The Beauty of Desert Vegetation at the Red Hills Desert Garden

By Cliff & Ilene Bandringa, BackRoadsWest.com

We love exploring the Southwest and part of that love is being able to see the wide variety of desert plants out there. From the trees, like desert willows or smoke trees, to bushes, like the creosote, to all the different varieties of wildflowers, cacti, yuccas, and agaves, they all offer a beauty unique to the desert environment. We always come away with a deeper appreciation of Mother Nature’s diversity.

The Red Hills Desert Garden in St. George, Utah, is one of the only desert gardens that specialize in plants of the Mojave Desert region. You’ll find more than 5,000 water-efficient plants within their five-acre space that are beautifully displayed and landscaped. And because it is a demonstration garden with the goal of educating people about the benefits of having a water-smart landscape, all of the plants are labeled so that you can learn their names. There are also convenient QR codes on the labels that you can scan with your phone to get a full description of that plant, along with several pictures of it and what the flowers look like.

During our recent visit, we had a strong internet connection and were impressed by the information we were able to get via the QR codes. When at home, you can easily use their website (you can find the link at the end of this article) as a reference or catalog to help you with the design and plant choices when you’re creating your own desert landscaping.

Along with showcasing desert plants, the Garden also has a replica of a slot canyon, imprints of actual dinosaur tracks that are found just outside of St. George, and a habitat for native Virgin River fish that can be viewed through glass. You can easily spend one to two hours thoroughly looking around the Garden and it’s a fun place for both kids and seniors. It’s also a great place to get ideas and be inspired!

The plants are, of course, at their most spectacular in the spring and early summer when everything is blooming, but the fall and winter months at the Garden also have something to offer. For the holidays, starting with Halloween, the Garden puts on some spectacular light shows. More than 60,000 lights and other holiday-themed, lighted decorations are artistically placed throughout the entire area, transforming it into an absolutely magical wonderland of lights. It is truly amazing and something to see. It has become an annual winter event for us to bundle up and take leisurely strolls through the Garden in the crisp night air.

All too often, people think of desert landscaping, or xeriscaping, as something that will look barren and without color or interest, but nothing could be further from the truth, as is proven by what you see at the Red Hills Desert Garden. As you look at the pictures in this article (and check out the “Gallery” section of the Garden website), notice the variety of shapes, colors, sizes, and textures that there are to choose from. Also, notice how much shade some of these trees create and how green things are.

For those of us who have chosen to live in the desert environment, it only makes sense to embrace the desert, which includes remembering that water is very limited here. Households that utilize desert landscaping save up to 70% in water consumption as compared to landscapes that have turf or non-water-efficient plants. It is so important that we all try to be aware of our water consumption and how to live within our means when it comes to that usage.

And once you’ve seen just how beautiful and lush a desert landscape can be, we think you’ll agree that it’s a win-win situation! You can have a beautiful landscape and use only a fraction of the water of a conventional lawn. Plus, you don’t have to mow it once a week!

If you are a “do-it-yourself” person, the Red Hills Desert Garden website is a good resource to help you plan your new desert landscape. There are many nurseries in the area that sell waterefficient plants and you can also find a variety of landscaping

Oh, and one more important thing that you should know about the plants found at the Garden—in addition to being water-efficient, they are also well-suited to tolerate the extreme temperature swings of this region. They can take the heat and occasional freezing temperatures here. Living in a desert is tough and not all plants can do it!

We hope that this article inspires you to learn more about and enjoy the desert vegetation that lives all around us. In our area, the Red Hills Desert Garden is one of the best ways to see desert plants from our region all in one place. When traveling to other southwest areas, we suggest that you look up botanical gardens that typically display plants from those places. A couple of our favorites are the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix and the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, east of Phoenix. These two gardens showcase plants from the Sonoran Desert (instead of the Mojave), so they won’t grow here but are still lovely to see. And in Las Vegas, there is the Springs Preserve Botanical Garden.

So the next time you find yourself out exploring our fascinating desert backyard, see how many plants you can identify out in nature after seeing them showcased at the Red Hills Desert Garden. It’s like a fun treasure hunt! Happy Exploring!V

For more information about the gardens, go to RedHillsDesertGarden.com. The website includes detailed information about every plant growing there.

To learn about places to visit in the Mojave Desert that are lush with vegetation, see a collection of trip ideas from our blog at BackRoadsWest.com/blog/category/mojave-desert/. We also publish an online travel guide for the Mojave National Preserve (located southwest of Las Vegas). It includes hikes, road trips, and has lots of desert botanical garden information.

To see and purchase beautiful images of desert scenes and plants, go to SnapShotsWest.com.