Four Days of Garden Gifts: Day 4 – Nature Kits for Kids

DIY, Gardening With Kids, Gift Ideas, Vegetable Gardening

The Best Garden Gifts for Kids

Christmas tree with disco ball ornaments and packages of garden gifts

We’ve reached the final day of our garden gift lists and today, it’s all about kids.

Cultivating Curiosity with Garden Gifts

Gifts with a garden theme aren’t just for adults; there is no better way to foster the curious spirit of children and lead them on a path of discovery about the natural world around them than the gift of a kid-sized kit with a garden theme. As a mom and grandma, I’ve enjoyed countless hours with young children as they learn about plants and insects. Here are some gift ideas for the young people in your life.

1. Root Viewer

Foster a love for vegetable gardening by showing kids what goes on beneath the soil. They plant a carrot, onion, and radish seeds and watch the roots develop at the same time that the leafy tops grow. Click here to learn more and purchase.

2. Butterfly Garden Gift

Join with your kids as you view the miracle of caterpillars transform into butterflies. All you need is inside this best-selling kit, except for the sugar water. I wrote about my experience of doing this with my kids. Needless to say, they loved it! Click here to order.

3. Grow N’ Glow Terrarium

Terrariums are fun for both adults and kids alike, allowing them to view a self-contained world. I like that this kit has all you need to make your own while learning about plants and how they grow. My 6-year-old granddaughter, Lily, asked for this for Christmas. Click here to order.

4. Mason Bee House

Imagine the delight of your kids when they see little mason bees making their home in this little bee house. Mason bees are important pollinators and don’t sting, making this a safe and fun gift. Click here to order.

5. Little Diggers Garden Gift Tool Set

Young children like to work alongside adults in the garden, so how about getting them their own set of kid-sized tools? Believe it or not, we bought this when my 32 and 23-year-old daughters were little, and they used them often. All of the tools lasted a long time. In fact, we still have the little shovel! Click here to order.

The right garden gift for a child can foster a lifelong love of gardening, and you can be the one to begin them on this journey.

This concludes my Four Days of Garden Gifts. If you missed any of them, here they are – Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

Four Days of Garden Gifts: Day 3 – Books for Southwest Gardening

Arizona garden, Book Review, Cactus/Succulents, California desert garden, desert gardening, Drought Tolerant, Gift Ideas, herb gardening, Las Vegas gardening, Nevada garden, New Mexico garden, Product Review, Southwest garden, Southwest Texas garden, Succulent Gardening

Discover the Perfect Garden Gifts: Day 3 – Books for Southwest Gardeners

It’s Day 3 of our garden gift ideas and today it’s all about books.

Unveiling the Arid Beauty of Southwest Gardening

Gardening in the Southwest can be challenging because many of the traditional gardening rules. Some plants just don’t work here. Traditional garden literature often ignores the unique opportunities and challenges that our arid climate presents. A good book that focuses on our distinct region can become an invaluable tool. As a garden writer, I know many garden authors and have been asked to review many books, and I include my top eight with you.

As a garden writer, I’ve been asked to review some garden books and know several of the authors personally and can attest to their expertise in gardening in the Southwest.

*This blog post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you).

1. Southwest Fruit & Vegetable Gardening

Our dry climate is an ideal region for growing fruits and vegetables. We have fewer insect pests and diseases than, in contrast, more temperate areas. From apples, peaches, to citrus – many types of fruit can be grown here. Vegetable gardening is a favorite pastime of mine. Due to our relatively mild winters, we can grow them throughout the entire year. Tucson native, Jacqueline Soule, teaches you how to create your own edible, southwestern garden. Click here to order.

2. Gardening In The Deserts of Arizona

Mary Irish is one of my favorite authors and worked for years at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. Her books are what I like to refer to as the ‘bible’ of growing ornamental plants in the Southwest. From lists of plants that grow well in our climate to how to maintain them each month, this book is a must-have for new (and old) desert gardeners. She has written several books. This is a good one to start with as it breaks down how to care for your garden. I met her at a conference in California and found her utterly charming and down to earth. Click here to order.

