Newcomers to the Southwest usually find that their favorite landscape plants aren't suited to the hot, dry climate. Many authors offer advice on adapting plants to the desert; now Mary Irish tells how gardeners can better adapt themselves to the challenge.

Drawing on her experience with public horticulture in the Phoenix metropolitan area, Irish explores the vexations and delights of desert gardening. She offers practical advice on plants and gardening practices for anyone who lives in the Southwest, from El Paso to Palm Springs, Tucson to Las Vegas.

Irish encourages...

For twenty years Mary Irish, along with her husband Gary, tended a garden in Scottsdale, Arizona. Over the years they transformed it into a lively and lovely spot that reflected both its place in the world hot, dry, and often hostile to gardeners who don t understand its ways and the particular passions of its two creators. Of course, not everything went as planned, and the garden talked back as much as it obeyed. But for these two gardeners, the unexpected outcome is one of gardening s great pleasures.

Mary Irish is a delightful writer. With grace, wit, and obvious affection, she...