Old Pueblo

Yes, I'm another Tucsonan.

I have recently put in an active/passive rainwater harvesting system and a rain garden. The tanks went in first, then I planted some trees. Later I had some earthworks built and planted a lot of native stuff as well as a few fruit trees. I've been loving my garden ever since!

These pics were taken in March, and things have grown a lot since then.

Nice space and it truly is coming along!

It looks really good, great work!! That mulch must go a long way towards keeping the moisture in 😃 Really love the rainwater harvesting too. So important here.

What kind of fruit trees do you have? I'm thinking about putting some more in myself, and am always curious to hear about what's working well for local gardeners

Thanks. The blossom in the 3rd pic is on a dwarf peach tree. It's leafed out now. In the foreground of the 5th pic is a dwarf sweet orange tree. It had some green fruit on it when it was planted in September, and I got 8 or 9 oranges around Christmas.

I really miss having a peach tree 😭 We just put in a dwarf mandarin in September too. Very excited about that! 😃 Hopefully we'll both be inundated with fruit in a couple years

Tell me more about the native species you planted!

I've got some brittlebush, hop bush, San Marco hibiscus, Texas ranger, jojoba, creosote, bee bush, baja fairy duster, and a bunch of globe mallows. Most of these have flowers. Then some red yucca and a little miss sunshine, prickly pears, barrels and a ocotillo. And a few others I haven't learned yet.

Wow, you've got quite the variety, I'll bet the beneficials and local critters really love hanging out there! 😁

I'm such a big fan of the jojoba and the fairy dusters, I should collect seeds from them and plant some. You're giving me ideas for my local community garden - I'm helping out Community Gardens of Tucson to revamp one of their locations and it could definitely use more variety of native species, so it's on my mind 🌵

I would imagine the hop bush and Texas ranger both help as windbreaks, do the birds like to hang out in them for shelter? I like the idea of some hedgerows comprised of those two...

I see a lot of little birds - the ones I used to buy seed to feed - pecking seeds from the ground. They seem to like the globe mallow.

You're welcome to stop by and peck a few seeds as well. Do we have private messaging here?

You do have a great variety! Have a number of those growing in my space as well. The jojoba produced fruit this year, not many, but still good to know that I have one that will. Creosote has been the only one that I have tried growing and was a bit challenged with, but finally have one that is taking off. Provided that it survives the summer, can cross that one off the list of plants I'm wanting 😁