3. Lawn Gone

Austin, Texas resident, Pam Penick, is well known for her blog, Digging. Pam makes frequent contributions to a variety of gardening magazines. Her approach is saving water in the garden by removing or minimizing lawn areas, with an emphasis on simple and creative design solutions. I am fortunate to call Pam my friend and have toured gardens with her in Arizona and California. I’ve owned this book for several years. It ranks as one of my favorites. Click here to order.

4. Potted

Annette Gutierrez asked me to review her book. She and Mary own a trendy garden shop in Los Angeles that focuses on outdoor accessories and design services. As its title suggests, this book focuses on instructing readers on how to create unique containers using everyday items. The results are eye-catching and add a welcome design element to garden spaces. This book is for those on your list who like to be on the cutting edge of gardening trends. Click here to order.

5. Growing Vegetables in Drought, Desert, and Dry Times

If you or someone on your gift list like to grow vegetables, this is an invaluable book. Specifically, it addresses the cultivation of an edible garden in an arid climate. This emphasizes the importance of mastering the skill of maximizing your harvest while efficiently managing water.

The author draws upon her experience of living and gardening in the desert regions of California. Grouping this book along with packets of vegetable seeds and a raised bed kit, would be a much-appreciated gift for a beginning vegetable gardener. Click here to order.

6. Homegrown Herb Garden

Herbs are very easy to grow and flourish in arid climates. I grow them in pots, a vegetable garden, and indoors. Moreover, one of the authors, Ann McCormick, also known as the ‘Herb n’ Cowgirl,’ has a blog by the same name. This book provides helpful growing tips along with how to use them to flavor your favorite dishes making it a great choice for the gardener and cook on your list. Click here to order yours.

7. Trees and Shrubs for the Southwest

Many gardening books contain smaller lists of plants. This Mary Irish book has comprehensive lists of shrubs and trees that flourish in the Southwest. It delves beyond the often repeated plant palette of bougainvillea, oleander, and Texas sage. The book delves into the impressive variety of plants that can grow here. This book is a thoughtful choice for those who want to learn more about the plants that can grow in our arid climate. Click here to order.

8. The Water-Saving Garden

This book holds a special place for me because of Pam Penick. She made a journey to visit me in Arizona to research her book. We spent an entire day together visiting gardens throughout the greater Phoenix area (including mine), covering over one-hundred-fifty miles. Many of the photos that she took that day are in the book. As its title suggests, the book focuses on how to create lovely gardens that don’t need a lot of water. Click here to order.

All of these books will serve to inspire and teach the gardener on your list,. These books teach how to create a beautiful garden that will thrive in the arid Southwest climate.

More ideas needed? Here you go –

Want more ideas? Check out Day 1 and Day 2 of my garden gift ideas.

Tomorrow, I’ll share my picks for garden gifts for kids.

Beautiful Succulents, a Wild Animal Encounter, and a Special Story,

az plant lady family, Cactus/Succulents, desert, Desert Animals, Noelle Johnson Landscape Consulting

Life has been awfully busy lately. So much so, that it has affected me from doing blogging as regularly as I like to do. So, I would like to take a little time to let you know what I have been up to this past month.

Work has seen me driving me from one corner of the Phoenix metro area to the other, meeting with clients and helping them to create beautiful outdoor spaces. In fact, I broke my record for the most landscape consultations in a single month. Now that the holidays are here, work has slowed down a little.

A beautiful succulent, Euphorbia trigona

One thing that I enjoy about visiting new clients is that I get to see impressive specimen plants like this Euphorbia trigona that flanked the entry of the Phoenix home.

beautiful succulent

This is a truly beautiful succulent that lends a tropical look to the landscape. It is very frost tender and must be protected when temperatures dip into the 30’s. I’d say it’s worth the effort for a plant like this.

Coyote

Encounters with wildlife happens often during my work. However, seeing a coyote in the middle of the day is rather rare. As I was driving home from a consultation, I saw this beautiful coyote walk across the street. I stopped my car and it stood off to the side of road while I took a few pictures with my phone.

