I Found The Ultimate Gravel Garden

Joshua Tree, The Ultimate Gravel Garden

If you want to see a gravel garden, go to Joshua Tree National Park in the Mojave Desert, a few hours from Vegas. This is true desert and anyone who chooses to live near by chooses not to garden. The gardens I passed didn’t have a single bit of plant life in them and had that swept appearance created by snake fearers (or ophidiophobics if you prefer).

Once we were up in the park, though, where it is significantly cooler than it is in town, we started to see typical desert vegetation, like cacti and yuccas.

The Joshua Tree is a form of yucca, namely Yucca Brevifolia. It waits for years to flower and, once it does, that branch doesn’t grow any more. Instead of dying, though, the plant sends out a new branch, making a very twisty, weird looking tree! It has the same wonderful flowers as all yuccas, like creamy candelabras which are wonderfully aromatic.

Our visit in late April was a little late for the yucca spring show and most of the yuccas had finished blooming and were making seeds. The seed pods are quite spectacular in their own right, especially against the deep blue sky.

The massive rock formations in the park are beautiful and spare and, along with the Joshua Trees, give the park its very spiritual quality, especially when the sun rises or sets. Skull Rock looks just like its name and I wouldn’t like to find it alone in the dark!

We parked our car and walked into the ultimate gravel garden. We went behind the rocks and the more we looked, the more flowers we found, some relishing the full sun and others hiding away under bigger shrubs, all finding cooler temperatures for their roots under the gravel which is one of the best types of mulch . The entire park was one huge gravel garden! Incredibly low maintenance – no need to water and no grass to cut.

Now is the time that the cacti are starting to flower and we saw three wonderfully named cacti in bloom: the aptly named Beavertail cactus is fairly low growing with a wide spread and has clusters of bright magenta flowers. This one was nestled below a Juniper tree. Juniper trees are quite lovely and quite startling to see in this arid landscape, providing some very welcome shade for the wildlife there. The only wildlife I saw were lizards and vultures but I believe this is where the infamous roadrunner hangs out too.

The charmingly named Teddy Bear Cholla is definitely not very huggable! It is covered in very nasty looking thorns and very vivid, lime green flowers. These grow quite large and are all over the place, obviously relishing the dryness.

The third one was called the Hedgehog Cactus which suited it very well, and it also has bright pink flowers. The ones I saw were very low growing and I believe they don’t grow more than a foot high.

There were a couple of types of bushes, the most numerous being the Paper Bag Bush covered in purple, pink and white depending on the age of the flowers.

What surprised me, though, were all the spring flowering annuals. The ubiquitous Lupine was there, sweet little thing, putting out some serious blue. There were also blue desert Veronicas. Yellow Brittlebrush were scattered around the place, as were lovely purple Chias with little spiky globe flowers. These are the flowers that produce the new super food. The gravel floor of this desert keeps the roots of these little treasures cool enough to survive the hot desert temperatures.

There were white Pincushions growing in small clumps and nearby were little orange-red globe Mallows. There were lots of others too, which I still can’t identify, one lovely clump with pink and red pincushion flowers and one with white flowers that would make a gorgeous bridal bouquet, all low growing and full of flowers. These sun loving plants are a real testament to tough living; how to do it and how to enjoy it.

I was drawn into the space around me with its sunny aspect and its strangely alluring trees, its gravel walkways dotted with charming little clumps of annuals, its sandstone boulders and its big sky and I can see how gravel gardens can become addictive. The ultimate gravel garden would be easy to replicate in any garden, albeit on a smaller scale, without the huge boulders and the Joshua Trees of course.

Happy gardening and please don’t forget your sunscreen. There’s so much skin cancer about, you must protect your skin.

By the way, here is a link to a list of gopher resistant plants: http://www.groundcoversandgardening.com/gopher resistant plants.

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