While I’ve seen a number of coyotes over the years, most often their appearance reflects the hardship of living in the desert. However, this coyote was the healthiest one that I’ve encountered.

I think that it enjoyed the attention that I was giving it as it stood still for several seconds before walking off into the desert.

Christmas is my favorite season of the year. I enjoy shopping for the perfect gift, decorating the house, baking my favorite desserts, singing along to Christmas music in the car, and rejoicing in the reason for Christmas.

Earlier this week, we filmed a video segment for our church’s upcoming Christmas Eve services. We were asked to share the story of our daughter Ruthie’s adoption along with her cousin Sofie. They were best friends in the orphanage when my sister and her family adopted Sofie back in 2006. One year later, my husband and I went to China and adopted Ruthie. So, they are not just best friends, but cousins.

We taped the video at my sister’s house, which took over 3 hours. The video came out great. You can view it here.

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are enjoying this holiday season.

10 Cold Hardy Succulents That Add Beauty to the Winter Landscape

AZ Plant Lady’s Christmas and New Year Newsletter

az plant lady family

Do you write a family Christmas letter telling people what has been happening in the past year? I confess that I have never done this before. But today, I thought that I would write one for you that talks about our Christmas celebration and what the coming year holds in store.

Christmas was spent with a house filled with my 5 children (including my oldest daughter from Michigan and my second-eldest from California), my son-in-law, 2 grandchildren, my husband, me plus our 4 dogs. So that makes 10 people, not counting the dogs.

While things have been busy and chaotic, juggling bedrooms and bathrooms, keeping the dogs from eating wrapped Christmas gifts, cooking dinners for 10 people, picking up stray toys and finding time to take the grandkids on grandma and grandpa dates- I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The Christmas tree has since come down and most of the holiday decorations are stored away and our house has begun to resemble its former self, which allows time to reflect on the past month and look forward to some exciting things happening soon.

My daughter Ruthie, my twin nephews and my niece, Sofie.

Every year, I host our annual cookie baking day for my nieces, nephews, grandkids as well as my own kids. The kids look forward to it every year and it is fun to see them decide what cookie cutters they will use and how messy they get decorating their cookies.

My granddaughter Lily, nephews and my son Kai (the tallest one).

While their parents sit and visit, I scramble to keep up with the kids helping them find the right color frosting and sprinkles to create their masterpieces.

After they have finished, each one can pick one cookie to eat and the rest we save to eat together when we gather with extended family on Christmas day.

This is the aftermath of a successful cookie baking day. After an hour and a half, I am exhausted. However, each year I am pleasantly surprised that the older kids still look forward to participating and it is so much fun seeing my young grandkids now taking part.

This Christmas was extra special because it was my grandson’s first one. What also made it especially happy was that my daughter was able to spend Christmas with us for the first time since she joined the Navy.

The kids all enjoyed their gifts, including Gracie who especially liked the ‘sugar’ cereal and chocolate bar that her brother gave her – food that her mother doesn’t buy her 😉

The day after Christmas was a big one for me. I turned 50 this year and we celebrated with extended family at my sister’s house.

To be honest, it wasn’t as much of a milestone for me as I thought it would be. The reason is that I have spent the entire year thinking about turning 50, so I might as well as have skipped over being 49 years old.

I do feel great and am embracing my age and being in the position to have lived long enough to have learned quite a few things and young enough to still be able to do just about anything I still want to do.

I look at my mother as she spends time with my grandchildren and am thankful that I will probably be around when these two have children of their own.

This is my newest wallpaper for my phone. My husband and I took this picture when we took Lily and Eric out on a date to McDonalds. One nice thing about little kids is that McDonalds is as fancy as you need to get and they love it.

The coming year is filled with a lot things to look forward to.

I have several test plants growing in my garden, which were given to me by growers who want to see how they will perform in the desert Southwest. Of course, as a horticulturist, I am interested in seeing how they do as I like to be able to recommend a greater variety of plants to both you and my clients. It also doesn’t hurt that they were free 🙂

My former side vegetable garden is planted with wildflower seeds, many of which, I am growing for the first time such as different colors of California poppies.

New roses are also on their way, which will also be added to the side garden amongst the wildflowers. (I still have two other vegetable gardens, which grow plenty of produce for us.)

AZ Plant Lady's Christmas and New Year Newsletter

On the business front, I keep getting busier each year helping others create beautiful, low-maintenance landscapes using plants that thrive in our climate. In 2015, I had over 85 consultations – I so enjoy meeting with people and helping them with their landscape.

Later this week, I will be appearingon a local television program, Arizona Midday, to talk about winter garden tasks. Frost protection, planting roses, bare root fruit trees and other winter chores will be covered.

Travel will be another big part of this year with trips planned to Seattle, California, Georgia, and Michigan already planned. I’ll be sure to take you along with me as I blog from the road.

Speaking engagements are also filling up my calendar with the first one happening the end of January. Later in the year, I will be a landscape instructor for an upcoming Landscape Design School given by the Arizona Federation of Garden Clubs.

Of course, I will continue to write garden articles for Houzz and for other companies as well.

**I wanted to take a moment to thank you for taking time out of your day to read my blog. It means so much to me and I look forward to sharing more with you the coming year!

Natural, Recycled DIY Items for the Home & A Sale!

Arizona, Uncategorized

Do you like to decorate your home with natural objects?

I do.

Recently, I’ve been busy creating items using things found in nature.

For example, these may seem like regular pieces of wood from a tree – but what if I told you that they were actually old roots from a cresote bush?

You may not know what a creosote bush is, but if you live in the desert – you’ve seen them. They are the shrubs scattered throughout the desert.

The roots that I used for my project came from one of the creosote shrubs in the picture, above.

This creosote shrub was in an area that I was asked to design next to a golf course. While I kept most of the creosote, I had one removed to make room for new plants.

You can see the pile of creosote roots left over after the shrub was pulled out.

I came up on these roots after placing the new plants and thought that they would be great for a future project. They were woody, twisted and had great character. I loaded them up in my truck and stored them in my side yard until I could find the right project in which to use them.

I decided to pair my old wooden roots with air plants.

My mother, who is extremely creative, introduced me to air plants and I immediately fell in love with their unique shapes.

Air plants are unique in another way in that they do not need soil. All they need to grow is air, water and a sunny window, which makes them perfect for using in home decorating projects since you don’t have to worry about soil.

You can read more about air plants and how to care for them, here.

So what do you get when you pair air plants with pieces of natural wood?

A very attractive centerpiece that looks great on the coffee table.

I was so excited about how nice it looked that I decided to try using smaller pieces of wood and different air plants.

Because each piece of wood was unique and had been twisted over time by nature, each pairing looked different.

I must admit that I had so much fun playing with different combinations.

So, what am I going to do with so many creosote wood / air plant combinations?

Earlier this year, my mother proposed going together with my sister and create items for the home that are made from natural elements for a large holiday boutique.

My sister and I both agreed and have been working on making different items focused on using natural and/or recycled elements, along with my mother.

Here are just a few of the items we will be selling:

Gourd Bird Houses

My mother and I have both grown gourds in our gardens and transformed them into bird houses and feeders.

Seed pod Christmas ornaments

Can you tell what type of tree/shrub this seed pod comes from?

If you guessed Texas mountain laurel (Sophora secundiflora), you’d be right.

My sister has made a variety of Christmas ornaments using seed pods. I love the idea of transforming natural items and using them to decorate your home for the holidays!

Terrariums with air plants

Do you like terrariums? I think of them as small worlds enclosed by glass. There will be quite a few terrariums with air plants, including hanging ones.

Lavender sachets made from antique seed bags.

During a trip to Winona, Minnesota – we bought quite a few old seed bags from antique stores. My mother, who is an excellent seamstress, made them into sachets, glass cases and aprons.

Reading glass cases made from antique seed bags.

‘Sparkly’ white Christmas seed pod ornaments

My sister has made a variety of Christmas ornaments using seed pods. I love the idea of transforming natural items and using them to decorate your home for the holidays!

Basil Salt

I love using basil salt on my favorite Italian dishes. The basil came straight from my garden 🙂

Mini air plants on antique wooden spools

Seed Bombs

Have you heard of seed bombs? I wrote about this fun garden trend last year. I first saw these at the Sustainability Festival last year.

*Can you tell that they are wrapped in ‘recycled’ packaging?

Air plants mounted on driftwood sitting on top of wooden plants ready for hanging.

My mother and I collected much of the driftwood during our trip to Lake Michigan this summer.

In addition to what I’ve shown you above, we will have aprons, totes made from seed bags, terrariums made from light bulbs and fairy garden houses made from wood and moss.

Our goal was to create items using natural and/or recycled items.

If you live in the greater Phoenix area, we would love to see you!

We will be selling our natural items at the Believe Boutique, which is a large holiday boutique with over 125 vendors. It is being held at Cornerstone Church in Chandler, Arizona on Friday, November 7th from 4:00 – 9:00 and again on Saturday, the 8th from 10:00 to 3:00.

**We’ll be located in the main lobby in the ‘Sustain’ booth. I’d love to meet you, if you have time to stop by!

Happy New Year!

AZ Plant Lady, az plant lady family, azplantlady, Baking, Double S Farms

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL! I just finished watching the Rose Parade with my mother. It’s a tradition in our family and reminds me of when my grandparents took me when I was a child.

We didn’t have tickets to the parade, so my grandfather carried a ladder from their house (which was close by) and set the ladder up at the edge of the parade route. Each of us kids would take turns climbing to the top of the ladder to watch the parade.

Even though we didn’t see much of the parade, it is still such a special memory.

Well, Christmas is over and the decorations have all been put away. But, we had a wonderful time over the Christmas holiday.

Here are a few highlights…

Baking Christmas cookies with my kids along with my young nephews. Every year, I have all of them come over and we have so much fun making the cookies. Then they get to take some home for ‘Santa’.

Christmas Eve. Every year, my mother-in-law makes her famous lasagna. It is delicious. But, she says that this is the last year that she will be making it. So, I took a picture of it just in case no one else takes up making it in her place.

Each year, on Christmas Eve, all my kids (those that still live at home), ask me to read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’. The dogs enjoy the story too 🙂

Christmas morning at our house.

After Christmas morning at our house, the entire family gathers at Double S Farms. My granddaughter, Lily is excited about opening more gifts. Well, not really. She just likes to tear the tissue paper up into tiny pieces.

Our family just keeps getting bigger.

After we finished opening gifts, it was time for our ‘treasure hunt’. This is a family tradition where my mother writes clues, which eventually lead us to our last Christmas gift. We all work together to solve the clues.

This year’s hunt took us to the chicken coop and to my mother’s vegetable garden…

Doesn’t it look fabulous for December?

Anyway, here is where found one of the clues…

There was a note inside this broccoli plant.

After gifts were all opened, it was time to play outside. The men and boys played football. My twin nephews had fun on the toy tractor being pushed by their mom.

Lily wanted to play ball, but Johnny wasn’t going to share.

So, her aunt and cousins decided to give her a ride in the toy tractor.

Trees were climbed by my nephew, Oliver.

The ‘men’ had fun talking.

And my 2-year old nephew, Danny, finally got to ‘climb’ a tree with a little help from my daughter, Rachele.

My mother got her wish…a photo with all of her grandchildren and one great grandchild.

Although, this was a wonderful Christmas for me, it was also a little bittersweet.

My daughter, Rachele, holding her niece.

You see, my second oldest daughter, Rachele, is entering the Navy in April. While I am so proud of her, I will miss her. She will probably not be with us next Christmas.

And so, every memory from this past Christmas are extra special to me.

*************************

I have lots of plans for the garden this coming year and some road trips. So I will have lots to share with you.

AZ Plant Lady’s Christmas and New Year Newsletter

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